Wiener confronted in Mission District, says activists harassed him at Trans March

A man confronted State Sen. Scott Wiener in a Mission District bar and restaurant on Wednesday, June 24, while Wiener was watching a World Cup match, demanding that he chant “Free Palestine.” Wiener said the man screamed abuse at him and staff before bar employees ejected him, and video of the exchange spread online.

The confrontation was followed two days later by another clash at the Trans March in Dolores Park, where Wiener said he left because the crowd became too aggressive and unsafe. In a statement Saturday, Wiener said he had been “harassed, threatened, and physically intimidated” in separate incidents this week. He said the Trans March marked the first time in about 22 years that he did not participate in the annual event, which he said he had attended since the first march in 2004.

The episodes landed in a city where political protest often spills into public space, especially around the Mission District and Dolores Park. The Trans March, a Pride-weekend event held in Dolores Park, has long been a flashpoint for clashes over Israel and Gaza inside progressive San Francisco. Several people at Friday’s march blasted Wiener’s stance on Israel and Palestine, and local coverage has shown the encounter drew quick attention online after the Mission District video circulated.

Wiener’s office framed the incidents as part of a broader pattern of hostility aimed at public officials in spaces that are otherwise ordinary parts of city life. The setting mattered: a neighborhood restaurant, a crowded park, a public march. Those are the kinds of places where San Franciscans often expect disagreement, but not escalation to the point that an elected official leaves or is removed.

The tension also comes as Wiener is in the middle of a high-stakes race to replace Nancy Pelosi in California’s 11th Congressional District. He finished first in the June 3 primary with about 41% of the vote, ahead of San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan and former tech organizer Saikat Chakrabarti, and advanced to the November general election.

The Trans March has seen this kind of conflict before. In 2016, then-Mayor Ed Lee and Wiener were booed off the stage in Dolores Park, a reminder that the march has long been a venue for confrontation as well as celebration. That history reaches back to the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in the Tenderloin, one of the city’s defining moments in trans resistance.