Alum and Activist Cleve Jones

FRONTIERS LA -- Jones studied Political Science at San Francisco State, and after Milk was elected supervisor in January 1978, he became Milk’s intern. Jones was in City Hall shortly after the gay supervisor’s assassination on November 27, 1978. Jones says the most important lesson Milk taught was for people to ‘come out’ as political action — “because then it became much more difficult for people to hate us and hurt us and vote against us.” Milk also advocated coalition-building. “He understood that we would only win equality if we had allies, and in particular the labor movement,” Jones says. “The big breakthrough was the Coors beer boycott, started by the Teamsters. We succeeded in removing Coors beer from almost every gay bar in North America in a very quick amount of time.”