How three Black trans activists are working towards a ‘higher future’ for San Francisco’s trans neighborhood

When three black trans community leaders co-founded the world’s first legally recognized transgender district, they did so with a core idea: to create a space for trans people, by trans people.

With this in mind, the Transgender Cultural District of Compton was founded in San Francisco in 2017.

Aria Sa’id, the district executive director, said there was talk of an LGBT district, but she and her co-founders – Honey Mahogany and Janetta Johnson – “fought to be a transgender district because nothing was special up until then for us and our experience – and especially for our history and our future. “

The transgender neighborhood is six blocks from San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, which has been known as the home of transgender people since the 1920s. an event that even preceded the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

Aria Sa’id, President and Co-Founder of Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco.

According to the Transgender District website, the focus is on six major program initiatives including: Tenant Protection, Business and Human Resources Development, Art and Culture, Heritage Preservation, Cultural Literacy, and Land Use. A recent report on the district added a seventh area of ​​work: transgender – and gender neutral – empowerment, “Sa’id explained, adding that the only way to address the” systematic and structural “disparities within the community is to that trans people “get opportunities to lead solutions for trans people”.

These issues include many members of the San Francisco transgender community who live in abject poverty and have few opportunities to emerge from their economic disenfranchisement; Something that Sa’id describes as an “abrasive reality” for trans people living in the city.

“As many trans people come here as there are refugees from other cities in the US,” Sa’id said. “And they came to this great place called San Francisco because they were told to come there only to find that there weren’t any real options for them here.”

When Sa’id moved from Oregon to San Francisco at the age of 19, she had $ 60 in her purse and a dream of a “better life,” as many said, awaited her there. What she found was that San Francisco was safer and that she and other trans people were legal and social upholding; however, it was not exactly the utopia as it was described.

“I went to job interviews and was laughed at, I was spat at in the street, harassed by passers-by or looked at or gawked at,” she said, noting that not much has changed over the years as a tranny. People still wear the ” Brunt of violence, discrimination and harassment.

A sign for Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco.

Johnson, who moved to San Francisco from Florida in the late 1990s, echoed Sa’id as he spoke about the reality of being transgender and moving from small town to big city to seek opportunities, acceptance and a new life .

“By the time you get here, you’ve had so much trauma and so much heartache and so much abandonment that San Francisco is a place that could eat you up and spit you out alive,” she said, noting Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, one leader of the transgender community, encouraged and supported them to take the big step.

“There is a lot to be healed,” she said, emphasizing that progress will be made when trans people “come together as a community … and continue to raise the bar on how we are treated and how we should be.” respected. “

Johnson said her hope for Compton’s transgender cultural district is to provide a “safe place” for trans, queer, gender neutral, and gender non-conforming people who come to San Francisco and “find a more welcoming place with more resources and opportunities to grow the human.”

For Mahogany, who grew up in San Francisco, one of the driving forces behind Compton’s transgender cultural district was keeping a piece of the city she knew well, the neighborhood that is now in the transgender neighborhood, from preventing herself to change right in front of their eyes.

There is a lot to be healed.

“We realized that if we didn’t do anything, the tenderloin would get gentrified quickly,” Mahogany said. “Many of the people who have called the tenderloin home for generations would continue to be ousted and our history would be completely wiped out and bulldozed.”

“The future is pretty bright for trans people in San Francisco,” Mahogany said, adding that the trans neighborhood today is thanks to the “holistic approach” that is revolutionizing and validating life for trans people by tackling housing “flourishes”. Problem, Economic Opportunities, and Celebrating Transculture.

With the release of Compton’s transgender cultural district, Mahogany said San Francisco takes trans people seriously, invests in their success and helps them preserve their history and heritage in a “very official way”.

While Sa’id, Johnson, and Mahogany each have their own vision for San Francisco’s transgender neighborhood, they all agreed that simply because it exists, there is reason to be optimistic and move on to a better one Working towards the future for trans people.

The future looks pretty bright for transsexuals in San Francisco.

“It was incredible to go from an experience of disempowerment, marginalization and disenfranchisement and then to be able to create something transformative,” Sa’id said. “And in this moment of visibility, something has to emerge from this visibility. It can’t just be that we are visible … it actually has to be substantial. “

However, by focusing on San Francisco, a transgender community, Sa’id hopes to provide them with “true empowerment and inclusion” and the foundation laid by Compton’s Transgender Cultural District for going global.

“I think we will see a future with transgender neighborhoods in other cities around the world,” Sa’id said, “in which trans people take possession of the land below them and their culture and history as a radical solution the inequality we often face. “