Fluid Cooperative Cafe: A Gathering Place For All, by S.F.’s Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender Non-Conforming Communities.

Fluid Cooperative Cafe was formed with a vision, one that recognizes the people who are in the best position to nurture, uplift, and advance transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming communities are the community members themselves. While we are centering the trans community, allies are encouraged to join us in supporting our mission.

Having graduated from the Transgender District’s small-business incubator, Fluid Cooperative Cafe is a space for historically marginalized people in the Tenderloin that respects our trans ancestors.

This principle — by us, but for all — sparked independently within the minds of Fluid Cooperative Cafe founders Shannon Amitin, JoJo Ty, and Santana Tapia. These three trans leaders, business owners, activists, artists, and community members have for years demanded a seat at the table in spaces that were not built with us in mind.

This idea of a cafe and space for the community to gather is hardly new. It is in the very fabric of San Francisco’s trans and queer history; indeed, Compton’s Cafeteria in the 1960s was an early example of a community space.

But there’s an important distinction: Trans and gender non-conforming people did not own those spaces. During the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, management called on the State to use violence to push our trans and queer ancestors back on the streets.

Fluid Cooperative Cafe brings us full circle and makes us whole.

We will no longer demand a seat at just anyone’s table. With Fluid Cooperative Cafe, we are building our own table — and we invite you to join us each time you come in, one coffee and one event at a time.

Today, in San Francisco’s groundbreaking Transgender Cultural District, this vision will become a reality. We hope you’ll be a part of this historic, community-building event.

Here are three ways you can support Fluid Cooperative Cafe today:

1) Donate!

2) Send this page to your networks via email

3) Post on social media, tag us @wearefluidsf

First and foremost, any financial contribution you make goes to ensuring a living wage for three POC transgender San Franciscans. Specific to the genesis of this project, it will enable Fluid to obtain a physical space and the requisite coffee-making equipment to serve our communities the best way we can, along all the necessary permits, licenses, and domains, while setting up the business accounts required to get the project running swiftly and smoothly. We will also retain the services of a photographer, videographer, graphic designer, accountant, and business attorney — not only to put our best foot forward, but to ensure that Fluid Cooperative Cafe endures to serve future generations of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming folks in San Francisco and beyond.

Sarello is a proud mestizo queer trans daddy with ten years of experience in the coffee and hospitality industry here in San Francisco.

Santana is a child of immigrants and an immigrant herself, fighting to create the life her parents envisioned for her.

JoJo is a first-generation Filipinx American and a youth organizer in the city.

Website: fluidcoopsf.com

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