By Tony Bravo, San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 2021
As a college student arriving in San Francisco in the late 1980s, Cecilia Chung wasn’t just looking for higher education. The future transgender activist and chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission was looking for a community.
“I knew I could find someone (here) who could understand what I was going through,” said Chung, speaking at City Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 24, as part of the declaration of San Francisco’s first Transgender History Month by Mayor London Breed. “It’s not an accident you see such a big and beautiful community here in San Francisco. It was because of all the resilience, all the fights we got into. … To be able to see the progress means a lot.”
Standing on the Mayor’s Balcony next to the blue, white and pink Transgender Flag, Donna Personna remembered when living as a transgender woman was a crime in San Francisco in the 1960s and ’70s due to laws forbidding “crossdressing.” Having transgender history officially recognized by the city this week felt overwhelming to the 75-year-old activist and artist.
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