16 applicants seek SF drag laureate post

by Matthew S. Bajko

Sixteen applicants are seeking to become San Francisco’s inaugural drag laureate. City Hall officials expect the person to be announced this spring, well ahead of Pride Month in June.

The deadline to apply was last Thursday, February 16. It had been extended by a month in order to give people more time to apply, which included filling out a questionnaire as well as submitting a video recording.

Cornejo did tell the Bay Area Reporter this week that he believed the city was able to attract “some good candidates” to choose from for the post.

“I think it is going to be a tough choice for Mayor Breed and our committee,” he predicted.

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I’ll start by offering a brief reflection on the enormous challenges we encountered in my first year. I think every leader’s hope is to spend their first year simply listening and learning, in order to craft careful strategic plans that best serve the community, staff, clients, volunteers, and other stakeholders across the city. I entered with this hope, and have been able to hear and learn from so many folks involved in our work in the past year. But, I also soon realized there would be a need for quick and decisive action in response to a variety of outside challenges to our work.

In the past year, we actively responded when a fire closed our busy Harm Reduction Center and forced our services onto nearby sidewalks; we pivoted our services and advocacy when mpox became a threat; we pushed forward our safe consumption service advocacy and harm reduction work in the face of political opposition. At every step, we were informed by our values: of justice, dignity, courage, leadership, and excellence, and what would be best for the communities we are here to serve.

In the coming years, the familiar sexual health, substance use, and community programs and services of SFAF will continue and be strengthened by new investments in our staff, our race equity work, and our infrastructure. And, we will continue to innovate to bring the community exciting and valuable new services.

At our sexual health clinic Magnet, we will continue to ramp up the provision of two relatively new prevention strategies: doxycycline for STI prevention (“Doxy PEP”) and injectable PrEP for HIV prevention (“CAB-PrEP”).

We are excited to be a leader in HIV prevention and sexual health services here in San Francisco and nationally, and are excited to expand access to our clinical services at all of our loca- tions (including our Harm Reduction Center and mobile sites), and through partnerships with other organizations.

For many years, we have been a leader in substance use and harm reduction services for people who use drugs through The Stonewall Project and Syringe Access Services, and more recently through our Pick Up Crew (which offers citywide syringe disposal 12 hours a day, seven days a week). It remains a priority for us to ensure that people have free access to safer drug use and substance use resources, including overdose prevention tools like Narcan/Naloxone, and access to affirming and non-judgmental drug use counseling and support.

But, there are also a variety of new challenges posed by a changing drug landscape in San Francisco that we are working diligently to address.

Rates of fatal overdose have skyrocketed in recent years, in part due to the introduction of fentanyl in the drug supply. One of our challenges is how best to support and care for people who use fentanyl – whether purposely or accidentally – in the face of Narcan supply shortages, changing city services, political apathy, and the many forms of stigma, oppression, and hardship faced by people who use drugs (many who are Black, Brown, and people of color).

In the coming years, we will focus on expanding our distribution of the overdose reversal medication Narcan, providing drug checking services, and educating all in our community about overdose prevention and response – particularly those in communities who may not have easy access to safer drug use information and supplies. Through our substance use counseling program, Stonewall, we are increasing capacity to serve monolingual Spanish-speakers, and opportunities to engage in low-threshold drop-in counseling. Our advocacy and policy team will continue to push for expanded harm reduction services for people who use drugs, and will move forward with advocacy toward establishing safe consumption services and other policies that improve the health and lives of people who use drugs.

As we have been for many years, San Francisco AIDS Foundation is here for our community first and foremost. Our long-lived community programs – Black Brothers Esteem (BBE), El Grupo Apoyo Latino – and many of our newer programs – TransLife, Ibeji, Hues, the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network – are looking forward to a variety of new events, exciting communitybuilding opportunities, and even launching a revamped clinical internship program. Our HIV Advocacy Network, or HAN, is building peoplepower to advocate for the needs and rights of HIV and LGBTQ+ communities, and our popular art program at Magnet is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a special celebration and art opening in September.

We’re looking forward to seeing and hearing from you in 2023. Please visit us online at sfaf.org, and sign up for news and events at sfaf. org/signup. t

Tyler TerMeer, Ph.D., is CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, co-chair of the AIDS United Public Policy Council, and also a member of the AIDS United Governing Board of Directors. He is passionate about improving the health of people living with HIV, ensuring that LGBTQ+ people have access to affirming care, and supporting and empowering Black-led organizations and BIPOC leaders. TerMeer has been honored by the White House as one of the Nation’s Emerging LGBTQ+ Leaders and as part of the Nation’s Emerging Black Leadership.

“I think it was a good idea. It gave people a chance to get any questions answered that they may have had and gave people more time to fill out their applications. There were a lot of questions that needed to be answered,” said Sister Roma a member of the drag philanthropic group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who is on the selection committee for the drag laureate position.

The committee members were to meet Wednesday evening to begin the process of discussing the applicants and choosing upward of five individuals to recommend to Mayor London Breed She will ultimately select the person for the position.

“She will have some time to think about it and look over the applications as well. I think we are at least a month out from any announcement,” said Victor Ruiz-Cornejo, a gay man who advises Breed on LGBTQ policies. “I think we will have the person in place well before Pride so they can be part of the various events and whatnot.”

The drag laureate will serve for 18 months and receive an honorarium of $55,000 to help cover the costs of performing their duties. Among the requirements for applicants was that they reside full-time in San Francisco and are at least 21 years old.

The city is not disclosing the names of the people who applied and are now under consideration. Ruiz-

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From page 6

Local small business owners were unified in their opposition, telling the committee that they were not contacted and there was insufficient economic data around the proposal. They also want to know how many of these smaller businesses were brought on as subcontractors for these big projects under the city’s local business enterprise program. In response, Safaí’s office told us last week that the supervisor had been talking with these small business groups.

We’re concerned about the fact that these proposals to radically change or do away with Chapter 12X are throwing away equal rights and the city’s progressive values to save money, even

Roma had encouraged people to apply in a guest opinion piece for the B.A.R. in early February. She said she has been impressed, so far, with the applications she has reviewed, and is hopeful of being able to introduce the drag laureate on the main stage of the Sister’s annual Easter celebration this year, set to take place Sunday, April 9.

“I am looking for someone with experience and somebody with an appreciation for the history of our rich drag culture,” said Roma, “but also someone forward thinking and looking to the future of drag. Someone who has done a lot of philanthropy, activism and fundraising with their platform as a drag performer will also be something I will consider.”

The position is being modeled after the city’s poet laureates, who have served between two to four years in the position. Breed secured the funding for the drag laureate in her budget proposal last year, and it is being administered via the city library since it also oversees the poet laureate program.

San Francisco was the second city in California to initiate having an official drag ambassador. In 2020, West Hollywood was the first known city anywhere in the world to approve the creation of a drag laureate.

Leaders in the Southern California city continue to tinker with the parameters for their position. New York City officials have also suggested creating their own drag laureate post.

As the B.A.R. has previously noted, the concept of having an ambassador though there are numerous examples where going with the lowest bidder on a contract has ended up resulting in additional costs for shoddy work and missed deadlines. For years, LGBTQ people have been under attack in red states, and that is not in any way abating this year. State legislatures want to ban drag performances and prevent trans youth and their families from accessing gender-affirming care, to name just two current hot-button issues. If LGBTQ San Franciscans travel to these states on the banned list, they could be arrested or denied health care in an emergency. Their partners or spouses could be prevented from being with them in the hospital if that hospital does not receive federal dollars. These ramifications should be considered by the board in any discus- for the local drag community was first proposed in the draft version of San Francisco’s groundbreaking LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Strategy released in 2018. It was reading about the drag laureate suggestion in the B.A.R. that led gay West Hollywood resident Scott Schmidt to first bring it to the attention of his city council representative.

City leaders in all three jurisdictions see it as a way to boost local nightlife venues and drag performers whose revenues have been impacted by the COVID pandemic over the last three years. San Francisco’s drag laureate will be expected to participate in and host community events while serving as an ambassador for the city’s LGBTQ, arts, nightlife, and entertainment communities.

The post is also being created at a time when Republican lawmakers in states across the country are banning drag events from being held at public venues and criticizing parents for taking their children to drag brunches or drag story hours at bookstores and public libraries.

“I am just so glad we are doing this as we’ve seen the drag bans popping up across the country.

It is just important for people to know that drag and trans and queer people have always been here,” said Roma.

“We aren’t going anywhere. We certainly aren’t going to allow that fascist homophobia and transphobia to take root here in San Francisco.” t sions. One of Mayor London Breed’s first acts when she took office in 2018 was to decline a trip to Alabama because the state was on the banned travel list. Now, however, she reportedly favors repealing or reforming the ordinance.

Political Notes, the notebook’s online companion, will return Monday, February 27.

Keep abreast of the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes.

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