SF Pride Cancels Tomorrow's July Members' Meeting

(Sup. Campos speaks at protest at SF Pride's office in June. Credit: Rick Gerharter, Bay Area Reporter.)

After almost three solid months of turmoil and crisis created by the SF Pride board, the bad news continues to flow from the nonprofit, with only small rays of good news shining through occasionally.

From the good news front, I received this note earlier today:

On behalf of San Francisco Pride, we want to welcome you as a member of our organization! Our members are a valuable asset to our team, helping to shape the direction of the event and the organization as we continue our year-round work. Attached to this email, we have included an electronic version of our welcome packet with important information about SF Pride.

Shortly after that hit my in-box, this arrived, bearing bad news:

We will not be holding our July General Planning Meeting that was scheduled for Tuesday, July 9. We apologize for the short notice, but we are now finalizing 2013 SF Pride programmatic and financial reports. We look forward to seeing you at our Volunteer and Member Appreciation Party, which will take place at 2pm on Saturday, July 20 at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. Please come to the SF Pride August General Planning Meeting, which will take place at the SF Pride office on Tuesday, August 13, at 7pm. We will send another reminder in the coming weeks. 

In the past month, I've called for Supervisor David Campos to hold a hearing or two at City Hall regarding the myriad problems with SF Pride and because we also need transparency about the nonprofit uses the annual $58,000 grant it receives from the City.

Other reasons for such Board of Supervisors' hearing include security at the Civic Center celebration where two people were injured from gun-related violence this year and the vicious assault on a woman at Pink Saturday in the Castro, not to mention the performance of City departments during Pride events.

Add the cancellation of SF Pride's July monthly meeting, only a day before it was to occur, to the ever-expanding list of why Supervisor Campos and his colleagues owe the LGBT community and the entire City a few hearings about Pride.