AIDS Memorial Quilt activist encourages compassion

Students, faculty and community members gathered for the inaugural event of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies' Kaleidoscope speaker series on Oct. 20 for a lecture from acclaimed activist Cleve Jones.

Featured within the context of a series that "hosts leaders from around the country who are facing, and overcoming, the challenges associated with leading in a diverse society," Jones's talk emphasized the common plight of the human experience and the absolute necessity of cross-boundary dialogue.

Introduced by Karen Zivi of the Jepson School as a citizen-leader, Jones said he had taken advantage of his right to free expression at an early age, when he marched with Cesar Chavez and supported the antiwar movement.

Jones abandoned his hometown immediately after high school and never actually attended his graduation ceremony. He boarded a Greyhound bus for San Francisco and arrived in the center of the gay liberation movement on Castro Street.

Although he "lived a kind of precarious existence for while," Jones emerged as a leading figure in the movement, serving in the office of San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States. He eventually helped to lead the effort after Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone's assassinations on November 27, 1978.

Having since earned national fame for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, a compilation of tens of thousands of individually made memorial blocks dedicated to victims of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Jones has evolved into a leading figure in the American gay rights movement and an advocate for progressive human rights.

As Jones addressed the audience, he juxtaposed a series of poignant anecdotes with judgements of the current state of affairs in the United States and abroad.

Noting with profound remorse the tragic suicides within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community in past weeks, Jones echoed claims made by the wide-spread YouTube "It Gets Better" campaign by declaring, "The last few years have been some of the most ... love-filled of my life."

Diving into the speech itself, Jones emphasized the role Harvey Milk played in his formative years while expressing his profound gratitude for Milk's compassion and guidance.

"I needed a gay father," Jones explained. "He saw value in me that no one had seen before."

Trapped within the confines of San Francisco City Hall during the aftermath of Milk's assassination by fellow Board of Supervisors member Dan White, Jones commented with trepidation that Milk's "was the first dead body I had seen. [Although] I've seen many since."

In the aftermath of the crisis, Jones organized the first annual candlelit vigil, held annually near City Hall to commemorate "the political principles to which [Milk and Moscone] devoted their lives."

As Jones explained, this commemoration eventually led to a larger annual demonstration devoted to the horrors of the AIDS pandemic.

Jones's reserve of emotion surfaced briefly as he recounted the horrors of San Francisco during the AIDS crisis, attempting to convey the horror of surviving among the deaths of so many friends, albeit with the aid of drug cocktails invented in the 1990s.

It wasn't until June of 1981 that he "read the first printed words about the disease we know call AIDS" in a CDC weekly publication highlighting a mysterious disease characterized by purple lesions which originated near the ankles and feet and found within clusters of gay men.

Jones clipped out the article and saved it, citing a gut feeling that he had stumbled upon something of consequence.

After seeing friend after friend wither away, Jones and others began advocating for assistance of any kind to protect themselves.

Faced with an unflinching Republican administration under President Reagan and a California State Republican conference prone to display bumper stickers which Jones reminded the audience read: "AIDS: It kills all the right people," he was forced to resort to more militant action.

In a final display of desperation, he reminisced about a particular candlelight vigil in memory of Milk and Moscone where the attendees continued on to the Reagan administration's West Coast Health and Human Services federal building and covered its facade with poster boards marked with the names of AIDS victims, the very beginning of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Eventually gathering support from other Californians, Jones organized the construction of the first quilt. After receiving sensational coverage he eventually bought a bus named Stella and traveled to the ten largest cities in the United States.

In 1996, he covered the entire National Mall in Washington, D.C. with the quilt, and he has used it as a teaching device to bring AIDS-awareness to school districts devoid of AIDS education initiatives. Jones reflected upon the outbreak of what he called "the worst pandemic in the history of humanity."

"We were the one nation on Earth with the advanced warning to stop this thing in its tracks," he said.

Ashamed of the current awareness of AIDS and its history, Jones advocated education of the history of AIDS, in order for this generation to move forward in the struggle to completely eradicate the disease.

Sophomore Zoe Gunn sympathized with Jones in her reaction to the talk: "I feel like in this day and age the queer movement has lost a lot of its passion. ... Everyone has to be educated about the history if we have any hope of moving this forward."

Although heavily focused on gay rights issues, Jones ended his speech by espousing a universal message of compassion and engagement, inspiring the current generation of students and activists alike to continue the battle for equality among all people: "Our lives are linked. They matter. Do it."

Contact reporter Erik Lampmann at erik.lampmann@richmond.edu