ORLANDO | LGBTQ activist icon Cleve Jones visited the LGBT+ Center in Orlando Jan. 29 for a meet & greet and book signing of his 2016 memoir “When We Rise,” but also took the opportunity to declare a call-to-action to the Central Florida LGBTQ community to get out the vote this election year.
“I’m 65, I’ve been politically conscious and aware since I was very young and I think nobody would argue with me that this is the most critical election in our lifetime,” Jones said to the crowd. “So much hangs in the balance for our country, and indeed for the entire world, as we look at the challenges facing the world today. We need an America that can lead with principal, be responsible and be a good ally and a good neighbor, and help us address the extraordinary challenges of climate change, income inequality and all of these other grave threats.”
Jones addressed the importance of encouraging democratic voters in the I-4 corridor to show up to the polls in the general election, saying that Central Florida will be the area to decide if the state goes blue.
“We know the south [Florida] is blue, we know the north is red [Florida],” Jones said. “This area could save the country and, really it’s not an exaggeration, save the whole damn world.”
Jones also recalled to the crowd stories from his early days of being an LGBTQ rights activist in the 1970s. He expressed how at age 15 he had planned to kill himself by collecting pain pills and sedatives from his parents.
“My mom and dad both had medical issues,” he said, “and I started stealing [pills] one by one very carefully so I wouldn’t get caught and I pulled up part of the carpet in the corner of my bedroom and hid them under the floor.”
Jones abandoned his plan after reading about the gay rights movement in LIFE magazine, flushed the pills and headed to San Francisco, where he met Harvey Milk.
“I wanted to make films,” Jones said. “Harvey told me I have no talent [for film] and to change my major.”
Jones enrolled in San Francisco State and studied political science. Milk arranged for Jones to come work with him at City Hall.
“And then on the night that [the LGBT+ Center Orlando] was founded, I found his body and I remember thinking it’s all over now,” Jones said. “How do we move forward? Our leader is dead.”
Jones continued, saying that when it seemed over, the community marched. He spoke about how they marched after Milk’s death, during the AIDS crisis and then when Donald Trump was elected.
Jones advised the crowd that the LGBTQ community is in a unique position to help unify the country.
“We are black and brown and white, we are documented and undocumented. We come from all these different backgrounds. So let us be the bridge builders and the movement builders that take this country back and save democracy,” Jones said.
Watch Jones speaking to attendees below.
Photo by Jeremy Williams. Video by Danny Garcia.
