Black Lives Matter to help lead San Francisco Pride Parade

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The San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration Committee has named the Black Lives Matter movement as one of the grand marshals for its upcoming 2016 pride parade.

The theme of this year’s parade is “For Racial and Economic Justice,” and the decision to make the Black Lives Matter movement a grand marshal stems largely from the group’s stated mission:

[Black Lives Matter] goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.

Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.

Other grand marshals include Larry Yang, who has helped to create several LGBTQI meditation groups in the Bay Area, and Janetta Johnson, executive director of the Transgender Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project.