Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Q&A:

Longtime gay rights activist Cleve Jones on LGBT movement in Las Vegas, progress at Culinary

Cleve Jones

Christopher DeVargas

Cleve Jones, LGBT activist and founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, is shown Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014.

The past week was doubly significant for the local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Las Vegas Pride celebrated its 31st year in Southern Nevada over the weekend. Then, on Monday, a federal appeals court in San Francisco heard oral arguments in a case challenging Nevada’s same-sex marriage ban .

On the eve of the weekend’s Pride festivities, four days before lawyers spoke before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a small crowd gathered for a panel about the case at the off-Strip offices of the Culinary Union Local 226. The union represents thousands of casino workers in Las Vegas and Reno.

One of the audience members there was Cleve Jones, a San Francisco-based LGBT activist who rose to prominence as the founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which honors the lives of people lost to the autoimmune disease.

Jones conceived of the quilt as the result of a 1985 march commemorating the late mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to public office in California. They were both assassinated in 1978.

Movie buffs may remember Jones’ character from the Academy Award-winning 2008 biopic ‘Milk’ — he was played by actor Emile Hirsch.

Today, Jones works for UNITE HERE, the international union of hospitality workers in the United States and Canada, of which the Culinary is a local affiliate.

During his visit, Jones sat down with the Sun to discuss his work with the union as well as LGBT activism in Las Vegas and beyond. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us a little bit about your work with the Culinary and how the organized labor and LGBT rights movements intersect.

My involvement with the labor movement and with this union actually goes back to the 1970s when I was mentored by Harvey Milk. When Harvey got elected, Local 2 — which is the counterpart of the Culinary in San Francisco — was a supporter of his. I was actually walking a Local 2 picket line the day Harvey got shot. I was an intern in his office. I’d been in the office that morning and he sent me home to get a file that I left at my apartment. I did a few rounds on the picket line and then somebody yelled at me that the mayor had been shot. So I’ve always believed in the coalition between the LGBT community and the labor movement. It really makes a difference in a very tangible way. Especially with gay rights — it gets to be so emotional, there’s all the slogans on both sides, but what we’re really talking about is economic security and fair treatment.

And in this town, this union has successfully negotiated contracts for many years now with almost all of the big employers. Those contracts protect LGBT people from arbitrary discrimination and also make sure that same-sex domestic partners are eligible for the health plan that covers over 120,000 people in Nevada.

How strong are the LGBT and labor movements are in Las Vegas compared to where they were when you first started coming here?

The LGBT community historically has not been strong in Las Vegas. But the Culinary understands that we have a lot of LGBT members, and we’ve made it one of our priorities. So for the last couple of years now, hundreds of our members have been participating in Pride and helping the community push this issue politically.

What do you think is the significance of Las Vegas Pride this year?

I just love seeing the community getting more and more organized. They have a new community center here that’s really state of the art, you see more and more people coming out to their family and friends and co-workers, you see more and more people politically involved. It’s just part of the bigger picture, which is that this issue that for so many decades was perceived as really limited to the most liberal jurisdictions is now truly spreading all across the country.

Are you hopeful about the outcome at the 9th Circuit?

I am extremely optimistic. My birthday is national coming out day, Oct. 11, and I’ll be 60 — I believe that I will see full equality under the law in my lifetime.

Do you include employment in that or are you just talking about marriage?

For me, frankly, the employment issue is more important. It’s another reason why I’m proud of this union, because it’s not just here that we negotiate contracts that protect people’s employment. We just won victory in Louisiana. The numbers may seem small to you, but in one of the casinos down there and one of the hotels, between the two I think it’s 1,800 workers now are protected from being fired because of sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s a contract that’s union negotiated. So even in a deep red state in the Deep South like Louisiana, we’re able to provide those protections.

What actions can people take to advance the employment issue?

First of all, we have to accept that for the foreseeable future Congress is going to do nothing on this or any other issue. So it’s more important than ever for local activists and state activists to push that in their Legislatures.

What are some other LGBT priorities, beyond marriage and beyond employment?

The level of violence directed at us is still high and it is unacceptable. I hear from these young people all the time who are afraid to go to school and I think it’s something that most straight people don’t even really begin to comprehend, how pervasive the violence is and the fear of violence. We’re born into all different kinds of families, but one of the things I think that unifies gay people is this experience of knowing that they are potentially going to experience violence.

But we know the strategy, and Harvey Milk told us what it was: He said you’ve got to come out of the closet and you’ve got to build coalitions. It’s cool to see how absolutely right on target he was.

There are a lot of conversations being had also about violence and discrimination against transgender people. What do you think the outlook is for that community?

The level of violence against transgender people is appalling. I think, regrettably, it’s going to be some time.

I’m sometimes frustrated with transgender activists, because I think they’ve had difficulty uniting themselves. I’ve been in conversations with a number of trans activists about the importance of really speaking clearly about what the political and legislative goals are rather than spending so much time talking about vocabulary.

If you talk to transgender people, there’s three things that come up over and over and over: violence, access to health care and employment. In our union, we didn’t even have to have a conversation about it. We negotiate contracts that protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and we provide health care. So we’re able to deal with two of those three.

But the level of violence, the frightening thing about it is — just as with gay people — it requires people to put themselves at some risk. Watching these plaintiffs in all these court cases all around the country has been really inspiring to me. These are ordinary folks. None of them set out to be heroes, most of them don’t even consider themselves activists, and to expose yourself and your family to that kind of scrutiny and condemnation is really very courageous. But we’re seeing it.

On transgender issues, I don’t know if we’re at a “tipping point” yet. But there’s amazing progress. As an old man now who joined the Gay Liberation Front when I was 17, I never imagined I’d see all this.

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