Cleve Jones: Remembering Harvey, and the Birth of the AIDS Memorial Quilt

In a moving and heartfelt talk, AIDS activist and longtime human rights advocate Cleve Jones addressed The Commonwealth Club’s LBGT Member Led Forum on June 1. The close friend of the late San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was portrayed by actor Emile Hirsch in Gus Van Sant’s 2008 Oscar-nominated film “Milk,” discussed topics ranging from his early years in San Francisco, to the AIDS epidemic, to the recent events surrounding the legalization of gay marriage.

Jones told the group that he was inspired to move to San Francisco at age 17, after discovering a magazine in his school’s library containing an article detailing the burgeoning gay rights movement in the city. “I had come to San Francisco to be a part of a revolution,” he said.

He shared his humble beginnings in the city and his first encounter with Harvey Milk, admitting that prior to their meeting, he had not really taken Milk seriously. However, the two men quickly developed a friendship, and subsequently Jones began working as an intern for Milk when he was elected to office. Jones said he was profoundly affected by Milk, and he credits Milk with making him a more tolerant and empathetic person. “I hated straight people when I first got here,” he said. “I was very heterophobic, and that hatred, like most hated, was born out of fear.”

Milk’s assassination overwhelmed him. Upon learning about the killing, Jones lamented, “[The gay rights movement’s] all over now. It’s finished; he was our leader and my father figure, he was the man who opened doors for me and allowed me to think of some amazing future waiting for me.” However, he continued, it was during the candle-lit procession that followed in which thousands of people, gay and straight alike, descended upon City Hall that “I realized it was just the beginning.”

Shortly after Milk’s death, Jones was faced with a new problem, the likes of which he had never seen before. He became aware of the AIDS epidemic, though at the time the virus was virtually unknown. He admitted to initially being “so confused and frightened,” and Jones touched on the shock of being tested and receiving a positive diagnosis. He lived with the virus for 10 years before treatment was available, during which time he watched his friends die on almost a daily basis. “It was just mind numbing,” he recalled. “I felt myself and people around me falling into a state of paralysis.”

However, he said that 1985 was a pivotal year that changed not only his life but the lives of thousands of others. It was during what had now become the annual march on City Hall in remembrance of the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone that Cleve conceived of the idea of the AIDS memorial quilt. He remarked how he passed out paper and pens, urging marchers to write the names of loved ones that they had lost to AIDS. At first, he said, people were hesitant and even ashamed to expose the full names of those they had lost. But eventually he and his friend collected hundreds of papers. After sneaking past security, the two blanketed the entire San Francisco Federal Building with the names of those who were lost, which to Jones looked like “some kind of weird quilt.” From this, the idea of the NAMES Project Memorial Quilt was born. According to Jones, “The quilt was a gift to me, to keep me alive and willing to keep fighting.” In the years since, the quilt has grown to become the world’s largest community arts project, memorializing the lives of more than 80,000 Americans killed by AIDS.

Jones concluded his lecture with a discussion of the current state of gay marriage in America. Though he said that he believes the country has made great strides, he also feels it is time to rethink the strategy on legalizing gay marriage. “I believe the time has come to abandon our focus on state by state, city by city, county by county,” he said. “Every time we settle for a compromise, we are undermining our own humanity, because no other group of people in this country would accept that kind of piecemeal bit-by-bit approach. There is no such thing as a fraction of equality. You are equal or you are not.”

An inspiring speaker, Jones has lectured at high schools, colleges, and universities, and has met several heads of state including Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton, and former South African President Nelson Mandela. His best-selling memoir, “Stitching a Revolution,” was published by HarperCollins in 2000. Jones has received numerous awards from AIDS and gay rights organizations, religious conferences, state and national health associations, and the legislatures of California, Indiana and Massachusetts. He has served as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Harvard AIDS Institute, the National Board of Governors of Project Inform, and the Board of Directors of the Foundation for AIDS and Immune Research. He currently lives in Palm Springs,California.

-- By The Commonwealth Club's Media and Public Relations Staff

Obama Ousts Wagoner from GM

President Barack Obama has reportedly requested and received GM CEO Rick Wagoner's immediate exit from the company he's headed for nine years (and where he's been employed for three decades).



The move comes one day before Monday's announcement by the White House of its plans for the auto industry, which has received billions of dollars in aid from taxpayers but has not yet satisfied the Obama administration's criteria for submitting a workable recovery plan. Chrysler and GM have between them taken $17.4 billion in government money, and they're seeking more than $21 billion more.

When Wagoner made a high-profile speech to The Commonwealth Club less than a year ago, on May 1, 2008, the executive touted the company's efforts at adopting green technology and responded to audience questions about GM's commitment to delivering on those promises. (See video, above.) At the time, the big question was the price of oil, which had spiked at more than $140 a barrel; that would, of course, fall, but only as the economy went into a tailspin. (Read a PDF of Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy's column about her ill-fated GM electric car, the EV-1, a column that Wagoner referenced in his address to The Club.)

By the time many of you have read this blog posting, the Obama recovery plan for the carmakers will have been announced. Will it help drag Chrysler and GM out of the murk and back into profitability? Will it be a money-pit for taxpayers? What would you suggest the government do? Leave a comment and join the discussion.

Economic Forecast: An Interesting Year Ahead

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich gave the annual Bank of America-Walter E. Hoadley Economic Forecast speech last month to a sold-out crowd of people curious about what's going to happen in 2009. Reich tried to allay the audience's worst fears, but he did not sugar-coat the basic message, that he believes we are in for a rough recession -- he mostly avoided the "d-word" -- but that effective action by Washington could shorten the pain.
Watch the excerpt above to see his message. And Commonwealth Club members should keep an eye out for their March magazine in a few weeks, which will feature a Reich forecast cover story, as well as some valuable looks-back at previous economic times of trials in 1980 and 1933.

Obama Names George Mitchell Special Mideast Envoy

Former Sen. George Mitchell was named President Obama's special envoy to the Middle East earlier today, as the new president moves quickly to make that region of the world a high priority of his administration's from day one.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have both been criticized for taking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict late in their terms in office, when even a full-court press often failed to produce results that could survive the entrenched security concerns of the participants. Obama's moves are a marked contrast. Yesterday, on his first full day in office, Obama called four Middle Eastern leaders.

Mitchell, who served as special envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process starting in 1995, will now take his considerable experience and contacts from a life in diplomacy, legislative bodies, and private business to his newest posting. You can get a sense of his approach to the world (and his theories about how America should engage the world) in his October 22, 2008, appearance at The Commonwealth Club, in which he and Club President/CEO Dr. Gloria Duffy discussed the U.S. role in the world [see video player above].

Can George Mitchell achieve in the Middle East what has eluded previous American peace efforts? What will challenge him the most? Post a comment and join the discussion!

Tough Times in the Citi

When Wells Fargo & Co. Chairman Dick Kovacevich spoke at The Club October 21, he gave a detailed history of the drive to deregulate banking in the United States and open up new lines of business for banks. (See video above of Kovacevich's speech, or listen to audio.) Kovacevich's history drew heavily on his many years of work as an executive at Citibank, as it grew to global giant status and led the way in the deregulation fight.

Now, is that fight over? News this week is that Citi is dividing itself up, sequestering its "bad bank" businesses from its "good bank" businesses so that the bad doesn't drag down the entire business. And the Congressional financial overlords are talking of tightening regulation of banks -- something that will be easier, now that many banks are taking taxpayer money in one form or another. (There's no free lunch, even for the pinstripes.)

We should get at least a glimpse of the answer on Tuesday, when Barack Obama gives his inaugural speech in Washington, D.C.

Bill Richardson Steps Back from Commerce Role

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) withdrew his nomination as President-Elect Barack Obama's commerce secretary today, attributing it to a desire to avoid letting a corruption investigation interfere with the launch of the new administration.

The fact that the corruption charges were no out-of-the-blue occurrence did not go unnoticed by some.

Richardson, who spoke at The Commonwealth Club June 12, 2007, during his short-lived presidential campaign [listen to audio of his program or watch video], was reportedly "stunned" by the Obama camp's move to have him withdraw, according to CNN. Apparently, the ongoing farce occurring in Illinois state government, with the arrest and impending doom of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has made the incoming president's team quick to pull the trigger to do away with unwanted ethics problems.

Presidential Transitions

As President-Elect Barack Obama moves with unusual speed to select and present the cabinet for his incoming administration, a great deal of attention is being focused on his possible and actual choices.

Today, Obama presented his economic team to the country. In coming days, we expect to hear about his foreign and domestic policy teams. Clues about the team and its goals can be found at the transition team's web site.

To provide some perspective on transitions past and present, we present Commonwealth Club President and CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy's most recent "InSight" column from The Commonwealth magazine. The column, called "Transitions," explains why a slow transition can present a danger to the nation. For a full-sized image of the column, click on the picture to the right of this posting.

Ted Turner on Nuclear Disarmament

In the above video excerpt, media mogul Ted Turner explains that his professional focus has changed from being a media entrepreneur to taking on the big issues, such as nuclear disarmament.

It was part of a wide-ranging (and often humorous) discussion he had with the San Francisco Chronicle's Phil Bronstein at The Commonwealth Club November 18, 2008.

Please forgive the low-quality video; we'll post a full video when our video partners at ForaTV make it available.

Financial Crisis: The Who, What, When, Where and Why

As of this writing, the Dow Jones is down 306 points, just two days after European governments super-charged the world's markets by laying out aggressive programs to deal with the frozen credit markets. The United States also announced a program to deal with the crisis, but markets have been weak-to-faltering even as the newspaper headlines start to sound optimistic for the first time in weeks.

What is happening? What will happen next?

Much of the problem stems from the easy credit and large amounts of money lenders were pushing into the housing market for many years. And though some critics have put blame on the people who bought subprime loans and other insufficiently securitized financing, "the people who should have know what they were doing was people who had experience lending money," said former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in a Commonwealth Club speech October 1, 2008 (see the embedded video above for his complete speech). "I think they did know what they were doing."

Perhaps they didn't. In the same speech, Reich said that he spoke with Wall Street financiers about the various financial instruments they were using to repackage bulk loans and sell them to investors. "Two years ago I asked a hedge fund manager, 'Please explain to me what's in your hedge fund,'" said Reich. He said the fund manager laughed and replied, "I have no idea."

"Thanks to high technology, you could slice and dice these [financial] packages into your appetite of risks," Steve Forbes told The Commonwealth Club on August 7, 2008. "You could have packages of sub-prime mortgages; you could own a piece of it that may be worth today 80, 90 cents on the dollar. you could own another piece that is zero cents on the dollar. Lots of institutions didn't even really realize how much of this junk they had until the crisis hit."

That, say experts, has led to the frozen credit markets, where banks are unwilling to lend to other banks because they literally don't know if the other bank's liabilities in bad loans are frighteningly awful or just frightening. Therefore, we've seen governments stepping in to provide liquidity for banks and trying to provide the confidence banks need to make the loans.

Where this will all lead is not clear, though even the optimistic predictions of many economists is that the United States is in for a serious recession lasting one or two years. That has people and businesses battening down the hatches and preparing for a tough time.

"The consensus among mainstream economists is if – if – we can avoid a meltdown, this is likely to be an extended but comparatively shallow recession," said Peter Gosselin, a financial journalist who spoke on a Commonwealth Club Inforum panel on "Surviving the Great Recession." He added that even a "shallow" recession can be very serious. That panel discussion was in July, but even then Gosselin said the country was likely to hit a crisis soon. Events would soon prove him correct.

ADDENDUM: The Dow Jones closed down about 733 points.