Tonight, San Francisco’s ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) will provide San Francisco with a series of special, confrontational treats!
Why:
We do this to remind our queer and trans brethren that the spirit of PRIDE lays in both in the spirit of rebellion as well as that of celebration.
PRIDE has become increasingly commercialized, so as to be unrecognizable to those who fought for their rights in the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in 1966 and at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. Pride could be an amazing expression of our loves and lives that holds the potential to pose a fierce challenge the status quo. Pride could function as a protest which demands justice for those most vulnerable and marginalized amongst us. Instead, it is a zoo of corporate sponsorship and a celebration of policies that don’t matter to us.
We are still fighting for our lives, with new HIV infection rates in the city on the rise, especially in the 18-22 year olds!
This year, SF Pride will celebrate Marriage Equality while HIV continues to spread through our communities. It will provide free advertising to Wells Fargo, who evicts people living with AIDS out into the streets and who finances the prisons who lock up our trans-sisters for defending themselves against anti-trans violence. It will celebrate the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in a time when the government prioritizes military spending while HIV medications still cost thousands of dollars a month and ADAP programs are being cut.
But we know what is brewing - our community is strong, our community knows how to really take care of each other, our community knows how to fight. En masse we will join arms and ACT UP FIGHT BACK FIGHT AIDS.
When:
Join us on Pink Saturday
8pm at 18th and Castro
Look for screaming queens and queers with condoms
Join us at Sunday;s Pride Parade
as part of OccuPRIDE
10am at Mission and Main
You’ll know when it’s happening.
5:34 PM PT: I just returned from the Pink Saturday Pride Festival at Civic Center. And it was far different than I remember. I admit I have not been to the Festival on Saturday in about 10 years. Gone are the Community Non-Profit Booths doing out reach and education, and in its place are 100's of booths hacking everything from T-shirts to Chakra massage! There were representatives from HRC and ACLU looking for donations to support this years work, which is the passage of ENDA. PETA was there, as was the Green Party, but I can hardly call these LGBT Community Organizations, nor do they help to build Community.
6:53 PM PT: San Francisco's ACT UP will be going OLD SCHOOL this evening and handing out Condoms and Bleach and doing informal HIV-Prevention on the spot with the young and at risk. We will be demonstrating how to put on condoms, we will be showing how to clean needles. Yes, we too thought everyone knew how to do these things, but the new statics show that prevention education is obviously lacking in our Community!