Tax Day Carnival was one of Warm Cookies of the Revolution’s playful experiments in civic engagement, using the familiar ritual of Tax Day as an invitation to talk about public money, shared priorities, and democracy. It reflects Evan Weissman’s larger idea that civic participation can be social, creative, and fun.

Warm Cookies of the Revolution was Denver’s “civic health club,” founded by artist and organizer Evan Weissman. Through gatherings combining art, conversation, food, games, and unexpected formats, it created approachable ways for people to wrestle with public issues and practice democracy together.

Evan Weissman was a Denver-based artist, organizer, and civic provocateur who founded Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a “civic health club” that used art, culture, conversation, and a healthy dose of playfulness to get people engaged in civic life. His work explored how democracy could become something people actively practice together—not simply something they participate in at election time.

Breonna McCree is Co-Executive Director of The Transgender District in San Francisco. She leads groundbreaking programs focused on economic empowerment, public safety, and wellness for trans and TGNC communities. With over a decade of experience in community health and advocacy, Breonna is a powerful voice for equity, healing, and trans liberation.

Stryker is the author of Transgender History, a widely used introduction to the political and cultural history of transgender communities in the United States, and co-director, with Victor Silverman, of the Emmy Award-winning documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria. The film helped recover the history of a 1966 uprising by transgender women and queer people at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin—one of the earliest documented acts of collective queer resistance to police harassment in the United States.

Founded by three black trans women in 2017 as Compton’s Transgender Cultural District, The Transgender District is the first legally recognized transgender district in the world.

GLIDE is a nationally recognized center for social justice, dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. Through our integrated comprehensive services, advocacy initiatives, and inclusive community, we empower individuals, families and children to achieve stability and thrive.

Compton’s x Coalition is working to reclaim 111 Taylor Street, the former site of Gene Compton’s Cafeteria and the historic 1966 transgender uprising. The campaign seeks community stewardship of the property and a future centered on culture, care, belonging, and the site’s living legacy of resistance.

The Tenderloin Museum celebrates the rich history of one of San Francisco's most misunderstood neighborhoods. The 31 blocks of the Tenderloin district are the beating heart of the city peopled by immigrants and iconoclasts, artists and activists, sinners and saints. Visit the Tenderloin Museum today and encounter a kaleidoscopic American city in all its grit and glory.

The Tenderloin welcomes people of all ages, races, religions, genders, sexual orientations, experiences, and circumstances. We believe our neighbors deserve pathways and opportunities to thrive.

Screaming Queens recovers the story of the 1966 uprising at Compton’s Cafeteria, when transgender and queer residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin fought back against police harassment. The documentary helped restore this largely forgotten event—and the community surrounding it—to its place in transgender and LGBTQ+ history.

Compton’s Cafeteria Riots is an immersive theatrical production bringing audiences into the history of the 1966 uprising by transgender and queer people at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. The production used performance and place to reconnect contemporary audiences with a pivotal piece of neighborhood and transgender history.

Mark Nassar was a writer/ producer for Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, an immersive theater production reliving the 1966 Trans uprising in San Fransisco’s Tenderloin District.

Kate Robinson is Executive Director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District (TLCBD) in San Francisco, where she leads work to improve quality of life and strengthen community in one of the city’s most diverse and complex neighborhoods. Her work brings together public-space stewardship, clean and safe programs, community engagement, economic opportunity, and neighborhood advocacy, with an emphasis on solutions shaped by the people who live and work in the Tenderloin.

Katie Conry is Executive Director of the Tenderloin Museum, which celebrates and preserves the history, culture, and people of San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Through exhibitions, public programs, performances, walking tours, and community partnerships, her work uses the neighborhood’s rich history as a foundation for storytelling, cultural preservation, and engagement with the Tenderloin as a living, evolving community.

Cary Tyson is Executive Director of Portland Downtown, the nonprofit organization working to strengthen the vitality of downtown Portland, Maine. A longtime leader in downtown and place management, his work brings together economic development, advocacy, events, public-space activation, and partnerships that support local businesses while reinforcing downtown as the civic, cultural, and economic heart of the community.

London Loo Tours turns the humble toilet into a lens for exploring urban history. The walking-tour company leads visitors through London’s public conveniences, sanitation infrastructure, social customs, and wonderfully peculiar restroom stories—revealing how something every city needs can tell surprisingly rich stories about the city around it.

The Tokyo Toilet brought leading architects and designers together to rethink one of the most ordinary pieces of public infrastructure: the neighborhood restroom. Built across Shibuya, the project uses architecture, accessibility, maintenance, and design to challenge assumptions about public toilets and create facilities people can trust and enjoy.

The Hundertwasser Toilets turned a small public restroom in Kawakawa, New Zealand, into an unlikely civic landmark. Designed by artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser using recycled materials, colorful ceramics, organic forms, and living vegetation, they demonstrate how even the most utilitarian public infrastructure can become an expression of place.

Bowl Plaza in Lucas, Kansas, turns the public restroom into roadside attraction, public artwork, and community project all at once. Covered in elaborate mosaics and shaped with a healthy sense of humor, it offers an exuberant answer to a rarely asked city-making question: why shouldn't the bathroom be memorable?