Highlights of the parade include floats, lion dancers, elementary school groups in costume, marching bands, stilt walkers, Chinese acrobats, and a Golden Dragon. The parade route begins on Market Street and terminates in Chinatown. First held in 1851, along what are today Grant Avenue and Kearny Street, it is the oldest and one of the largest events of its kind outside of Asia, and one of the largest Asian cultural events in North America. Held for approximately two weeks following the first day of the Chinese New Year, it combines elements of the Chinese Lantern Festival with a typical American parade.
The San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade is an annual event in San Francisco. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.The Chinese New Year Parade in 2009, the Year of the Oxġ953 ( 1953) (private events date to 1858) “And certainly a time when you couldn’t even dream of marching in Pride.” “There was a time in the San Francisco Police Department when you could not serve as open police officers,” Winters said. “We want to be able to show the members of our community that there are people just like you who put on these uniforms every day and are out there to support, help, and protect you.”
“I would really like San Francisco Pride to embrace the values of San Francisco, the values of radical inclusion,” Officer Kathryn Winters, who is a transgender lesbian, of the SFPD Officers Pride Alliance told KGO-TV in the Bay Area. To many LGBTQ officers who work in the city, the decision feels like a ban. Police can participate in the march with T-shirts that state they are law enforcement, but uniforms will not be allowed, said Ford, a transgender woman. “This is not a ban this is merely an invitation to participate with a condition attached,” Ford said. Suzanne Ford, interim executive director of SF Pride, told the weekly newspaper Bay Area Reporter that the policy is not an outright ban against police to participate in the parade. “But they have told us, peace officers, that if we wear our uniforms, we may not attend.” This committee would not order the drag community to wear flannel,” they said in their statement. “Let us be clear: this committee would not order the leather community to wear polyester at the parade. The board of SF Pride offered only one option: that LGBTQ+ peace officers hang up their uniforms, put them back in the closet, and march in civilian attire,” the group said in their statement. “We shared stories of the courage it took to serve as both a peace officer and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. On Monday, the San Francisco Police Officer’s Pride Alliance said the committee overseeing the parade left the officers with little choice in the matter. The 2022 Pride Parade will be the first where the new policy will be in effect.
That parade ultimately did not take place and several other events were held around the city. Conversations about the incident became tense in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a white police officer and the parade organizers decided that to make community members feel safe, that uniformed police would not be allowed to march in the 2021 parade. The controversy stems from 2019 when anti-corporate protesters blocked the parade route and were arrested and allegedly assaulted by police. The group says they have been in discussions with the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee, about incorporating uniformed officers into the event, but could not reach a compromise with the group that oversees the parade. The San Francisco Police Department will provide security for the event, according to a press release from the officers pride alliance. Then-San Francisco Chief of Police Greg Suhr waves while marching with officers in the 44th annual Gay Pride parade Sunday, June 29, 2014, in San Francisco.