The Gay March: A New Generation of Protesters
The march on Washington that gays staged Sunday on the National Mall drew something like 200,000 people — that's a good guess based on conversations with many of the organizers and local authorities, although estimates of Mall crowds are notoriously unreliable. But one number you can take to the bank: the average age of those backstage who wore walkie-talkie headsets and staff badges, the men (and a few women) who were behind much of the organizing effort, wasn't over 30. And that, by far, was the oddest thing about the march: Why would a generation wired to their mobile phones and Facebook accounts nearly from birth want to resurrect a form of political expression as old and musty as a mass gathering?...
... They didn't do it alone, of course. The macher behind the march was Cleve Jones, 55, a man who, in his younger days, was a compatriot of Harvey Milk's and, later, the conceiver of the most powerful work of American folk art, the AIDS quilt. Last year, Jones found himself in the spotlight again after the film Milk reminded the nation of what his close friend Harvey had died for. With relentless encouragement from David Mixner — a longtime gay activist and occasional friend of Bill Clinton's — Jones decided to pay attention to all the e-mails he was receiving from 20-something gays who were both angry about Prop 8 and inspired by Milk...
... Meanwhile, mid-career gay activists who run the day-to-day gay movement from the East Coast — men and women in their late 30s to early 50s who slogged away at gay causes during the Bush interregnum — were rather dumbstruck at the idea that young gays wanted to march on Washington. "Pointless," one seasoned gay activist told me. "If Cleve and David Mixner have really inspired so many kids to work on our behalf — finally, by the way, because I think these kids spent the early part of this decade playing Nintendo or something — why don't they tell them to go to Maine or Washington this weekend?" This activist was referring to the momentous votes coming up in Maine and Washington state that will determine how gay couples in those states can define their relationships.
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... They didn't do it alone, of course. The macher behind the march was Cleve Jones, 55, a man who, in his younger days, was a compatriot of Harvey Milk's and, later, the conceiver of the most powerful work of American folk art, the AIDS quilt. Last year, Jones found himself in the spotlight again after the film Milk reminded the nation of what his close friend Harvey had died for. With relentless encouragement from David Mixner — a longtime gay activist and occasional friend of Bill Clinton's — Jones decided to pay attention to all the e-mails he was receiving from 20-something gays who were both angry about Prop 8 and inspired by Milk...
... Meanwhile, mid-career gay activists who run the day-to-day gay movement from the East Coast — men and women in their late 30s to early 50s who slogged away at gay causes during the Bush interregnum — were rather dumbstruck at the idea that young gays wanted to march on Washington. "Pointless," one seasoned gay activist told me. "If Cleve and David Mixner have really inspired so many kids to work on our behalf — finally, by the way, because I think these kids spent the early part of this decade playing Nintendo or something — why don't they tell them to go to Maine or Washington this weekend?" This activist was referring to the momentous votes coming up in Maine and Washington state that will determine how gay couples in those states can define their relationships.