Thousands of people demonstrated at an anti-abortion march in downtown San Francisco on Saturday. Among the attendees at the annual Walk for Life were at least seven Proud Boys — a far-right, neo-fascist group known for its role in organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection — who held black flags declaring their affiliation.
“Our chapter is pro-life because we’re pro-God,” one flagbearer said.
“It’s traditional Western values,” another Proud Boy added. “It’s what our country was founded on. The right to life is part of the constitution.”
None of the men — who appeared to range in age from about 17 to 35 — shared their names or where they lived. While The Standard interviewed them, a young man broke off from the march to come ask for a photo.
“You guys are so cool,” he said.
The Proud Boys called it “ridiculous” to characterize their organization as a hate group, contending that membership of their Bay Area chapter was racially diverse. (The selection of Proud Boys at the march did not reflect this alleged diversity, and the Proud Boys’ history of hate speech is well documented, including in the Bay Area.)
They added that the Walk for Life was the only event in the city that they attend each year.
“There’s not much of a Proud Boy presence in San Francisco,” one member said. “This is the main [event] we come out to.”
While the Proud Boys and some other marchers wore Make America Great Again hats, most demonstrators did not advertise any political affiliation. Instead, shirts with slogans like “Life has no guarantees, abortion has no choices” and “Life Guard” alongside Catholic religious messages dominated the crowd’s apparel.
Just across a police barricade from the anti-abortion activists at City Hall, Lisa Navarro and her three children held signs with different messages, including: “If abortion is murder, a blowjob is cannibalism.”
Navarro and her family traveled from Salinas to the city to counter-protest this morning. She emphasized that she didn’t hate the anti-abortion protestors, and hoped they would never end up in a situation where life-saving reproductive care was unavailable to them.
“They just need to be better educated on the situation,” Navarro said.
While Navarro and her kids held signs, a 23-year-old who introduced himself as Michael but declined to give his last name looked on from the other side of the barrier.
“We have a fundamental misunderstanding of where the other side is coming from — both us and them,” he said, adding that he’s a devoted Catholic.
Michael, like so many of the other demonstrators, does not live permanently in the Bay Area — he said he’s in Oakland for a month from his home state of Montana, working with a nonprofit law firm that provides services to domestic violence victims.
Meanwhile, across Larkin Street in front of the San Francisco Public Library main branch, more counter-protestors gathered. “You can have an abortion and still be Catholic,” one said into a microphone, prompting cheers.
“The most important thing is we are showing that everybody needs reproductive rights,” counter-protest co-organizer Merideth Hartsell-Cooper said. “Even these so-called pro-life people — they need these rights. Maybe right now they think they don’t, but they absolutely do.
“We’re not a theocracy,” Hartsell-Cooper added. “We’re a pluralistic society, and they can’t dominate just because they bus people here to make it look as though the majority of Catholics don’t support abortion.”
The Standard witnessed 14 buses from Sacramento, Fresno, and other areas of Northern California unloading protestors in front of City Hall shortly after noon.
James Larsen traveled from Jackson, a town roughly between Sacramento and Stockton, to sell bedazzled “I ❤ ️ Jesus” hats and pro-life t-shirts. Larsen, who said he works at a store in Jackson called Trumpers USA, has been coming to the Walk for Life to hawk his goods for four years. Larsen said there is a significant overlap between the market for Jesus gear and the market for Trump apparel.
As the march made its way down market street, frontliners in their teens and early 20s held a banner and chanted, “We are the pro-life generation!”
At the end of Market Street, protestors encountered Shane Zaldivar, who performs as Pop-Up Drag Queen, dancing and lipsyncing near the ferry building. Zaldivar, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, strutted and spit on a torn American flag to songs including “God is a woman” by Ariana Grande.
“God is not a woman!” one protestor called from the crowd.
In a break between songs, Zaldivar told The Standard she didn’t even know the march was scheduled.
“I was doing this anyway,” Zaldivar said. She remained unperturbed as hundreds of conservative anti-abortion protestors swarmed around her, some yelling and laughing at her, many filming on their phones.
“They don’t care about women,” she told The Standard. “It’s pro-life until somebody is born. And god forbid that life is a woman.”