The San Francisco Dyke March will return to Dolores Park this weekend as an organized march and rally for the first time in six years, and it’s more inclusive than ever, according to its new leaders.
Interim leadership has worked for the last year to mount a comeback on Saturday after the last leaders resigned two weeks before last year’s Pride weekend.
The slogan for this year is “Dyke Solidarity, Dyke Resistance.”
“In this time of immense oppression from our regime in power, visibility is critical to show that we care about the world that’s happening around us, and we deserve to take space and to exhibit the power that we have,” said M Rocket, interim project director for the march.
The long-running Pride institution has been taking place at Dolores Park since the early 1990s, but since 2018, the Dyke March organizing group dwindled due to internal conflicts around racism and trans inclusion, the deaths of several leaders and burnout. Smaller renegade marches have taken place instead in recent years.
A group of four queer organizers wanted to bring the Dyke March back in full force, and it turned out they weren’t the only ones. The interim steering committee held four town halls over the last eight months to gauge interest and gather support, and found more than 200 people passionate about the march to return.
“Some people still see the Dyke March as some sort of authoritative entity. And it’s not,” Rocket said. “It’s a loose organization made up of dedicated volunteers who care about keeping it going. And all of us are in positions of service, not of authority.”
For the steering committee, “dyke” is more than a sexuality or a reclaimed slur; it’s a political identity.
The town halls were a forum for sometimes heated debates about what the organization’s values would be, especially around the inclusion of transgender people and opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. The group took feedback from community members and published their value statement in May, which proclaims they are “against war, imperialism, and all forms of genocide,” embraces all gender expressions and sexualities, and declares bodily autonomy an “absolute right.”
“There had been trouble in years past of trans exclusionists, you know, dykes not wanting trans people in our spaces, which is absurd,” Rocket said. “Trans dykes are dykes, and so we wanted to ensure that that was explicit throughout all of our values and it’s the most trans-positive set of values to come out of the Dyke March ever. I’m really proud of that.”
The group expects up to 20,000 people to show up at Dolores Park on Saturday.
Rocket estimates the cost of running the march and rally is around $80,000, including the cost of city permits and trash, bathroom and medical services at the park.
The interim steering committee has so far raised nearly $70,000, and will hold a final pre-Pride fundraiser at Moby Dick bar in the Castro on Thursday.
“I’m really excited for the rally in the park,” Rocket said. “That’s my favorite part, is to exhibit our power, our visibility, our art and culture, and our activism from the platform of the stage.”
The rally will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday with music, drag, comedy and speeches.
Performers include East Bay band Skip the Needle, jazz pianist Tammy Hall, comedian Marga Gomez and drag king Leigh Crow. Speakers include Imani Rupert-Gordon, executive director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights in San Francisco; retired San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson, who was the first openly LGBTQ chief of the SFFD; and Franco Stevens, founder of the Curve Foundation and Curve Magazine.
After the rally, the march will leave from and return to Dolores Park.
In August, Dyke March leaders will hold another town hall to roll out a new organizational membership model, and then hold elections for a new board in September.
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