(This is a Repost from last year, I’m a little lazy today so I’m just gonna post it. Haha enjoy!)
In his memoir, When We Rise, Cleve Jones describes his experience living through the Gay liberation movement. For 40+ years, Jones has been a prominent figure in the fight for gay rights. He almost committed suicide as a teen because his father, a prominent psychologist, tried to get him cured when he came out
I felt that my life was over before it even really began because it just seemed then that there was no way to have a decent life and to be gay. So I was terrified that I was going to be caught and I had already experienced quite bit of bullying and I just thought that only misery lay ahead and when I got caught that that would be the solution.
From When We Rise, Cleve Jones
He found solace in the San Francisco gay community and after traveling from his hometown in Indiana to live in Scottsdale, AZ at age 18, he settled in the San Francisco community of “The Castro” where Harvey Milk began his career in politics. He became close to Milk and worked on a few of his campaigns. He came to city hall the night of the assassination of Harvey because he had heard of the death of mayor Moscone and knew Milk was possibly dead too.
It changed my life forever. … Dan White had invited him into his office and shot him there. And his feet were sticking out in the hall and I recognized his wingtip shoes — he had second-hand shoes he had bought at a thrift store. Then we couldn’t leave. We were stuck there because the police were doing their thing.
(From the Fresh Air episode: “LGBTQ Activist Cleve Jones: ‘I’m Well Aware How Fragile Life Is” by NPR, pub. 11/29/2016)
He was pushed to activism, working for the California speaker of the house, working for other activism organizations. During the HIV/AIDS crisis he was diagnosed with HIV and his reaction was just shock
By the fall of 1985, almost everyone I knew was dead or dying or caring for someone who was dying. I tested positive for HIV the week the test came out, which I’m thinking was 1985. That time is a bit of a blur. …
I had been in a study I had volunteered for, so I knew that they had samples of my blood going back all the way to 1977. So I learned that not only did I have HIV, but I learned that I had had it since the winter of ’78, ’79, so I never expected to survive
(From the Fresh Air episode: “LGBTQ Activist Cleve Jones: ‘I’m Well Aware How Fragile Life Is” by NPR, pub. 11/29/2016)
He saw the amount of death in his community, and he started a project called the NAMES project and AIDS quilt. Where people across the country would sew patches in memory of people they lost to AIDS. This idea came to him during the Harvey milk memorial
That year, as we were getting ready for the annual tribute, the death toll in San Francisco rose to 1,000 and there was a headline in the paper about “1,000 San Franciscans Dead From AIDS.” …
I was just so struck by that number: 1,000. … So that night of the march, I had Harvey Milk’s old bullhorn and I got stacks of poster board and stacks of markers and I asked everybody to write the name of someone they knew who had been killed by the new disease. At first people were ashamed to do it, but finally began writing their first and last names, and we carried these placards with us with our candles to … the building that housed the Health and Human Services West Coast offices for the federal government for the Reagan administration. …
We had hidden ladders in the shrubbery nearby and climbed up the front grey stone façade of this building and taped the names to the wall. After I got off my ladder I walked through the crowd. There were thousands of people. It was gentle rain, no speeches or music, just thousands of people reading these names on this patchwork of placards up on that wall. And I thought to myself, “It looks like some kind of quilt,” and when I said the word “quilt” I thought of my great-grandma. … And it was such a warm and comforting and middle-American traditional-family-values sort of symbol, and I thought, “This is the symbol we should take.”
(From the Fresh Air episode: “LGBTQ Activist Cleve Jones: ‘I’m Well Aware How Fragile Life Is” by NPR, pub. 11/29/2016)
Cleve Jones has been a freedom fighter, had to live through persecution, through disease, through so much hardship and hell and back and he is still alive and Here to tell the tale. I’m inspired everyday by people like himself. Please if you have a chance, read his book and support him. He’s an amazing person who is still working to fight for the underdog!
Link to purchase book:
Finnoula’s corner 