Power Connect 2023: A Gala of Pride, Solidarity, and Hope

By Tony Archuleta-Perkins

The Golden Gate Business Association (GGBA) wishes to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who attended our Annual Gala, Power Connect, held on June 1. Hosted at the vibrant Oasis in San Francisco, the event marked a stellar kickoff to Pride Month. This year, as we gather to celebrate diversity and inclusion, our unity and shared commitment to support our community are more vital than ever.

With the backdrop of vibrant flags, heartfelt laughter, and engaging conversations, Power Connect 2023 was more than a gala—it was a tribute to resilience, a beacon of hope, and a rallying call to action. Oasis, known for its rich history and inclusive ethos, provided the perfect setting for this celebration. We were thrilled to see attendees from different walks of life, each bringing their unique voice to our gathering.

As the evening progressed, a tapestry of emotions, experiences, and aspirations was woven into the fabric of the event. Each shared story and connected glance served as a testament to the strength, courage, and unwavering resolve of the LGBTQ+ community. We reveled in the unique tales of triumph and took inspiration from stories of struggle and perseverance.

While the event served as a celebration, it was also an emphatic reminder of the struggles our community continues to face. The appalling number of legislative measures against the LGBTQ+ community introduced in 2023, over 520 as per the Human Rights Campaign, is a sobering reminder of the ongoing fight for equality and acceptance.

The time is now to acknowledge and counteract these distressing developments. Our shared platform is more than a means for networking and celebration; it’s an impetus for change. Power Connect 2023 stands as a beacon for this, reminding us of all of our collective responsibility to oppose discrimination and champion equality in all its forms.

The gala’s theme, Celebrating Diverse Communities, was a fitting descriptor for the palpable energy that suffused the event. It was a night of building connections, forging alliances, and further cementing our shared mission. By uniting our voices, we demonstrate the power of diversity, the importance of inclusion, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Power Connect 2023 was also a powerful reminder of the incredible progress we’ve made. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still much work to be done. With over four decades of advocating for LGBTQ+ businesses, the GGBA is committed to building upon this momentum and pushing for further strides towards equality and inclusivity.

In this critical time, it is essential that we continue to support each other, regardless of who we are or who we represent. We must remember that our community’s strength lies in its diversity, and in accepting and celebrating these differences, we pave the way for a more inclusive and accepting society.

In conclusion, Power Connect 2023, for all its glitter and glamour, served as a poignant reminder of our mission and the battles we are yet to conquer. As we move forward, we carry the energy and hope from this event, using it to fuel our drive towards a future free from discrimination.

We once again extend our deepest gratitude to everyone who attended and contributed to the success of Power Connect 2023. Your presence and support have not only made the event memorable but also have strengthened the resolve of our community.

Finally, we extend our warm thanks to Oasis for their wonderful hospitality. Their commitment to creating an inclusive space is truly commendable.

As we continue to celebrate Pride Month, let’s carry forward the spirit of unity, resilience, and hope. Let’s remember the power of connection, the importance of solidarity, and our shared commitment to a more inclusive, diverse, and equal society.

For more information on the GGBA, please visit: https://linktr.ee/ggba

Tuesday, June 27 GGBA June Board of Directors Meeting https://tinyurl.com/yc74sb8s

Tuesday, July 11 GGBA July Make Contact https://tinyurl.com/3khb8ejz

Tuesday, July 25 GGBA July Board of Directors Meeting https://tinyurl.com/mww2892s

Tuesday, August 8 GGBA August Make Contact https://tinyurl.com/mrxr7kwu

Thursday, August 24; Thursday, November 9

Chase for Business Presents: LGBTQ+ Business Certification & Readiness Series

Please join Chase for Business’ free series in partnership with the Golden Gate Business Association. Together, we will deliver curated business readiness courses quarterly to help LGBTQ+ businesses grow and scale. They will be presented at different locations around the Bay Area.

They will be hybrid events. Register for the Remote option of the session(s) you want to attend. You will be emailed the remote access link before the day of the course.

• August 24 (Palo Alto) Navigating Your Cashflow

• November 9 (Oakland) Cyber Security https://tinyurl.com/ykfpx7tf

Tony Archuleta-Perkins is the founder and owner of Ide8 Real Estate & Eclat Group He has worked in finance for 25 years, ten of those years specifically as a fractional CFO. He has two master’s degrees: an MBA and a Master of Science in Real Estate. In addition to his educational and professional pedigree, Archuleta-Perkins has a passion for advocacy for the LGBTQ+ Community and their allies. He proudly volunteers and serves on two boards here in San Francisco: President of the Golden Gate Business Association and Treasurer of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, SF Chapter. He and his husband enjoy international traveling and scuba diving.

“Celebrating Diverse Communities” was the theme of GGBA’s annual Power Connect held this year on Thursday, June 1, at Oasis and commemorating the organization’s 49 years of service to LGBTQ+ businesses and community.

GGBA President Tony Archuleta-Perkins, wearing eye-catching hot pink heels and a dinner jacket, welcomed members, supporters and guests. San Francisco Bay Times columnist Liam Mayclem served as emcee, and DJ and producer Oleksandr Stepanov provided music.

Speakers included State Senator Scott Wiener, former GGBA president Gina Grahame, board members Imani Brown and Aaron Lander, and Ryan A. H. Weyandt, CEO of LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance.

Scott Gatz, founder of Q.Digital, received the Small Business of the Year Award. JP Morgan Chase was honored as Corporate Sponsor of the Year.

Guests enjoyed cocktails prepared by Oasis bar staff and menu items served at an assortment of food stations: Azucar Lounge, Kokak Chocolates, Boichik Bagels, and Hugh Groman Catering. Rainbow-colored Pride cookies were among the items enjoyed by attendees.

Display tables were presented by event sponsors, including The Body Gods and African Queens Travel. https://ggba.com/

JUSTER (continued from pg 12) children” have urged parents across the country to file objections to books they haven’t even bothered to read—and too often, those books disappear off of shelves due to a sole person’s objection.

Organizations like the ACLU, PEN America, the American Library Association, Florida Freedom to Read Project, and many others have been working together to help communities fight back against this ideological censorship. Students need to see themselves and the world they live in reflected in the books they read. When those books disappear off the shelves, they feel erased, and threatened.

GLAAD has taken up this issue, producing a playbook for communities to fight back against book banning. It is going to take engaged communities working together to fight this plague of censorship. You can download GLAAD’s playbook here (see link). And if your community is working on fighting book bans, I would love to hear from you: https://tinyurl.com/BkBansGLAAD

4th Annual People’s March and Rally ... and Music Festival!

Born during the COVID lockdown of 2020 and the turmoil of the George Floyd protests, the People’s March and Rally continues to draw a passionately committed crowd on Pride Sunday. Proudly non-corporate, organized by activists Alex U. Inn and Juanita MORE!, and led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous queer people, this march is both a grassroots labor of love and a defiant call to action, centering the needs of the most marginalized in our community, and calling for public money to be reallocated for social services, mental healthcare providers, and social justice. It is also joyfully defiant, and uplifting. It begins with a rally at Polk and Washington Streets in San Francisco on Sunday, June 25 at 11 am, then proceeds right down Polk Street—the route of the first Gay Liberation protest in 1970—directly to Fern Alley, where there will be a Fern Alley Music Festival from noon to 6 pm, featuring DJs and performers. Fern Alley just happens to

ROSTOW (continued from pg 12) gave undeserved credence to those who ridicule legitimate attempts to make language more inclusive or, for that matter, more expansive.

What were they thinking, you wonder? Um, they were trying to recognize that a non-binary person might consider themselves a lesbian, while failing to realize that they just effectively downgraded every woman on the planet, cis, trans, gay, and straight. Meanwhile, the group had no problem referring to gay “men,” when consistency would have required they revert to the term “gay non-women” if they really wanted nonbinary people to fit into the category.

Language is important. But language can only be stretched so far if it’s to maintain its role as an expressive means to communicate. And I don’t think many non-binary people are insisting that we dispense with male, female, man, or woman in order to embrace the ambiguity that can exist in the liminal space between them. Quite the contrary, I imagine.

Our community can go too far, and being “woke” can too easily stray beyond a range of common sense that leaves us vulnerable to easy condemnation. We are already condemned unfairly; let’s not give people a real excuse to point the finger.

We Dare Defend Our Rights be a short skip to Juanita MORE!’s legendary Pride Party, so if you managed to score a coveted ticket to that event, the March will take you right there.

Over in Montgomery, Alabama, the co-founder of the Invisible Histories Project, Dr. Maigen Sullivan, delivered a lecture on LGBTQ history in Alabama, which sounds like one of those innocuous well-meaning events that I personally like to skip in favor of Margarita Night at the Rainbow Cattle Club.

More Pride, More Joy

There are SO many events, parties, and performances during June that no one could list them all. But here are a few worth checking out through the end of June that you might have missed:

The Bayard Rustin Coalition and Soul of Pride are hosting their annual Pride Weekend Kickoff Reception on Friday, June 23, at the Ula Grand Ballroom in San Francisco. They will be honoring the SF Pride Grand Marshals and Black community leaders. Enjoy African Diaspora art, cocktails, delicious bites, and lively music. All are welcome. RSVP at: https://tinyurl.com/BRCPride23

For sheer magnitude of celebratory Pride events, look no farther than Parivar Bay Area’s website. The number and variety of their Pride events is enough to lift your spirits and get you in the mood to celebrate. Parivar Bay Area is America’s only Transgender-led, Transgendercentering South Asian organization, and their Pride events reflect the breadth, diversity, global scope, intersectionality, and joy of the work they do in the community. They have Pride events every single day in June; check them out here: https://tinyurl.com/ParivarPride

Oakland Black Pride is once again closing out Pride Month with a series of events that range from a 7-course tasting dinner to an exploration of kinky expression to a queer pub crawl. All the events are designed to improve economic opportunities, access to safe spaces, and wellness resources for Black LGBTQ+ people, and strengthen the community through accountability and collaboration. See all their events and learn more about their work here: https://tinyurl.com/OBPride

It is heartening to see Pride celebrations popping up all over the Bay Area, even in some of the smaller towns. While a truly comprehen-

The event was hosted by the Alabama Department of Archives and History, but paid for, not with taxpayer funds, but under a grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance. Nonetheless, a couple of GOP lawmakers attacked the program as part of a “woke liberal” agenda that doesn’t represent Alabama values. “The fact that state money, buildings, and resources are being used to promote a liberal political LGBTQ agenda flies in the face of our state’s values,” said House Majority Leader Scott Stadthagen. “If this is what they are doing with the taxpayer money that is sent to them, perhaps we should rereevaluate their [ADAH’s] allocation in the next budget.”

It wasn’t paid for with public funds! And even if it had been, since when are funds for archives and history limited to subjects of interest to right-wing politicians and conservative activists? Talk about big brother and the thought police. There’s no one worse than this “antiwoke” cabal with its banned books, its restrictions on school discussion, its denial of slavery, its war on drag shows, and its insufferable pomposity. I’m waiting for the arc of the moral universe to bend back towards justice, but these days I fear the arc is operating on cosmic time.

Oh, the title of this section? It’s the state motto of Alabama!

I Want a Fun Badge

Guess who’s on today’s target at the One Million Moms shoot out? It’s the Girl Scouts of America, who have “been on a moral decline for a long time, supporting abortion, sexual education similar to that of Planned Parenthood, and the LGBTQ+ agenda.” sive list might be impossible, this link gives you an idea of how communities around the Bay are celebrating: https://tinyurl.com/ChronPride

If you were lucky enough to attend the evening with Jane Fonda at the Castro Theatre that kicked off Pride Month on June 1, you got to enjoy the Queens of the Castro as they started the festivities by sashaying through the aisles, then leading the audience in a surprisingly refreshing set of seated warm-up exercises. In addition to being festive entertainers and experienced fitness gurus, Queens of the Castro are activists with a serious purpose. Since 2011, they have been supporting and creating safer spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, ages 16–25. Their list of accomplishments to date is impressive, including planning and implementing dozens of drag shows in California, educating teachers and students about gender identity, supporting the work of drag performers in California, connecting LGBTQ+ youth with drag mentors, and granting more than $250,000 in scholarships to youth.

The scholarships are mostly granted to youth pursuing higher education in the sciences, math, and other academic fields. However, QOC member Grace Towers decided to take things one step farther, creating the Grace Towers Scholarship for the Arts, to encourage LGBTQ+ youth who want to explore selfexpression and creativity through the arts. Said Towers, “Oftentimes when words fail us, as artists, we turn to our creative practice. It really helped me during times in my youth that were difficult. This is my way of being the mentor I needed when I was a younger version of myself. By letting our youth know that their art is appreciated, seen, and important, we can continue to collaborate on our commitment to raising awareness about LGBTQ+ issues and stories of resilience.”

Applications for this year’s Queens of the Castro Scholarships are due at 11:59 pm PDT on June 30, 2023. Due to a high volume of applicants,

This month, girls “as young as kindergarten age” can earn a rainbow striped Fun Badge by learning some GLBT terminology and completing one or more gay-themed activities. According to One Million Moms, the girls might: “sketch a portrait of a member of the LGBTQ+ community whom you admire; make a LGBTQ+ music playlist; create art that celebrates how families come in all kinds; participate in No Name-Calling Week, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); or attend an LGBTQ+ Pride celebration.”

It’s not at all clear from the Moms’ press release exactly what might be wrong with these sweet-sounding tasks. Still, the Moms request that we all stop buying cookies and boycott the Girl Scouts “as long as the organization is pushing these liberal agendas on girls.” arostow@aol.com incomplete submissions will not be considered. For application information, go to: https://tinyurl.com/QoCGTS

It’s interesting. The press release doesn’t even include the usually amusing hyperbole. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten what all the fuss is about and it reads as if they cut and pasted the language from the GLSEN or Girl Scout pamphlets. Are they perhaps getting tired of hyperventilating into a paper bag every time they see a non-binary minion or a gay starfish? Who knows?

Before I go, let me mention the depressing Gallup Poll results that I was going to cover, but did not. It looks as if support for the GLBT community has plummeted in American society over the last year—down 7 percent. I don’t like to think about it and I find it depressing, so I’m just ignoring it (sort of).

Mark Your Calendar: AIDS Walk

Returns to Golden Gate Park on July 16

Since 1987, AIDS Walk San Francisco has brought together people from all over the Bay Area to raise crucial funding for a number of local organizations that support people with HIV or AIDS. Full disclosure: I have been part of AIDS Walk San Francisco since 1988, and what drew me to this event in the beginning is what I still find compelling: Anyone can participate, and anyone can make a difference, no matter their age, income, or level of ability. They only need to bring their heart, and a desire to help.

What brings me back year after year is a memory from an AIDS Walk in the late 1990s. In those days, walkers would turn in the donations they had collected in the form of envelopes full of checks and cash. I opened one fat envelope turned in by a young teenage boy. Inside was over $200, all in $1, $5, and $10 bills. That boy had asked everyone he knew to help him raise money to help people with AIDS—something that was NOT easy for a teenage boy to do in those days. The heart and courage behind that boy’s efforts made me cry that day, and have inspired me ever since.

You can make a difference, too. Whether you walk as an individual, or part of a team, the funds you raise will make a difference to organizations right here in the Bay Area. Sign up to walk, or to support a walker, here: https://sf.aidswalk.net/

Go Forth and Celebrate

I hope to see many of you at the Trans March, Gary & Donna’s Pride Brunch, Frameline, SF Pride’s parade, the People’s March & Rally, and many other events. Please stay safe, stay proud, and don’t let anyone steal your joy. Happy Pride, everyone!

Joanie Juster is a long-time community volunteer, activist, and ally.

MILLER (continued from pg 17) their networks the challenges ahead and what they can do year-round and not just in June. We are truly all in this together.

Let’s show the world that we are not afraid to put into the work to keep marching forward. Happy Pride!

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Brandon Miller, CFP®, is a financial consultant at Brio Financial Group in San Francisco, specializing in helping LGBT individuals and families plan and achieve their financial goals.