Many Castro businesses non-LGBTQ owned, survey finds

by John Ferrannini

“Pose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross, left, led about 50 transgender conference staff and volunteers in a protest with multiple grievances against the National LGBTQ Task Force’s management and planning of Creating Change 35 at the conference’s closing plenary February 20.

Trans TV star leads protest at SF Creating Change confab

by Heather Cassell

“Pose” star and transgender activist Angelica Ross staged a protest against Creating Change at the conference’s closing plenary in San Francisco February 20, unhappy with alleged anti-trans incidents at the host hotels and problems with the conference itself.

On Monday, attendees at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s signature event suddenly received a push alert on the conference’s app around 4:45 p.m. stating that the closing plenary was starting at 5; it was to have started at 5:30.

The nearly 3,000 Creating Change attendees were used to sudden schedule changes four days into the conference and headed to the Grand Ballroom at the Hilton Union Square for the plenary. What they got was transgender conference workers and attendees rising in protest. Ross was their spokesperson.

“I heard that you know, we needed a demonstration and a protest because some shit wasn’t going down the way that it was supposed to go down,” Ross said about the text messages she received from transgender activists working for and attending the conference.

Ross had walked out on stage and sat down with the task force Executive Director Kierra Johnson and fellow “Pose” star Dyllón Burnside to talk about the organization’s future.

But then she stood up and invited an estimated 50 transgender, gender-nonconforming, and intersex conference staff, contractors, and volunteers on stage reading their list of nine grievances

“I’ve been at Creating Change for years,” said Ross, who is a task force policy institute fellow alumna. “So, when my brothers and sisters were telling me what was going on, I was like, ‘You got to be kidding me. This is still going on?’ So, we’re not asking. These are not asks. These are demands.

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Less than half of businesses in San Francisco’s LGBTQ neighborhood that participated in a 2021 survey conducted by the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District were “owned or managed” by members of the queer community, neighborhood leaders told the Bay Area Reporter.

According to the survey results only 45% of the 129 businesses that responded to it were owned or managed by LGBTQ people.

The B.A.R. previously reported on the survey at the time it was being undertaken. The information was gathered for inclusion in a Cultural History, Housing and Economic Sustainability Strategies, or CHHESS, report, according to Tina Aguirre, a genderqueer Latinx person who is manager of the cultural district. That report is required by the city, which funds San Francisco’s 10 cultural districts.

“We did not disseminate the entire results of this survey publicly,” Aguirre stated to the B.A.R. “Instead, we used it as a data source for our CHHESS report that is currently in development, and I shared key takeaways with OEWD [Office of Economic and Workforce Development] and

MOHCD [Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development] in the last year.”

Aguirre stated, “This information underscores the need for intentional small business support that centers LGBTQ culture and community needs in the Castro district.”

They hoped the survey would be shared with the Castro Community Benefit District, the Castro Merchants Association, the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, and the Eureka Valley Neighborhood Association.