November 16, 2023 edition of the Bay Area Reporter

TDOR events planned

Lesbian confab eyes NYC

15

'Fellow Travelers'

ARTS

13

ARTS

11

15

John Waters exhibit

The

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Serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communities since 1971

Vol. 53 • No. 46 • November 16-22, 2023

Spirit of Gay Games 2023 outshines COVID, politics, and doubters analysis by Roger Brigham

Courtesy Afrika America

Drag performer Afrika America was attacked November 6 after performing at the Midnight Sun.

Drag queen slashed in SF’s Castro district

by John Ferrannini

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prominent Castro neighborhood drag performer was attacked late Monday with a knife, but says she is doing fine now. “Captain cranky pants over here,” Afrika America told the Bay Area Reporter. “I’m supposed to be doing other stuff with my life today, this week. That’s OK – life goes on, things happen.” A drag ambassador for Drag Out the Vote, which encourages people to register and vote in elections, America told the B.A.R. she had just wrapped up a performance at the Midnight Sun bar at 4067 18th Street and was waiting for a car from a ride-hailing app, at around 11:45 p.m. on November 6. “I literally live up the street,” she said. “As we were walking out, this guy and a gal were walking past a bar and they threw a bottle – but I want to make it clear they were just crazy, they weren’t aiming for gay people, but they were mad about something. They threw the bottle at a street light.” While America said they “weren’t aiming for gay people,” drag performer Nitrix Oxide, who was with America, said that the pair did hurl homophobic slurs at the group. “A guy and his girlfriend threw a bottle at a lamppost which shattered and they responded with f-slurs,” Oxide told the B.A.R. “Afrika and the other guy with us said they’d heard it. We basically told them to go away, knock it off.” America said she told them not to throw bottles, at which point “they started cursing at us and we said ‘just go.’” It was then that, in the words of Oxide, “the girlfriend pulled a knife.” America said that right beforehand, the woman repeatedly said, “I’ll cut you.” “She pulls out a knife and lunges at one of the guys, and I tried to disarm her,” America said, continuing that the two engaged in a physical struggle after that. “I didn’t feel the knife cut me.” The two suspects were able to get away. “This all happened in 30 seconds to a minute,” America said. “It was really fast. Then I realized ‘Oh shit, I’m bleeding.’” See page 12 >>

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f you read the superficial news reports and commentaries published in the final days leading up to the Gay Games events held in Hong Kong and Guadalajara, Mexico this month, you would have expected sparsely attended tournaments populated by athletes ducking bullets fired by Mexican cartels or constantly looking over their shoulders expecting to be kidnapped by communist party security officers. If you actually participated in the events, you would have found what is always present at the Gay Games: athletes and artists having the most joyous times of their lives overcoming obstacles and critics while transforming those around them for the better. In many ways, these may have been the most revolutionary and impactful Gay Games since the inaugural Gay Games four decades ago in San Francisco. That may sound unbelievable to the journalism hacks who pooh-poohed the games before they even happened, but then they weren’t competing or volunteering. They missed out on the magic. Leading up to Gay Games XI, which was delayed by one year and divided between two locales for the first time ever because of the onset of CO-

Courtesy Wrestlers WithOut Borders

Wrestlers posed for a photo while at the Gay Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

VID-19 and Hong Kong’s imposition of severe travel restrictions, many news media focused on the unique challenges facing the Gay Games. They implied failure was inevitable. They ignored the unique opportunities and the extraordinary work that went into capitalizing on those opportunities. Outsports announced it would skip the Gay

Games altogether and declared the event had an undefined identity crisis. Most pre-Games news reports looked like they had been written by betaversion artificial intelligence bots assigned to write from formulaic scripts built on Google searches See page 4 >>

SF labor icon Baird, union head spar over Teamsters’ name

by John Ferrannini

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legendary labor leader and longtime Castro resident is renewing a 31-yearold call for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to change its name so it better reflects that the union’s membership is not made up solely of men. Allan M. Baird, a retired president and business agent of Teamsters Local 921, had led the famous 1973 boycott of Coors beer because of the Coors Brewing Company’s then-homophobic and anti-union stances. He famously teamed up on it with then-political newcomer Harvey Milk, a gay man who would go on to win a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Baird, a straight ally who has resided in the Castro since 1942, is now 91 years old. The longtime Teamster told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview at his home last week that he first initiated the discussion about changing the union’s name with its executive board back in 1992. While the exact phrasing of his proposed new name has changed since then, Baird told the B.A.R. he believes the union should now be known as the International Sisterhood and Brotherhood of Teamsters. As Baird wrote in his most recent letter to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien about the need to change the name, “especially when

John Ferrannini

Longtime International Brotherhood of Teamsters member Allan Baird is pushing for the union to add “Sisterhood” to its name and holds a letter he wrote to Teamsters’ leadership.

women have been organizing for some time now to seek parity in the workplace and protections from violence there and in the home, as well as full and equal inclusion in all aspects of daily life, and the sole right to make decisions themselves along with their doctors regarding their own health care, it seems only just and natural to see the Teamsters’ union reflect their right to equality under the law, in life, and in regard to our union.”

Three decades ago Baird said he didn’t receive a response from the union’s leaders. But he did hear back this year from O’Brien when he renewed his calls that the union change its name. O’Brien was not supportive of Baird’s proposal. “As for the union’s name, I understand your desire to remove ‘Brotherhood’ from the name,” O’Brien wrote to Baird in a letter dated May 18. See page 10 >>

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