Get involved, says gay dinosaur

Gay rights activist Cleve Jones spoke at UC Berkeley on Thursday, urging the younger generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to continue the fight for equality that Jones’ friend Harvey Milk began more than 30 years ago.

“In 1972, when I came to San Francisco, if someone had told me that I would be fighting for the right to get married or join the Army in 2009, I think I would have started dating women,” he said jokingly.

Jones, the founder of the AIDS quilt, the world’s largest community arts project that now contains more than 40,000 panels dedicated to people who have died from the disease, and the co-founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, was equally comedic and serious during a 90-minute talk and question-and-answer session for several hundred students and community members, reports the Oakland Tribune.

“I think it’s very important that there be more connections between the generations, so here I am from the gay Jurassic (to share some insights),” he said, at the start of his talk.

‘Jones said he met Milk at Castro and 18th streets shortly after hitchhiking in 1972 from Arizona to San Francisco to join the gay rights revolution. Jones, who was a teenager at the time, said he didn’t immediately like Milk, who was in his 40s at the time. But as he watched him speak to people at bus stops and in Bingo parlors, he said he quickly learned that the politically campaigning Milk had “the ability to connect to ordinary people” and spur change.

Jones took a job as a student intern in Milk’s office while studying political science at San Francisco State University, and the two worked together on gay rights and other issues. In 1977, Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “He had courage and he spoke the truth,” Jones told the hundreds of people who packed Heller Lounge at UC Berkeley Thursday afternoon.

In November 1978, less than a year after he was elected to office, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down by Dan White, a fellow supervisor who had resigned and wanted his job back. White was convicted of manslaughter and spent five years in prison. He killed himself in 1985, two years after his release.

The killing of Milk changed Jones’ life, and he has gone on to become a well-known and respected gay activist, said Leslie Ewing, the executive director of the Pacific Center, which co-sponsored the talk with the Gender Equity Resource Center and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.’

Posted in Gay culture, Gay organisations, History, People, Politics, Society, USA, protest | Tagged gay history, gay politics, San Francisco, Harvey Milk, Cleve Jones, Aids Quilt | No Comments »