Reflections on my place in the events in San Francisco 1970s portrayed in When We Rise
Academy-Award winner Dustin Lance Black executive produces this miniseries chronicling the real-life personal and political struggles, setbacks, and triumphs of diverse LGBT activists who played integral roles in pioneering their leg of the U.S. civil rights movement from its infancy. The story focuses on AIDS and LGBT rights champion Cleve Jones, women's rights leader Roma Guy and her wife, Diane, African-American community organizer Ken Jones, and transgender activist Celia Chung, following them from the Stonewall riots in 1969 through the AIDS epidemic of the '80s and beyond.
First episode date: February 27, 2017
Network: American Broadcasting Company
Directors: Gus Van Sant, Dee Rees, Thomas Schlamme, Dustin Lance Black
In February 2017, ABC-TV ran a four night miniseries that told the story of events in gay history in San Francisco. The series, written by Dustin Lance Black based on the book by Cleve Jones, subtitled My Life in the Movement, focused on just a few characters, with Cleve Jones as the connection between them, but referenced the many other things going on in S.F. and the country from the rise of Gay Liberation in the early 70s to AIDS in the 80s & 90s to Marriage Equality in 2015.
I lived in San Francisco in the 70s. My life intersected with events in the movie in a number of places.
The most significant role I played was with regard to Pat Norman, the character played by Whoopi Goldberg. Out of the demonstration by The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance, I was male co-spokesperson of the Taskforce on Gay Mental Health Services that recommended/demanded Pat Norman be given the job in the San Francisco Health Department to oversee gay/lesbian-sensitive services.
I'd been involved with gay mental health and peer-counseling from 1972 when I started working with the San Francisco Gay Counseling Center hot line. Through that connection I'd met Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (played by Maddie Corman and Rosie O'Donnell) at meetings at John Newmeyer's house. Everybody in those days knew Phyllis and Del.
June of 79, the renowned gay historian John D'Emilio spent several weeks at my flat on Fair Oaks St. It was an exciting time, just after the White Night Riots. Through John, I met Estelle Freedman, Allan Berube, Vito Russo, Amber Hollibaugh, AND Cleve Jones.
Early in the movie, Cleve is shown, apparently living on the street, being rescued from a creepy-looking john in a car by a bearded red-headed man. That was Arthur Evans. The room they are shown talking in later, when Arthur tells Cleve about Stonewall, was in the flat next door to mine at the corner of Ashbury and Haight--but that would have been a year after we'd moved out. I remember going to potlucks at Arthur's later.
Cleve Jones and Gilbert Baker are shown standing at the base of the flagpole in United Nations Plaza during the 1978 Gay Pride Day Parade where the rainbow flag, produced by Baker, is flying for the first time. I marched in that parade and had seen the flags for the first time in the morning when I helped Toby Marotta set up a booth for Hospitality House, the Tenderloin social service agency he worked for. A year later during the 79 parade I was standing about 100 feet from where Jones & Baker are shown at in the movie. I volunteered as a monitor in 1979 and was assigned a spot just where the parade route turned off of Market Street and entered U.N. Plaza--where the marchers all saw the rainbow flags as the culmination of the March. I heard the exclamations of joy and pride and amazement, over and over, at the size and beauty of the two flags that flanked the opening of the Plaza.
In that same area around City Hall, a month earlier on May 21, 1979, the White Night Riots had followed the lenient sentencing of Dan White who'd assassinated George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Cleve is shown setting fire to one of the police cars that was burned that night. I was across the plaza, running from a policeman twirling a billy club over his head. I remember the smell of teargas and the whirr of the billy club just missing the side of my head.
Cleve is shown meeting with Jim Foster, the Democratic Party operative who was the first openly gay man to address a national political convention. Foster tells Jones to cut his hair and clean up his act if he wants to be political. He's shown as assimilationist in the movie. I knew Jim in those days as a champion of gay liberation. I remember having a late breakfast with him one Saturday or Sunday morning in New York City at the apartment he was staying at in the upper west side near where I was staying at 89th and Central Park West with Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe and personal assistant to our literary agent John Brockman.
I also realize I have had a certain indirect influence on Dustin Lance Black. He lived in San Antonio in the 80s from the time he was 6 to 14 years old, 1981-88. During that time, I was the gay therapist in San Antonio and male co-chair of the San Antonio Gay Alliance. Kip and I were the gay couple interviewed on TV about gay issues from AIDS to the 87 March on Washington. We had helped shape the public face of gay consciousness in San Antonio in the 80s.