Scott Wiener leaves San Francisco Trans March after Gaza protest backlash

Scott Wiener left San Francisco’s Trans March after protesters confronted him over Gaza at Dolores Park, turning Pride weekend’s kickoff into a sharp public clash over Israel, trans rights and Democratic politics. The California state senator, who is running to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress, said the protesters “surrounded” him and that he felt harassed and intimidated.

The confrontation unfolded on Friday, June 26, 2026, during the annual Trans March, a marquee San Francisco LGBTQ event that organizers present as free, safe and sober. The 2026 schedule placed the rally and performances at Dolores Park before the march through the city, making Wiener’s appearance especially visible in a city where Pride weekend remains a central civic stage.

Wiener is Jewish and has already faced intense backlash over his position on the war in Gaza. After declining to call Israel’s actions genocide at an earlier candidate forum, he reversed course in January 2026 and said he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Wiener later summarized that shift bluntly: “I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore,” he said.

That stance has become a flashpoint in California’s 11th Congressional District race, where Wiener is widely viewed as the front-runner. His Democratic challengers include former congressional aide Saikat Chakrabarti, San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and San Francisco attorney Marie Hurabiell. The issue has put him at the center of a wider fight inside San Francisco politics, where support for Palestinian rights, Jewish identity and LGBTQ activism have increasingly collided in the same public spaces.

The episode also captured the strain on coalition politics in a city long defined by overlapping identity movements. Pride weekend drew the dispute into one of the most visible gatherings in the local LGBTQ calendar, and the video of the encounter spread rapidly online as Wiener was pushed out of the march. For a candidate already trying to hold together progressive, Jewish and establishment Democratic constituencies, the scene at Dolores Park showed how quickly protest can cross into intimidation when those alliances fracture.