Cleve Jones, one of the leading activists in the first wave of the GLBT rights movement, says supporters of equality need to focus on fighting for rights at the federal level, rather than state-by-state.
“The National Equality March in October was to try to shift the focus away from what I consider to be a fail strategy of fighting state by state, county by county, city by city for fractions of equality,” Jones said. “There’s no such thing as a fraction of equality. One is equal or is not equal. True equality can only come from the federal government. That’s not my opinion, that’s the fact.”
Jones got involved in the gay rights movement after meeting Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office, on the street. After working on the campaign to elect Milk onto the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco, Jones worked in his office until the Milk was shot.
“I had never seen a dead person before — I have seen many since, but none compare with the horror of seeing close-up what bullets do to skin and bone and brain tissue,” Jones said. “The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘It’s over.’”
But it wasn’t over. Whenever there was a crisis or reason for outrage, people knew to go to the corner of Castro and Market Street, the center of the gay district in the city.
“It was standing in the midst of those tens of thousands of San Franciscans that I understood that it wasn’t over, that it was really just beginning,” Jones said. As a tribute to Milk and Moscone (the mayor of San Francisco shot the same day and by the same person), the vigil would be reenacted every year on the anniversary rain or shine.
At the vigil of 1985, Jones got his idea for the NAMES project, a collection of quilts to commemorate those who have died of AIDS.
“I had big stacks of poster boards and stacks of magic markers,” Jones said. “I asked people to write down the name of someone that they knew who had died. People made these signs with the names of their friends and neighbors who had passed away because of AIDS. We carried those to city hall and then I took them another two blocks to the federal building. We had ladders hidden and we climbed up the federal building with big rolls of tape on our wrists and covered the wall of the federal building with this patchwork of placards bearing the names of our dead friends and I looked at that and thought, ‘It looks like some kind of strange quilt.’”
The NAMES project has become the biggest community art project in history, and has helped raise awareness about AIDS, as well as the gay rights movement.
Jones thinks that the movement today needs to focus on changing things at the federal level rather than state-by-state.
Now Jones works with the union UNITE HERE.
“I love this job. It’s part of building the coalition between the LGBT movement and the labor movement, but it also keeps me grounded in work that is very real and clear-cut,” he said. “When we win, and we usually win, the ladies that clean the hotel rooms and the guys that park the cars, and the busboys and the waiters go home with more money in their pockets.”
Jones came to AU for AIDS Awareness Week on Dec. 3 thanks to the Kennedy Political Union, the GLBTA Resource Center, AU Queers and Allies, Women's Initiative, the Wellness Center, College Democrats and the Student Government.
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