When We Rise by Cleve Jones

Author:Cleve Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Gay & Lesbian, History / Social History, Political Science / Civil Rights
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2016-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

Our next opportunity to take the streets was only weeks away: a referendum challenging a gay rights bill that had been enacted in Wichita, Kansas. The election would be on May 9, 1978. Something about that date nagged at me, and after a few hours of leafing through my history books I remembered: Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, May 9, 1938, when Nazi SA units and German civilians launched attacks against Germany’s Jewish community that destroyed thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and residences. I decide that this time, I would write a speech. So I spent hours scribbling notes on yellow lined paper as my friends distributed flyers and posters alerting the community to the upcoming vote.

The afternoon of May 9, I walked down to Castro Camera, where Harvey was hanging out with Danny and some other cute boys, waiting for the march. I asked if I could read what I’d written and he said sure.

I started, “Forty years ago tonight, the Jewish people of Germany and Austria learned that they no longer had rights.”

When I was done, Harvey looked up with a slight smile and said, “Not bad, Cleve, maybe a little long?” I was somewhat deflated and moving towards the door when he stopped me.

“Come over here, I want to give you something.” He reached under the counter and pulled out the battered old red and white bullhorn that Allan Baird and the Teamsters had given him during the Coors beer boycott.

“I want you to have this,” he said. “I may have an office in City Hall now, but we still need to be outside in the streets. This is yours now. Use it tonight.”

Crowds began to gather on Castro well before the march was scheduled. As expected, we lost Wichita overwhelmingly. Word went out on the telephone tree, and our march monitors gathered. At eight o’clock I climbed up on the big blue box at Castro and Market and began my speech, talking through Harvey’s bullhorn. It was windy, I was trembling with nerves, and the papers in my hand were shaking. Before I could finish my speech I noticed that the crowd was already starting to move down Market Street, and I scrambled off the box to get monitors in place at the front line.

Harvey was there; he gave me his little smirk. “I told you it was too long. And next time lose the paper, it’s distracting.”

Still, it was a start.

This march was huge. The crowd surged down Market Street, making noise that reverberated off the buildings. The cops were aggressive, edging their motorcycles into the crowd. We retaliated by closing more streets and marching against the flow of traffic. We shut down the electric buses and streetcars by pulling their connectors from the overhead wires. The din of thousands of whistles, chants, and drums filled the air as we roared down Market Street, past City Hall, up and over Nob Hill, and down to Union Square.

Two weeks later we did it again, with an even larger crowd, as the gay rights ordinance in Eugene, Oregon, was repealed.

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