by Cleve Jones
I hurried the two blocks back to my apartment, telling everyone I passed to meet at Castro and Market. I tried to appear brave but I was very frightened. I knew how people felt and feared the violence that could be unleashed. I feared the police and the brutality they could inflict. Most of all, I feared the legal system and the possibility that I could be blamed, charged, even incarcerated for whatever it was that was about to happen.
The apartment was full and even Eric looked angry, his ever-present grin replaced by a tight-lipped expression I’d never seen before. He handed me Harvey’s battered old red and white bullhorn, given to him by the Teamsters during the Coors beer boycott. He said, “I put in some fresh batteries. I’ll wait here for fifteen minutes then lock up, and we’ll all come down to join you. Hurry.”
At Castro and Market the crowd had already grown to several hundred, with scores more arriving with every minute. As I watched the angry masses fill the intersection I knew that there was little, if anything, that anyone could do to control or direct what was about to transpire.
It was almost dusk as the crowd, now several thousand strong, began to move quickly down Market Street, blocking traffic in both directions. I remembered Harvey’s old instructions to “march them ’til they drop,” and thought to myself that it might work again. I also knew that it was important to maintain a clearly delineated front line for the march to avoid stampedes and also to direct its progress. If one can control where the front line goes, usually the rest of the march will follow. So I set out to maintain that line, and to march until we could march no more.
With each block our numbers grew, and even side streets were clogged as people joined the advancing march. The noise was deafening as our chants and whistles bounced off buildings and reverberated beneath the overpass above Market Street at Octavia. The sound pushed ahead of us as we moved towards City Hall.
In previous demonstrations we marched down Market Street to Polk Street and then turned left, heading north past City Hall up Polk to California Street. We’d race up California to the top of Nob Hill, then crash down Powell Street to Union Square. It was very dramatic. Everyone knew the route, and everyone, including the cops, was thinking that was what would go down tonight.
Down at City Hall a small but determined group of lesbians opposed to the death penalty had already set up a sound system on the Polk Street steps leading up to the building. They had predicted that Dan White, whatever his sentence, would not receive the death penalty. Dan White, as supervisor, had supported the other initiative sponsored by John Briggs, Proposition 7, to expand the application of the death penalty in California. Unlike Prop. 6, it had passed handily. The women on the steps of City Hall that night sought to call attention to the fact that people of color, especially African American men, were so much more likely to be subjected to the death penalty than people like the aptly named Dan White.
As the marchers from Castro Street arrived in Civic Center Plaza we could hear speeches from the front of City Hall and the front line of the marching crowd gathered around to listen, bunching up on Polk Street at the City Hall steps. We weren’t going to keep marching, it was clear. Hundreds more poured into the area. The small sound system didn’t have enough power to be heard by those on the edge of the growing crowd. My fear increased.
The crowd in front of City Hall swelled rapidly to several thousand people. One police car was parked on Polk Street a few feet north of the main entrance. Suddenly, a line of SFPD officers in full riot gear moved onto the steps, placing themselves directly in front of the doors. In the confusion, the generator was overturned and the lesbians’ sound system went silent. The crowd began to get louder. A few rocks flew, then more. The cops retreated into City Hall and someone broke the windows of the lone police car in front. Within minutes we could smell the acrid smoke and saw that the car was on fire.
As the sound of breaking glass continued, many in the crowd began to yell, “Stop! No violence.” Several of us took turns with Harvey’s bullhorn to try to calm the crowd. But more rocks flew and the sound of shattering glass increased. Soon the police car was engulfed in flames, and I saw a small group of young women smash through a basement window to enter City Hall.
Public officials, including Mayor Feinstein, appeared on the mayor’s balcony overlooking the plaza and the still-growing mass of protesters. Street kids of all races and genders, as well as anarchists and members of various left-wing sects, joined the mostly young gay and lesbian crowd. More police cars raced into the Plaza, sirens wailing and lights flashing. The hail of rocks against the building increased, forcing the public officials off the mayor’s balcony after Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, Harvey’s closest ally on the Board of Supervisors, was struck in the face.
Enraged protesters ripped down the ornamental grillwork from the City Hall doors and used it as spears against the police officers inside as they attempted to push their way in. I watched in dismay as the bullhorn Harvey had given me was passed hand over hand away from me. Various people urged calm. Many people chanted, “No more violence!”
Then a strikingly beautiful young lesbian named Amber Hollibaugh seized the bullhorn. She raised it up and bellowed something to the effect of, “I don’t know why people are telling us to calm down, I think we ought to do this MORE OFTEN.” And then all hell broke loose.
The cops massed on Polk Street just north of McAllister Street and left a long line of police cruisers in front of the old State Building. They beat their clubs against their large Plexiglas shields and grunted as they charged into the crowd in a tight phalanx. Other cops shot rounds of tear gas canisters into the throng, causing a screaming surge of protesters to rush toward the Reflecting Pool for water to rinse out their eyes. The cops advanced, shoulder to shoulder, towards the disoriented and panicking demonstrators, pushing us out of Civic Center Plaza into Market Street and the Tenderloin neighborhood. As the cops advanced, their tight front line began to fall apart as individual officers beat protesters and attempted to make arrests.
“Someone’s going to get killed!” It was Bill Kraus, who with Gwenn Craig had run the San Francisco campaign against Proposition 6. We huddled with a few others and agreed: we had to stop the stampede or people would be trampled, seriously injured, or worse. We had no sound system, Harvey’s bullhorn was gone, and sirens, whistles, and screams rose and fell on the smoky wind.
Bill started yelling at the top of his lungs: “Don’t run! Don’t run!”
I joined him, and soon five or six others picked up on what we were doing and added their own loud voices. We saw a few people nearby slow down and stop running. More joined in and we chanted in unison, “Don’t run! Slow down! Don’t run! Slow down!”
Up and down the Plaza, fleeing protesters heard the chant and took it up, passing it on to the next block. “Slow down! Don’t run.”
As the crowd began to slow we noticed that the front line of charging cops had completely disintegrated. Others saw it too, and the chants changed from “Slow down, don’t run!” to “Turn around! Fight back!”
Hundreds took up the chant. They slowed down. They stopped running. They turned around and threw themselves against the cops—skinny little sissy boys and big strong dykes, downtown office workers, Castro clones, leather men and lipstick lesbians, black and brown and white—and pushed back into the Plaza.
“Turn around! Fight back!”
The cops ran in panic, leaving behind a long line of their cars, which, one by one, we burned.
Soon the Civic Center was filled with smoke and tear gas and the eerie sounds of dying police cars as their sirens melted and ammunition shot off. Then the deep dull thud of their gas tanks exploding: Boom. Boom. Boom.
In the Tenderloin, the mostly low-income residents, many of them immigrants, transsexuals, drag queens, and sex workers, hurled bottles and other debris at the cops from their rooftops and fire escapes. Burning dumpsters blocked a mile-long stretch of Market Street. Bill Kraus and I found ourselves at the corner of
Market and Van Ness, in front of the Bank of America, known in those days as Bank of Apartheid for their many investments in racist South Africa.
Bill and I were just about speechless, simultaneously exhilarated and terrified by the spectacle unfolding around us. Bill eyed the large plate-glass windows of the bank.
“Have you ever broken a window, Cleve?” I shook my head. He looked up at the window again, then down at the sidewalk, now littered with rocks and fragments of glass.
He picked one up and showed it to me. “I guess now’s the time.” Bill heaved the rock at the plate-glass window. It bounced off harmlessly, and I almost pissed my pants laughing at Bill’s chagrined expression.
I picked up a larger rock. “Here, let me show you how it’s done, girl.” I threw it as hard as I could. It bounced off. Bill and I hung on to each other, laughing hysterically amidst the smoke and fire of Market Street.
Then a large woman strode up, dragged a huge garbage container up to the bank, and smashed it through the window with one powerful lunge. Bill and I just about collapsed on the sidewalk but were stopped by the sight of more cops.
“Run!”
We got separated, and I ended up alone on Larkin Street until a Puerto Rican dyke friend of mine on a Harley spotted me and hauled me up and away.
She dropped me off at my apartment on Castro and 19th. A lot of people were milling about and most of the bars were filled with folks who’d avoided the drama down at City Hall. I ran upstairs to wash the traces of tear gas from my face and hands, then Eric and I went to our front neighbor’s fire escape overlooking Castro. A few minutes later, dozens of police cruisers and vans arrived silently on 19th Street. The cops made a line and advanced down Castro, beating everyone they encountered.
Eric and I dragged some of the wounded into our apartment as we heard screams and breaking glass coming up from 18th Street. The police had attacked the Elephant Walk bar; they charged in and beat the patrons and staff with their clubs while smashing the furniture and windows, trashing the place.
My friend Gavin was inside and hid in the bathroom listening to the destruction. “It was the most terrifying thing I ever heard,” he would tell the reporters later.
But soon the cops found themselves surrounded and outnumbered by those who were returning from the battle at City Hall and those who had stayed home only to be attacked by vengeful cops. I looked up and caught a brief glimpse of someone on a roof across the street holding a rifle. I pointed him out to a friend, but then he vanished.
The chief of police, Charles Gain, arrived and was joined in the intersection by newly appointed supervisor Harry Britt. The crowd chanted “Cops go home!” and “Dan White was a cop!” while Gain and Britt negotiated. Britt prevailed and the chief gave the order for the cops to withdraw. It was over. Maybe.
The next morning I was summoned to Mayor Feinstein’s office at 8:00 a.m. When I arrived, the room was filled with Feinstein’s gay and lesbian appointees to various City commissions, friends, and donors. I sat in the back and listened as she explained her decision to call in the National Guard. I felt in my gut that would be a disaster. It was Harvey’s birthday and tens of thousands would gather on Castro at sunset, curfew or not. If cops or troops tried to stop us, we would fight.
The appointees were uncomfortable. Some offered weak apologies. Finally Jim Foster looked at me and asked me what I thought. I told the mayor that, in my opinion, the presence of National Guard troops and a curfew would ensure continued violence. I urged her to let Harvey’s party go on and to order the cops to keep a low profile. Then I lied and told her we had hundreds of trained monitors on hand to keep the peace.
I left City Hall in a big rush to turn that lie into a fact. Fortunately, there were many of us and everyone knew what to do. Some worked to finalize arrangements for the stage and sound system. Others recruited lawyers from the ACLU and the Lawyers Guild to serve as legal monitors. We found nurses and doctors who volunteered as medics. We activated the telephone tree and used the assembly hall at Douglas School to train monitors in shifts all afternoon until we did, in fact, have hundreds of volunteers to help protect the crowd from provocateurs, the police, and bashers.
With sunset came the crowds, many ready to fight again. Sally Gearhart and I greeted the thousands, and I began the party with a welcome: “Thank you for being here. Last night the lesbians and gay men of San Francisco showed the rest of the city that we are angry and on the move. Tonight we are here to show the world what we are creating out of that anger and that movement: a strong community of women and men working together to change our world.”
Off on the side streets, for blocks all around us, the police were deployed, hundreds strong and thirsty for revenge. But on Castro Street we danced to Sylvester and sang “Happy Birthday” to Harvey Milk. There were many tears, much laughter, and not a single act of violence.
CHAPTER 21
We March on Washington
WELL, THAT’S THE THING, CLEVE—YOU CAN’T HAVE AN ATTORNEY with you when you testify before the grand jury. You’re in there alone.” Matt Coles raised his eyebrows and looked over his glasses at me. The subpoena had arrived a few days after the riot, summoning me to appear before the San Francisco County Civil Grand Jury as part of their investigation into what was already being called the “White Night Riot.”
This wasn’t as scary as a criminal grand jury or a federal grand jury, but I found the summons pretty intimidating nonetheless. I knew full well that grand juries have the power to detain witnesses who do not cooperate and that those powers had been wielded often against social justice activists as well as journalists. I also knew that I would not, under any circumstance, either apologize for the violence or identify any of the other participants.
Matt laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. We were in his office at Gay Rights Advocates on Castro Street.
“Another factor,” he continued, “Is that all grand jury testimony is secret. They will make you swear to never reveal their questions or your responses.” Now I was really nervous. This was complicated.
But Matt had a plan. “You know, I can’t be in the room with you but you do have the right to consult with counsel before you respond to a question. You can leave the room, talk it over with me, then return and respond.” He chuckled. “Maybe we can run out the clock.”
I arrived at the appointed hour and reported to the county grand jury holding court in San Francisco City Hall. I was wearing my best shirt, a blue cotton button-down my grandma had given me for Christmas. I was armed with a thick pad of legal-sized yellow paper, several pencils, and a pocket full of throat lozenges—I was still raspy from all the shouting.
After the foreman swore me in, the deputy district attorney assigned to the jury asked me his first question: “Could you state your name, please?
I asked him to repeat the question. I wrote it down carefully, and looked up. “I respectfully request to consult with counsel before I respond.”
The heads of the grand jury members moved back and forth from the DA to me as they registered my request. The DA, obviously annoyed, allowed that it was, in fact, my right. I got up and walked out. Matt was waiting in the hall with coffee. We hung out for several minutes, then I walked slowly back into the court, sat down, and responded, “Cleve Jones.”
The DA seemed relieved. “Fine. What is your address, please?”
I asked him to repeat the question and wrote it down carefully. “I respectfully request permission to consult with counsel before responding.”
Two of the jurors snickered. The DA’s face got red. I walked out to find Matt. A few minutes later, after another coffee and a cigarette, I walked back in and sat down. “593-A Castro Street.”
It went on and on and on. He would ask a question and I would go out for coffee, a smoke, and a consultation. Finally, the exasperated DA had enough of my nonsense and sternly lectured me that if I did not cooperate I would face serious consequences, potentially jail ti
me, and would I now please just answer the questions?
I asked him to repeat the question.
By this time, half the members of the grand jury were openly amused by the situation, smiling and whispering to each other. The DA’s face got redder and the veins pulsed in his neck as I left the room to consult with counsel.
In the hall, Matt laughed quietly as I described the DA’s facial expression. But it wasn’t really funny, because I’d seen the stacks of police photographs on the table in front of me. Picture after picture of protesters smashing City Hall’s front doors and windows. Faces to be named, in secret and under oath.
I sat down and read a few sentences stating that I could not agree with the secrecy of the proceedings and that it was my intention, should the DA force me to testify, to publish all of the questions they posed, and all of my responses.
They sent me out. We waited a while, and then I was dismissed. Too much coffee, too much stress—I was trembling like a leaf, but it was over. There were no indictments.
There was other good news. A few weeks later, Howard Wallace called to tell me that he had rescued Harvey’s bullhorn from the melee in Civic Center Plaza. I was so grateful and hugged Howard when I picked it up at his place on 14th Street.
I spoke at the 1979 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade a few weeks later. There’s only one photo as far as I know. It shows me in jeans, wearing a hooded sweatshirt I’d brought back from Europe, with a big bunch of curly hair. I don’t remember what I said.
I got a job working in a book and magazine store on Market Street near Castro called Noe Books and News. It was boring to stack the shelves, box remainders, and deal with the incoming and returned magazines and newspapers, but it was great to be surrounded by books and I enjoyed being the cashier, helping people find their books and chatting with everyone who came in.
The riot changed everything for us in San Francisco. We were more powerful, and we could feel it. There were changes coming and we felt the wind at our backs. It was going to take some time, though. Mayor Feinstein sacked Police Chief Charles Gain, the liberal reformer, and replaced him with Cornelius “Con” Murphy. She couldn’t have found a more old-school Irish cop. The baby-blue SFPD cruisers were repainted black and white, and Mayor Feinstein posed for photographs wearing a SWAT team uniform.
