August marks 59 years since the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot took place in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. On this anniversary, community members came together to recognize the riot’s role in transgender and queer history.
Saturday, San Francisco’s Transgender District threw a party called “Reparations is a Riot.” The celebration brought San Francisco’s all-Black drag show, “Reparations,” to the district’s party at Trellis, featuring pulsating music and a star-studded cast of performers, including Naomi Smalls and Jax, who were on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
“We’ll have a good time with community, and celebrate the resistance of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot,” said Breonna McCree, a Co-Executive Director for the city’s Transgender District.
Back in 1966, Compton’s Cafeteria was a place where many trans and queer people would hang out.
One night, a trans woman was reportedly being harassed by police there. When she threw her coffee at an officer, others in the cafeteria joined her in fighting back.
“And during that uprising and subsequent to that uprising, there were changes made here in the city of San Francisco that helped to elevate and center some of the needs that our community most needed at the time,” said Carlo Gomez Arteaga, a Co-Executive Director for the Transgender District.
59 years later, San Francisco is honoring that history through dance and community. August is not only the anniversary of the riot, but also Transgender History Month.
McCree said that some of the factors that prompted the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot have similarities to what the transgender community is experiencing today.
“We’re having that same idea in trans communities, where there was something in the air, people were just tired of being sick and tired,” McKee said. “And that started in Compton’s Cafeteria riot, that happened in Stonewall.”
This week, the Transgender District also launched a new fundraising effort called “The Riot Fund,” named for the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. It’s described as a multi-year emergency fund, designed to build up a reserve of $100,000 and sustain that funding for the next three years.
“Many trans organizations at the federal level, at the state level, and the local level, are really struggling right now for funds, and a lot of this is stemming from the fact that we’re being used as a wedge issue by the federal administration,” said Gomez Arteaga.
Transgender District said it is facing a shortfall of funding due to cuts to San Francisco’s city budget, rescinded grants, and a “wider trend of institutional divestment from trans-led organizations both locally and nationwide.”
Gomez Arteaga said the money raised by the Riot Fund will go towards programs for transgender and nonbinary people, such as assistance with name changes on official documents, help with housing access and rental assistance, job training, and help with starting businesses.
“We want to make sure that folks know that any and every dollar helps,” he said.
As the Trump administration continues pursuing policies targeting transgender individuals, the people at the party on Saturday said it feels all the more important to have occasions like this to support one another.
Nikki J., a drag queen and the host of the Reparations is a Riot party, said she had recently gone to see the Compton’s Cafeteria play by the Tenderloin Museum.
“Everyone talks about Stonewall, and they talk about that, but [Compton’s Cafeteria Riot] was like the precursor to all that as well,” she noted.
“We’ve been in this situation before, and we’ve overcome things, and we can do that again and again,” she continued. “There will always be someone telling us no, and we will be here to fight back and say ‘yes.’”
Source: NBC Bay Area