The San Francisco Pride weekend is in full swing, but a few violent incidents, including a shooting near an entrance in the Castro District, vandalism, and two cases where State Senator Scott Wiener said he was \u201charassed, threated and intimidated\u201d are bringing concerns.<\/p>\n
That violence is catching the attention of millions of people on social media, on a weekend when the world\u2019s eyes are on the Bay Area for Pride and World Cup.<\/p>\n
One of those incidents was posted on social media. The viral video shows a crowd during Friday\u2019s Trans March shouting at State Senator and Congressional Candidate Scott Wiener, eventually chasing him away.<\/p>\n
After having a day to process what happened, Wiener said he felt \u201charassed, threatened and intimidated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when folks are basically swarming around you, getting really close, and then touching you, and just trying to drive you out of the park physically, that\u2019s not okay. That crosses a line,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Wiener says some people were actually getting physical with him, and for the first time in 22 years, he left the march because he didn\u2019t feel safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich makes me really sad, because it\u2019s the first Trans March I\u2019ve ever missed since it started in 2004, but it would not have been safe for me or for my team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Wiener says he and his staff were also accosted in a separate incident while attending a World Cup watch party Wednesday night in the Mission District.<\/p>\n
\u201cA guy who had previously harassed me, in a very antisemitic way, sort of cornered me, and blocked me and was getting very close to me and being very aggressive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On Friday\u2019s, the incident that occurred during the Trans March left to San Francisco police officers injured and five people under arrest.<\/p>\n
SFPD released a statement, which in part read: “The SFPD always respects individuals First Amendment rights to protest; however, criminal activity will not be tolerated in San Francisco.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0Pride participants told NBC Bay Area they\u2019re aware of what happened, but not too worried.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t, and that kind of violence and threat of intimidation because if you stay away because you\u2019re afraid something might happen they\u2019ve already won,\u201d San Francisco resident Sister Roma said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being here. I love seeing everybody, seeing everybody happy. This is what pride is about. It’s just about the beauty of being in community and just being together with people and feeling that love,\u201d ally Jason said.<\/p>\n
Wiener agrees with them and SFPD.<\/p>\n
He says he respects everyone\u2019s rights to disagree and voice their own political views, but he says too often, people are crossing the line into harassment, intimidation and bullying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to fight them, and stick up for each other, and that\u2019s what Pride is about. It\u2019s about celebrating the community and recommitting to the fight ahead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The main Pride weekend event, the San Francisco Pride Parade and Celebration, will be held Sunday morning. Wiener said he will be there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Pride weekend is in full swing, but a few violent incidents, including a shooting near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[113332,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-378480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-pride-month","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}