Five people were arrested and two SFPD officers were injured during the San Francisco Trans March on June 27 — but the brawl over what to call it may prove more consequential than the arrests themselves.

When Mayor Daniel Lurie labeled the crowd confrontation of State Sen. Scott Wiener at the Trans March "antisemitic," he triggered a sharp rebuttal from the activist who filmed it — and surfaced a fault line that has been widening in SF progressive politics for years: whether opposition to Israel's conduct in Gaza is antisemitism or anti-war dissent. The distinction matters especially now, as Wiener runs for Congress in what is shaping up to be one of the Bay Area's most watched races.

Officers monitoring Friday's Trans March around 7 p.m. observed people spraying paint on property at Market and Eighth streets, SFPD spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca said in a social media post. One person also assaulted and spray-painted a bystander, Rueca said. When officers tried to detain suspects at Turk and Taylor streets, a crowd surrounded and obstructed them in an attempt to free those being detained. Police arrested three people on assault and vandalism charges and two others for obstruction. Two officers were assaulted and received treatment for non-life-threatening injuries.

Those arrests happened separately from the earlier confrontation with Wiener. Earlier in the afternoon at Dolores Park, where the march begins, a group surrounded the senator as he moved through the crowd. Wiener, in a statement released Saturday, said people "began screaming at me, ran up to me, surrounded me, and began harassing me, both verbally and physically, including physical contact." He said they made statements about his "Israeli handlers" and other claims he described as "inaccurate, extreme, and vile." He said he left the park for the first time in 22 years of attending the Trans March.

Mayor Lurie responded with a statement condemning the treatment as "antisemitic." "As mayor, I can never accept hate directed at a member of our community," Lurie said. "This language directed at Senator Wiener yesterday was targeted, hateful and antisemitic."

Dimitry Yakoushkin, the San Francisco activist who filmed the confrontation and whose video has been viewed millions of times online, pushed back on that framing directly. "I think homophobia is disgusting and antisemitism is disgusting, but what happened in the park is not that," Yakoushkin told Mission Local. "It's unfortunate this is being conflated and that homophobes and antisemitic folks are hopping on this as a bandwagon. We hate him for very different reasons, and we do not include those folks. They're worse than Scott."

Yakoushkin said the protest was spontaneous. He told Mission Local he received calls from the New York Times and other national outlets, and feared that outside coverage would strip the incident of its Gaza-specific context. A New York Post headline called it "Humiliation for would-be Pelosi successor."

The episode also underscores a complexity in Wiener's own record: the senator called Israel's actions in Gaza a "genocide" earlier this year after sustained pressure from constituents and advocacy groups — a position that put him at odds with much of the national Democratic establishment and led him to step down as co-chair of the state's Jewish Caucus. Pro-Palestine activists nonetheless argue his continued support for Israel's right to exist makes him insufficiently aligned with their position.

The Trans March itself has a documented history of ejecting politicians across ideological lines. In 2016, Mayor Ed Lee was booed off stage before he could speak, alongside David Chiu, Mark Leno, and Wiener himself — at the time, protesters were angry over homelessness enforcement, not Middle East policy. Mayor Lurie was himself chased from last year's Trans March by the same Dolores Park crowd, with a person telling him on camera, "You are not wanted here." The same Yakoushkin filmed that confrontation too.

Wiener said he has "no objection" to protest or disagreement. "But when opposition and disagreement transition to harassment, including cornering me, touching me, or trying to physically bully me out of a public event, that crosses a line," he said. His spokesman Erik Mebust said both the Trans March confrontation and a separate Wednesday incident at a Mission bar — where Wiener was "accosted" while watching a World Cup match — would be reported to SFPD, but that no appearances would be canceled. Wiener appeared at the Sunday Pride Parade, where he received cheers.

His congressional rival, Supervisor Connie Chan, marched through Dolores Park unmolested, Mission Local noted.