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If you're trans you should know what Comptom's! It is our history!

Trans Activists Vow to ‘Liberate Compton’s’ After SF Board of Appeals Loss

KQED

By Nastia Voynovskaya

July 17, 2025

A group of San Francisco activists wants to oust a private prison corporation from a historic site in the Tenderloin and turn it into a community resource center. But on July 16, their strategy to use zoning law to do so hit a roadblock.

At a packed five-hour Board of Appeals meeting where over 60 people gave impassioned testimonies supporting the activists, the board ruled in favor of Geo Group in a zoning dispute over 111 Taylor, a building where a riot for trans rights took place in 1966.

“We have not lost this fight,” said historian Susan Stryker to her fellow activists after they exited the hearing. “We’re going to continue pursuing justice. … We’re gonna do it together and we’re gonna live to be the change that we need to see in this world.”

Look what they want to make it into... it is a slap in our face!

To understand the significance of the hearing, it’s crucial to understand the building’s history. In the ’60s, 111 Taylor was a late-night diner called Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a popular hangout for trans women and queer people. Police routinely raided the establishment, and one summer night the patrons fought back. After the riot, San Francisco became the first city to create social services for its trans community — three years before a similar riot at Stonewall Inn in New York City launched the modern-day LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Why does ICE want to make it into a detention center?

Yet activists say 111 Taylor’s current operations are an affront to this history. Geo Group is a multi-billion-dollar private prison corporation that has been accused of holding inmates in inhumane conditions and underpaying them for prison labor. At 111 Taylor, a subsidiary of the company, Geo Reentry Services, runs a transitional facility for people on parole. (Geo Group also operates ICE detention centers and has recently made headlines for profiting from the Trump administration’s mass deportations.)

“I think that the building should be something different that is aligned with the legacy of resistance,” said Chandra Laborde, the appellant in the zoning dispute and a member of Compton’s x Coalition, the activist group behind the “Liberate Compton’s” movement.

This sounds awful fishy to me given Trumps hate for us.

Ultimately, the vote to uphold Geo Group’s letter of determination was 4-1, with Board Vice President J.R. Eppler siding with the activists.