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AIDS activist Cleve Jones honored with Lifetime of Commitment Award on World AIDS Day [1]
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Date: 2022-12-02
“The most important day of my life, unquestionably, was when I saw Harvey's dead body on the floor of City Hall,” Jones tells Daily Kos. “That was the moment when I knew that this is what I would be doing for the rest of my life.”
Jones tells Daily Kos that Milk was in many ways a father figure to him as well as a political mentor. “He encouraged me and believed in me and even persuaded me to go back to college. I loved Harvey,” Jones says.
Jones was famously portrayed by Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant’s Oscar-winning film MILK. And in 1983, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the AIDS Memorial Quilt—now under the stewardship of the National AIDS Memorial. He is also the author of a memoir titled When We Rise, published in Nov. 2016.
He adds that the genius of Milk was his way of finding genuine connections with all kinds of people.
Jones says Milk could go from a union hall full of Teamsters to talking to wealthy white ladies from Nob Hill to rowdy gay boys in a bar.
“He taught me how to choose vocabulary that's accessible to everybody. This is something I think progressives ought to be paying attention to,” Jones says. “I find that the level of jargon within the progressive movement is mind-numbing at this point, and it's very elitist. All that guarantees is that the message is not heard from the people who I think we would hope the most would hear it.”
Jones uses Milk’s savvy in his work these days building unions with Unite Here and says the battles are strikingly similar to the activism he did within the LGBTQ movement.
“The people who are trying to bust unions are often the very same people trying to deny LGBTQ people our rights. And in my case, with this particular union, it just so happens that all of the hotel companies and all of the airlines market specifically to the LGBTQ community and also employ large numbers of people from our community. So it's very exciting. I enjoy it,” he says.
Jones's work of late has been hyper-focused on the many young baristas working to form unions.
“Right now, I’m communicating with a group of young baristas, many of whom are queer and trans, who are striking at the Great Lakes coffee shop in Detroit, Michigan. And my Union and SEIU [Service Employees International Union] have also been organizing Starbucks workers.”
But, Jones says unions are struggling in general in a COVID-19 world. He says that about 90% of workers were laid off in 2020, and many are choosing not to return. He adds that companies are capitalizing on the lack of workers and putting more on the shoulders of those who are there to work.
Jones says what he calls “the full-frontal assault on democracy” is the biggest concern he has today. “There's this word we used to overuse on the left and probably used inappropriately. Maybe we didn't quite understand its definition, or maybe we were just engaging in hyperbole, but this is ‘fascism.’ The Republican Party has become a fascist party that has embraced authoritarianism, and it is tearing down democracy itself. If we lose that, we lose everything.”
Today, Jones is battling to stay in his San Francisco rent-controlled apartment as the new owner threatens to evict him—or increase the rent from $2,400 to $5,200 a month.
Jones has lived in the Castro for decades and says the issue isn’t simply about the greed of gentrification; it’s about losing what he calls the “gayborhoods.”
“When these began as gayborhoods, most of them began during a period when the population of the inner cities was declining. There had been upheaval, there’d been crime and the phenomenon of white flight. So when the industry left, gay clubs sprung up where they could dance after-hours and not get the police called on them, and this was basically during years where it was illegal to be gay.”
Jones adds that losing these tight-knit communities also means losing housing, certainly, and also losing political power, the arts that come out of these neighborhoods (Gay Men’s Choir, the Rainbow flag, the Memorial Quilt), along with the specialized social services necessary for the gay community, such as senior services and HIV care specialists.
So, as much as Jones says he didn’t want to fight for his apartment, adding that he’s “not in good health.” Jones has been living with HIV for some time.
He says he may win the battle and lose the war on his apartment but asks, “How can I, who have spent my whole freaking life telling people to stand up and fight, not fight?”
x Hugely inspiring anti-eviction rally for Castro community hero @CleveJones1, exposing state laws designed to enable the fracturing and displacement of communities.
Full story here: Activist Cleve Jones plans to stay in Castro and fight rent increase
https://t.co/9mGXnrEsPO pic.twitter.com/XDI4ciczpo — Lee Hepner (@LeeHepner) March 27, 2022
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/2/2139682/-AIDS-activist-Cleve-Jones-honored-with-Lifetime-of-Commitment-Award-on-World-AIDS-Day
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