The dike march is officially canceled, but it could still take place

It hasn’t exactly been the most organized and least controversial event of Pride season, but this year’s Dyke March is apparently coming with some additional organizational turmoil.

As KQED reports, members of an organizing committee for the annual Seawall March have all dropped out, amid “intercommunity conflicts around racism and trans inclusion.” There were also reported deaths among the group’s leaders, and some members were simply exhausted.

A new committee has apparently formed and was meeting for the first time today, but they decided, according to KQED, not to officially hold a march this year, instead focusing on recruiting supporters and sponsors for the next year. The official Dyke March website still displays information about the 2023 march.

“Marginalized groups (and) communities do not always have the time and resources available to navigate difficult times, such as recovering from a global pandemic,” said a representative of the march, Ms. Rocket, in a sent statement via email to KQED. Many of us are working class and work multiple jobs to stay afloat in one of the most expensive cities in the country. »

It’s been a Pride weekend tradition since 1993, when the first Dyke March passed through the Mission District. It was still a grassroots protest-style affair, in keeping with the origins of Gay Freedom Day celebrations, and helped establish visibility for the large and proud female-centered queer and non-binary community .

The name itself, Dyke March, embraces and owns the old epithet of queer women, and was indicative of a punk, lesbian Gen dyke” in a pejorative manner.

The first marches against the levees all took place in June 1993, essentially simultaneously in New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta. They were launched by the group Lesbian Avengers, which had marched a few months earlier in the massive march on Washington for equal rights and liberation for lesbians, gays and bisexuals, with the group’s New York chapter leading this effort.

Here in San Francisco, the Dyke March showed signs of splintering nearly a decade ago, with a second, renegade march breaking off from the planned route in 2015. Protesters called the splinter march an act of defiance “in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to protest the displacement of queer people and community institutions in San Francisco,” and the splinter group vowed to “take back Dyke March” from the forces that tried to make it less of a protest.

The issue at the time was the agreement of the official organizers for the march to begin two and a half hours earlier than usual, at 3:30 p.m. This agreement, forged in solidarity with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the city, was reached in an effort to combat the crime that threatened Pink Saturday in Castro, which traditionally occurred every Saturday before Pride. Like Halloween in Castro, Pink Saturday was threatened with cancellation due to the shootings and crime it had sparked in recent years. This cancellation finally took place in 2016 after a more discreet daytime version in 2015.

But many Dyke March participants wanted to flout the agreement, go off alone and disrupt traffic as was tradition – instead of following an authorized and sanctioned route.

This happened and it led to some chaos and scuffles with police, as well as a few arrests.

Subsequent years have seen the march itself decline in size, although the traditional daytime gathering at Dolores Park has remained quite large every year except 2020. The 2019 march attracted thousands of people, but by the time she arrived at the Castro, she was not yet grown up. the big, noisy affair it traditionally was, with the Dykes on Bikes crowd barely there.

In 2023, a walk of about two blocks took place from the park to the Castro, but it also appeared to be a low-key affair. March organizers previously announced they would not hold an official rally in Dolores Park as they had previously.

Another renegade march is expected to take shape on Saturday, as KQED notes. And if it gets bigger and runs through the Mission and Castro, it would be more in line with the original Dyke Marches – although there is something to be said for organization and making sure people know where they go.

First, on Friday, the 21st annual Trans March will kick off with its own rally in Dolores Park, and at 6 p.m. it will continue its usual route to the transgender neighborhood of the Tenderloin. It’s March 21, but it’s the 20th anniversary of the event, which first took place in 2004.

The Civic Center Pride Celebration will continue Saturday and Sunday, and the Sunday Pride Parade will begin at the foot of Market Street at 10:30 a.m.

Related: SF Pride hopes to legalize cannabis sale and consumption at Civic Center Plaza party

Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist