- (uplifting music) - (uplifting music) - Hi, my name is Charlie Beal, I'm President of the Gilbert Baker Foundation.

Gilbert Baker created the LGBTQ+ Rainbow flag in San Francisco in 1978.

He was a good friend of mine.

He changed the world with this symbol he created, and sadly, he passed away in 2017.

And after that some friends and I decided we really needed to work to keep his legacy going.

So we created a sort of an advisory board for his family, which eventually turned into the Gilbert Baker Foundation.

And one of the things we do at the foundation is we do exhibits.

And right now we're doing the "Flag in the Map" exhibit, which has been done in 10 cities before being done here at the amazing Napa College.

And Gilbert was a good friend.

And this is a great, just, photo of him sewing his last flag he ever sewed, the nine color diversity flag.

He added a ninth color for diversity.

And this project is also a collaboration that we did with a group called ReportOUT in the United Kingdom.

And the ReportOUT does exactly what the name says.

They report on the conditions of sexual and gender minorities in the 73 countries where it's illegal to wave a rainbow flag where you can't come out of the closet, where any expression of homosexuality or gender diversity is really frowned upon.

So we gathered our resources and we created this wonderful exhibit, Flag in the Map.

And it's a very simple exhibit.

We put out submissions all around the globe to Pride groups and we asked that people would send us a flag.

So we created Flag in the Map, and it's a very simple idea, really.

We solicited stories and photographs from groups around the world and asked them, send us a picture of a rainbow flag that means something to you.

And answer two simple questions.

What does this picture mean and what does the flag mean to you?

And this first collection here is, we call it places and because it really does show, you know, just the flag meaningfully being shown in countries like Zimbabwe or here in West Palm Beach, the first city in the United States to fly the rainbow flag 365 days of the year, or Danny Nicoletta's photo here from Grants Pass, Oregon.

That rainbow flag has been torn down by homophobes five times and this church keeps putting it back up.

I think that is such a great story.

And one of my favorites is here, Jeff Tiller.

Jeff Tiller was a communications officer for the Obamas.

And he had the idea to light up the White House the night that the Supreme Court decided the gay marriage decision.

And they decided they were going to light it up, whether there was a decision for marriage or against.

And Jeff tells a great story, I think about this, where for a couple weeks beforehand to make sure that it worked right, they would go out one night and they would test the yellow, or the next night they would test the purple 'cause they didn't want to tip their hand about this great symbolic lighting that was going to happen.

And then I think about the day before they were going to do it, it rained, it shorted out a bunch of the lights.

So, you know, thank God they did get everything fixed.

And it's very important when they did this, I'm just going to read a little bit here.

He says, "The White House is the most powerful symbol of freedom and democracy in the world.

And on that day, it was illuminated by the joyous colors of Gilbert Baker's Pride Flag."

The symbolism of this is immense because that night they lit up Niagara Falls and then the Eiffel Tower and then the Sydney Opera House and, you know, and just around the world these colors, you know, became ubiquitous.

This is another great chapter here.

It's called activism and it really is what it sounds like.

These ah,incredible individuals have used the rainbow flag to move legislation, to move governments.

I love this story from the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Moses Mbariza who is a friend now.

In 2018, he and 50 people at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp in the world with 200,000 people, 50 brave people, decided to have their first pride march in a refugee camp.

And they got about three quarters of a mile and they were put upon, some of them were beaten, their flags were stolen and burned.

And Moses has gone on to create Freedom House to try to get people out of the camp so they're safe.

And he's helped, you know, almost 300 people be relocated to countries where they will be safe.

It's a real story of bravery that is still ongoing and we still support him in many ways.

Ron Berkeley's here with the Beautiful More Colors flag created by Amber Hikes.

She's a friend of ours from Philly.

She took the rainbow flag and added a black and brown stripe to show the intersectionality of, you know, people of color and queer people.

And Rob is a great activist in London and it's a great story he tells there.

Tania Stevens, I love Tania in the United Kingdom.

She's out there with this beautiful silk trans flag.

It's just gorgeous.

Trans Flag was created by Monica Helms in 1999.

Monica's a friend of ours, she's actually on our board of directors.

And so we knew we had to include her flag in this exhibit.

This has got to be one of the greatest photos in our collection.

I'm so proud that we have this.

This is from the Ukraine in 2020, this statue of here, it's called, it's an old Russian era statue called "The Mother of the Country."

And the people of Ukraine, they hate this statue 'cause it represents Putin and Russia and everything oppressive to them.

So what the gay activists did is they got this company called Dronarium and two drones, and they took one drone, had a rainbow flag on a string with a weight at the bottom, and the other drone filmed the first drone.

So this what looks like she's holding up a flag on her sword that's not photoshopped, that is a real photo that they did to protest Russian's oppression in Ukraine.

And this is before the war.

So I'm really proud of this.

I'm really proud of the people in Ukraine.

And the last place we did this exhibit, by the way, was in Malta.

And while we were there, we were able to give a signed Gilbert Baker flag to the contingent from the Ukraine to take back to the Ukraine.

So it's a very special story for us.

And here's Kristine from EuroPride in her own home country of Latvia.

And Igor here is a great activist down in Albuquerque who has managed to get this huge steps here painted in rainbow colors, you know, so that again, it's a big public display of the rainbow flag, you know, which is a symbol of visibility.

So if you can't be visible, you can't be out of the closet as we like to say.

So here, we have the next part of the exhibit, and I like that they've actually included some of the other flags from our community.

This is Gwen's lesbian flag, she's an activist down in Australia, created this flag about six years ago, and of course, Gilbert's iconic six color flag.

Michael Page's bi-flag, which he created in 1998.

And then Monica Helms and Michael were talking one day and Michael said, you should create a trans flag, which she did created in 1999.

And Monica's flag is now in this Smithsonian Institution.

And the story of how Gilbert created his flag in '78, I'll tell you very briefly.

There was a big discussion back then about our community needing a symbol to unify us because at that point, there were the intertwined gender symbols and they were using the Greek Lambda and the pink triangle, but the pink triangle was something put on queer people by the Nazis and it was a real downer.

And a person named Harvey Milk, who was a politician in San Francisco, went to an artist named Gilbert Baker and said, we need a new symbol, we need a hopeful symbol.

And Gilbert made two important decisions.

The first decision he said was, what we need is a flag.

And during the 1976 Bicentennial, Gilbert had noticed that the American flag was everywhere.

And he noticed these flags have power, you know, flags are important.

And the second thing he did was, he was out dancing one night with his friend Cleve Jones.

And he was out and he noticed the whole diversity of the crowd at this San Francisco nightclub, old, young, Black, white, you know, Latino, male, female and everything in between.

And he really, what he saw was the rainbow of humanity.

And that was it.

He had that epiphany, and now we have the rainbow flag.

This next section of the exhibit is called "Families and Friends."

And I like this section because it really does talk about our, you know, the families we're born into and the families that we choose as well.

You know, Grace here, she's in Kenya, I love this.

She's like, I'm proud to be openly out.

I'm a woman who loves a fellow woman.

And this is a great story about Adam Kelly at the United Kingdom and really, his story about struggling with his family just to be out of the closet because sometimes the struggle is as hard for the person as it is for the family.

And I think that story tells it.

From Sweden to Germany, to this great photo in the New York Pride March, where this flag is just floating over the crowd.

Again, here in the Channel Islands in the United Kingdom.

And I love this one from Germany.

The photo just speaks volumes by itself.

And Malta pride and this, we put in our exhibit long before we ever went to Malta.

We just went to Malta for EuroPride and did this exhibit.

But this is a great story about this very old, traditional, traditional country, the smallest country in Europe, these three little islands in the middle of the Mediterranean.

And yet, they have the most liberal LGBTQ laws in all of Europe.

So that just shows that even the most traditional countries, you know, if they have the right governments and and the right kind of accepting people that you know, change can happen.

So that's our Flag in the Map exhibit.

I'll end with this beautiful essay called "A Beacon of Hope" by Thushara Chandrasiri.

He's with ReportOUT.

And a photo of Gilbert Baker right here raising the original rainbow flag, June 25th, 1978.

- Well, good evening everybody, my name's Greg Miraglia, I'm the LGBT Education Program Coordinator here at Napa Valley College.

And I am very happy that you took time out of your Friday night to come down and listen to our program.

We have two amazing, I'm going to call them icons of LGBT history here with us tonight.

So this is a rare opportunity to see them together.

But before we begin, I'd like to have our Vice President of Academic Affairs and Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Priscilla Mora, come forward and give you a welcome.

Dr. Mora.

(attendees applauding) - It's my pleasure to welcome you all here tonight for this important event.

As I was walking through the exhibit, I noticed a number of really powerful words, one of them being maps tell stories.

And I saw the theme of love throughout and what also struck me was the importance of recognizing the full identities and the authentic selves of all people.

So it is our great pleasure for Napa Valley College to welcome our speakers tonight and welcome to all of you.

Thank you.

(attendees applauding) - There are a number of people that I want to thank, but I want to begin with our media sponsor tonight, Northern California Public Media and welcome to the stage the president, Darren LaShelle.

(attendees applauding) - Thank you, Greg.

Greg Also let me borrow his reading glasses for tonight because I forgot mine, so thank you for that.

Hi, I am Darren LaShelle, President of Northern California Public Media and we are very pleased to be a part of this historic event.

And I want to thank Greg Miraglia and Napa Valley College for inviting us here and for putting together this exhibit and tonight's event.

And I hope that you've had a great chance to walk through the exhibits outside showing the evolution, the remarkable history, and the worldwide appearances of the now iconic pride rainbow flag.

The stories this flag can tell are the reason for this event because in its travels in 40 countries from Kenya to China, Ukraine, Brazil, Russia, and the Middle East, it has been held aloft by freedom fighters, human rights advocates, hate crime fighters, and waved in pride and protest.

And we are so proud to be a part of this tonight.

You know, we're proud to know both of these amazing humans that you're going to meet tonight and hear from.

Gilbert Baker, of course, had participated in the flags creation and Charlie Beal has documented his work in an amazing book in this amazing exhibit.

And of course, Cleve Jones here tonight who went on to create the NAMES project, the AIDS Memorial Quilt and co-found the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in his long career for LGBTQ+ rights.

So we're very proud to be a part of this event tonight.

And speaking of amazing humans, one of my favorite humans is Greg Miraglia here tonight, who put all of this together.

(attendees applauding) And he will be back in just a moment to get the show going tonight as well as being with Napa Valley College, Greg is also the longtime host of Outbeat Radio News on NorCal Public Media's, KRCB Sonoma County Public Radio.

We are lucky to have him as part of our family and I'm glad that he invited us here tonight to be part of his.

So thank you, Greg.

(attendees applauding) - Thank you, Darren.

Tonight's program's really both about history and also a discussion of current day events.

It's a story about how a flag gained international power and how it's become a threat to many, including right here in our own state of California.

If you're not aware, there was a straight ally shop owner in San Bernardino County who was murdered, shot because she was flying the rainbow flag in front of her store just this year.

So our two speakers have been really a part of this history of this flag and I'm excited for them to share their experience with it and the parts that they've had in its creation.

Charlie Beal is a lifelong social activist who attended his first civil rights demonstration in Lansing, Michigan back in 1962.

He's also an award-winning art director for film and television, working with renowned directors including Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, Ridley Scott, and Gus Van Sant.

His film credits include "First Wives Club," "In and Out," "Milk," and his TV credits include "Boardwalk Empire," "Smash," "Gotham," and "Power."

Charlie was also a very close friend of Gilbert Baker, the creator of the Rainbow Pride Flag.

Since Baker's passing in 2017, Charlie has helped carry on Baker's legacy through the Gilbert Baker Foundation.

And that work has included producing several short documentaries as well as numerous exhibits like the one you've seen.

And this one is, has traveled internationally.

We're very lucky to have it here in Napa.

Charlie flew out here for tonight from New York to share his story with all of us, so I'm very grateful for him for that.

And then Cleve Jones, he is an American Human Rights Activist, an Author and a Lecturer.

Jones joined the Gay Rights Movement in the early 1970s and he was mentored by Pioneer LGBT Activist, Harvey Milk.

He worked for Milk in City Hall as a student intern until Milk's assassination back in 1978.

Cleve co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and founded the NAMES project, the AIDS Quilt, as you might know it, one of the world's largest community art projects in 1987.

Cleve was portrayed by Emil Hirsch in Gus Van Sant's, Oscar winning film "Milk," which 15 years ago, I believe is the anniversary of that this weekend.

He led the 2009 National March in Equality in Washington DC and has served in an advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which helped overturn or at least get the Proposition 8, the marriage equality bill in California, blocked by a federal court order.

Cleve lives in Sonoma County and he is definitely a personal hero of mine.

I think both of these men inspire me every day to do the work that I do.

So please join me in welcoming Charlie Beal and Mr. Cleve Jones.

(attendees applauding) - Hello, I'm Charlie, this is Cleve and I'm here to going to give you a little history lesson to begin with and then we're going to talk about history and about the rainbow flag.

Cleve was there when it was created, but first, we're going to talk about what led up to that.

But the first time really the flag showed up that I know of through knowing certain vexillologists and flag experts was the Bund Shuh Movement in Germany in the 1700s.

And interestingly enough, Thomas Payne wanted to put rainbow flags on American navy ships and international waters as a sign of neutrality.

And in the '20s, the cooperative movement used the rainbow, the '20s Meher Baba movement used the rainbow.

And then there was a movement in the 1950s to make the rainbow flag the world flag, but none of those caught on until you get to the '70s and you got these people, this White Panther movement became the Rainbow Gathering movement.

And it's a lot of hippies out in the woods doing drugs basically, but they love their rainbows.

And that led to this moment in San Francisco in the late '70s when I think Cleve got involved in the story when there was this desire within the queer community for a new symbol.

Because up to then there had been the pink triangle, which was kind of a downer.

It was put on us by the Nazis and there was the intertwined gender symbols and the Greek Lambda, but they were all very obscure or just not the great symbol of hope that people like Harvey Milk and Artie Bresson and Hank Wilson, you know, wanted for our community.

So you know, they went to Gilbert and they said, you're an artist, you're a drag queen, you know how to sew, we should come up with a new symbol.

And here was Gilbert, he lived with this woman named Lynn Segerblom, aka Rainbow Fairie Argyle.

And he was making costumes for rainbow the mime.

And like I said, these were the symbols from, that were being used before that.

When Gilbert was sort of tasked with coming up with a new symbol, the first thing he did is he decided it should be a flag.

To me, it's as important as the rainbow part because, you know, flags have power.

And he had just gone through the Bicentennial 1976 and up until then he said he had, you know, poo-pooed the American flag as being a kind of an empty symbol of patriotism.

But you know, he decided that that should be a flag, should be our new symbol.

And in his memoir, he writes about being out dancing one night with Cleve, Cleve doesn't remember it, (chuckles) and looked at the very diverse crowd that was out in the San Francisco nightclub.

And he said he saw the rainbow of humanity and an idea was born, you know?

How did Gilbert get to this point?

He was grew up in a very conservative family in Kansas.

He joined the Army, not a wise idea, he was gay bashed terribly in the army.

And something actually I think mentioned in Randy Schultz's book.

And, but he happened to meet a nice lieutenant who said, "Listen, you're really in trouble here.

Why don't you become a medic?"

So he said, "Okay, I'll become a nurse."

And where did they station him but San Francisco.

And you know, he took off his army uniform and put on a dress basically and joined the movement.

He learned to sew.

He was designing glossy gold lamé jeans, Gilbert jeans.

And he got involved with Cleve Jones in the early...

This is the 1977 Gay pride parade where Gilbert worked on the decorations for this parade.

Some really iconic symbols.

And Cleve, that was like one of the first big parades, was it not?

It's '77.

- It was definitely one of the largest 'cause there'd been a real movement against us, started by this woman named Anita Bryant down in Dade County.

Yes, please hiss.

And, but I have to just add a little bit to something you said earlier.

It's not like Gilbert was told you have to create a symbol.

There was a conversation that had been going on, as you correctly described it.

You know, the pink triangle came to us from the Nazi death camps.

Later on, Act Up would change it by turning it upside down and make it a symbol of defiance and resistance.

But at the time, that was one symbol.

The other symbol was the Greek letter L, the Lambda, which just seems so like weird and obscure.

And I'm sure Charlie has also looked at so many explanations of how this Greek letter L became a symbol of this movement.

And each explanation I've read leaves me more confused.

The Lambda still is around, there's the Lambda Literary Award, which my book won, shameless plug, there'll be more.

And they attach a white one to the rainbow flag in the city of West Hollywood.

- [Charlie] West Hollywood, that's right.

- So there was this ongoing conversation about the need for a symbol, but also Gilbert and I had kind of started to, with our younger friends, take over what is now the pride.

It was called Gay Freedom Day then, which had had started out, the parades had started out really as a way to get more people in the bars, frankly, they were run by the bar owners and it was almost all older white guys.

And so Gilbert and I were part of like an insurgency that was trying to make it more diverse, younger and more political because there were these huge fights coming up.

And we got in the budget, how much was it 10,000?

A thousand dollars.

- A thousand dollars.

It went a lot further then.

So we had this small budget and Gilbert was in charge of decorating San Francisco Civic Center Plaza for Pride.

And he started doing these drawings at which I got to see, and I write about it in my book.

And, but honestly, it wasn't until the flags went up that any of us saw like, oh, that's what it is, you know?

- Right, yeah.

You know, they were a bunch of hippies and Cleve was there helping him dye this thousand yards of cotton fabric and these big vats of dye and ironing and sewing.

And there were, I think like 30 volunteers.

Here's some of them that...

There's Cleve with the glasses, Ken Jones up in the corner, there's Fairie Argyle, and James McNamara, I'm blanking on some other names here, but we'll get to those later, sorry.

But there were a lot of volunteers, there were a lot of people involved in making these two huge 30 foot by 60 foot flags.

I would say that Gilbert was, you know, he knew that the size and the scale was going to make an impression.

And I think that's something he was good at and would do over and over again with really large flag projects.

So on June 25th, 1978, these flags went up in the air.

And I think as Cleve said, they took on a life of their own.

You know, one thing Gilbert said about flags is you can't design a true flag.

It has to be torn from the soul of the people.

And I think once those flags went up, it was the people around them that made it the queer flag.

You know, because they saw it and they loved it and they felt, they saw it as a symbol for them.

Nowadays, you go on Photoshop, you just throw some colors together and you put it on, you know, Instagram and TikTok and it goes around the world.

But back then, it wasn't that easy.

But I think at some point, Gilbert and Cleve decided that even San Francisco was too small a stage, I guess, I would say.

And Cleve actually encouraged Gilbert to do a mile-long rainbow flag for New York City.

- [Cleve] And found the money.

- Yeah, and so he got a company called Stadtlanders to supply money to make a mile-long rainbow flag for Stonewall 25 in New York, which was a big accomplishment.

They got this workspace, by the way, when I came into the picture, I was not in San Francisco, I didn't know Gilbert until then.

I knew some friends of his from even as far back as the '80s.

But I met Gilbert when he came to New York.

He was looking for a space to build this mile-long flag.

And I saw his sketches and I said, I want to work with you.

I'm an art director, I like big productions.

And I thought, this is cool.

- You know, I think from this photograph that within a couple hours after that, he tried to kill me.

(attendees laughing) We had a huge fight.

- You could read about it in Gilbert's memoir.

- You can tell on this face.

(attendees laughing) - But think about it this way, Gilbert was not the easiest person to work with.

- [Cleve] Gilbert was impossible.

- He was a diva.

- Gilbert was impossible, he was so dramatic.

And he would just sort of present his buttons to the world and invite everyone to push them.

And people did it like mad.

But he also, there were times when he was just heroic.

Like when those runaway truck, do you remember this story?

I'll probably have the detail, but I think it was a FedEx truck.

Something happened with the driver and the truck is going downhill and the driver can't extricate himself to put on the brakes.

And Gilbert jumped up from his cafe and ran alongside the truck and jumped in and rescued it.

And he was a total queen, but he also was incredibly strong.

And I think he and I learned, I mean, we learned from each other and we fought constantly, but we stayed friends for over 40 years.

The origin story though, I think also, I get so annoyed when people say that Stonewall happened because the gays were upset that Judy Garland had died.

But that's not true.

But what is true is that that song, you know, definitely became some sort of anthem in our community, and I think that that was in his brain.

Gilbert in later years came up with all sorts of, you know, like what the colors mean and the rest of that, but that came a little bit later.

So there was sort of origin stories that came a bit after the fact.

But definitely that song "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," that was an important song for all of us.

- He was from Kansas.

- And he was from Kansas.

- So thanks to Cleve's sponsorship, they got the materials and the space to build this mile-long rainbow flag.

And I think it took three weeks to fold it up into a red ribbon, which was a symbolic nod to the AIDS Red Ribbon.

And Gilbert himself was getting in trouble with the sponsors because he was very principled and he was sewing in a dress and they were telling him, "We don't really think you sewing in a dress is a good idea."

And you know, Gilbert was very gender fluid that way.

And back then, people didn't understand it as well as they do now.

But you know, he stuck to it.

He got the flag and we got it out there and it got unfurled up First Avenue.

It was a big fight to do it, I got to tell you, this whole thing was permitted by Mayor David Dinkins, who was a good guy and a friend to our community, but unfortunately, in the middle of this process, he lost an election to a guy named Rudy Giuliani.

And Giuliani immediately revoked our permit for Fifth Avenue because his friend John Cardinal O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral for years was trying to get rid of the parade going.

And he didn't want that rainbow flag going in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

And he thought with Giuliani, he is going to finally get his wish.

And first they wanted this flag to go over on the FDR Drive.

I'm not joking.

We unfolded it up First Avenue, and to spite the Mayor, Gilbert gets up to, we get it unfurled and this guy, Mick Hicks, who's a friend, was up, he's a photographer, was up in a helicopter shooting this.

And as soon as we got the word that it had been unfurled, we got the world record and all that kind of thing for the biggest flag in the world, Gilbert, in his silver gown, took out some scissors and you can see him here, he starts cutting the flag into pieces because at the same time that this was happening, Act Up had a second illegal march to protest Giuliani, they had about 10,000 people marching up Fifth Avenue.

So we took about 10 sections of this flag and we put 'em into backpacks and evading the police.

I had one of them myself, I mean, we had to evade the police.

They tried to stop us from going to Fifth Avenue and we went over to Fifth Avenue and we reassembled that flag on Fifth Avenue and we bravely marched it, sorry, in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral as a big (attendees applauding) protest.

And we took those pieces into Central Park.

And this is where it gets really interesting, because I think, you know, with Cleve's help, Gilbert had made the rainbow flag, you know, the gay flag in the United States.

But this plan not only was to, you know, kind of get back at the mayor, but then we took these 10 pieces and they were given to people from contingents all around the world because the gay games were in New York and there was a human rights conference and it was this big global, you know, pride celebration.

So the very next year, you see in London and Brazil, and you know, Spain and China, and all sorts of cities, you started seeing these giant flags and what was a national symbol became an international symbol.

So I thought it was a brilliant strategy and it really blew it up bigger than it ever had been.

In the year 2000, I went with Gilbert to Rome to the first world pride, where again, battling the Catholic church who impounded all of his artwork for his exhibit in the airport.

We had to raise money to get that art out, you know?

And he went on to do, you know, a lot of other pride marches.

But I always like to talk about the fact that, you know, Gilbert was always also looking out for all members of our community.

I think, you know, heard this great story about, the Castro Theater wanted to do a showing of "Gone With the Wind," and they thought it would be interesting to put some confederate flags up.

And Gilbert and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence got out there and protested till they took 'em down.

So, you know, he was really fighting for all members of our community because, you know, he would say over and over again in every interview that the rainbow flag is for all sexualities, all genders, all races, all ages.

The rainbow of humanity, the rainbow of humanity.

That was his concept from the beginning.

Here you can see, are you in this one Cleve?

- [Cleve] I think (faintly speaking).

- This is the Key West Sea to Sea flag where he broke his New York record in 2003 for the 25th anniversary.

It went from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.

And you know, he would go on to do these big projects that's Ireland, Toronto, all around the world.

So we heard about a year ago that people were banning the rainbow flag, banning the flag in these small towns and school districts.

And at that time there was about 10 of these bans.

So we got in touch with the ACLU, thank you.

And with their help, we formed an initiative called "Save the Rainbow Flag."

And we're fighting back, we are working with local activists and believe it or not, we've had victories in California, New Jersey and Maryland, and in Florida working with some activists down there.

We actually turned back a ban in Florida.

We beat DeSantis, thank you.

So, you know, that's what our foundation does.

You know, we just try to carry on Gilbert's work, whether it's through the art, which of our exhibitions trying to celebrate his art or through activism, fighting back against people who are trying to erase our community.

That's what we're doing.

And now, I'm going to turn it over to you guys to see if you have any questions.

- I have a question, I lived through all this time too, as a straight white guy.

So I have a question.

When you were young and this was all going on, did you worry about money and were you scared, Cleve?

I mean, 'cause people are scared, right?

Were you scared?

- Well, I've always been...

I've always been scared.

I mean, I was abused and badly treated and beaten and stabbed, and I don't know what this money is that you speak of, I never had any.

(attendees laughing) But you know, it was so different then.

And I think this is one thing that the younger generation will never be able to understand.

It's no fault of their own.

Part of it is that young people today have no clue what it means to be criminalized.

And thank God you don't, you know?

'Cause that's a really horrible thing when you're a little kid to know that because of your desires, because of your sexual desires and your desire for love, you are a criminal.

And that there are police departments that have sections that their whole job is to find you and entrap you and arrest you and imprison you.

I couldn't tell my parents until I turned 18 because they would've had me subjected to electroconvulsive shock treatment.

So I hid in the closet until I was 18 and they didn't have the legal power to do that.

I think all of us in that time grew up with a great deal of fear and there's still a great deal of fear and it's one of those few things that unites us because we know that all of us could be attacked at any time and murdered.

It's always been a part of my life.

But then there was also a great joyousness to it, and this is the other thing that can't ever be known by the younger generations, is what it's like to be part of something that's truly brand new.

And that was just so cool, you know?

I read about San Francisco and Life Magazine, I decided I wasn't going to kill myself after all.

I was going to get the hell out of Phoenix and I, you know, to be there.

And every week you could see that there were more and more of us, and just the explosion of cultural vitality, the flag is just one of many amazing things that burst out of the community during that time.

And we were all basically refugees, even the ones that had been born and raised in San Francisco.

(chuckles) Yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, but.

Did somebody else have something over here?

- I just wanted to know, was there ever a time, and this has happened to me twice now.

Sunday morning, the morning we all woke up and heard the terrible news of the Pulse Nightclub tragedy.

I went to the Castro, I was drawn to the flag, and I actually stood there for a few minutes and started recording the flag while it was flying.

And kind of just like left myself for a moment and just like put myself inside the flag and got a deeper meaning of what that flag meant that morning.

Then on another occasion when the flag arrived at the museum, the one that we have now in the class, I was taking a lot of pictures of it, moving from different points and looking at it, and again, I found myself like stopping and just like shutting down and just like getting into the flag.

Like the flag had a deeper meaning.

Was there ever a time for you Cleve, or for you Charlie, when the flag kind of like overtook you and you saw a deeper meaning in what Gilbert was doing?

- I'll say, I definitely.

I consider myself at this point an amateur vexillologist.

I mentioned use that term earlier, these people who study flags.

Gilbert was a vexillographer, people who create flags and design them.

And I've, you know, especially since Gilbert's death sort of dug into that whole world of them.

I have come to believe that flags are imbued with a spiritual power that is frankly supernatural.

And the reason is that people put so much passion into these pieces of cloth.

I could take this shirt off and go out front of this building and burn it and people would walk by and they wouldn't blink.

But if I went into Red Square and even pulled out a rainbow flag, if I burned a rainbow flag at Harvey Milk Plaza, do you understand what I'm saying?

There is power in these pieces of fabric.

People march into war and die under them.

And I think that there is, you know, it's the force.

You know what I mean?

There is something about them.

And the reason I know that is because I have had people come up to me and say, "Do you know, I want to tell you about the rainbow flag."

And I mean, with fire in their eyes, passionately tell me things that are completely wrong, but it doesn't matter.

And I'll just sit there and go, "Yeah, wow.

Yeah, I didn't know that," you know?

Because I see that power.

And yes, the truth is I do, I have had that same experience, but I think that's because there is some deep power there and it's the power that is put into them.

I think Cleve said it best when he said, wow, they were making decorations for a parade and they ran 'em up the flag pole and then boom, it is all those thousands, thousands of people that were there that day that created the rainbow flag, our queer flag.

- Crazy to be talking to you guys.

Like you guys knew the... You guys are like there at like the beginning and everything.

And as like, you know, a kind of like a new generation gay person, it feels like really powerful to be sitting here being able to ask you guys questions, just wanted to preface with that.

But I was wondering what you guys think about like how the queer community has evolved?

- When I look at all the proliferation of flags, Gilbert himself created many varieties of the rainbow flag.

He had different flags for different states, but he kind of sowed the seeds for his own uh, problem when he began to say that the stripes represented certain things and then it strayed into the stripes representing people.

With Philadelphia when they attach the black and brown as a statement against racism, I honestly think a lot of people won't be satisfied until there's a rainbow flag that has their name on one of the stripes.

And I think that speaks to sort of a little bit where we're at with the movement right now, which is a huge amount of focus, which to me frankly at times feels very self-absorbed about our personal identities.

And I understand that this is important, especially for young people that are just trying to figure out, you know, who they are in this crazy world right now.

I would like to see more conversation about intersectionality of issues.

I feel a lot of grief right now.

You know, my book came out right after Trump got elected, and so between the book tours and the protests, I was invited to a lot of campuses and a lot of street protests.

And I always said uh, the same thing that, you know, those of us here with silver hair, you know, we're not going to live long enough to see the damage of that election undone.

And you who are young, I fear are going to have to work the rest of your lives to try to undo that damage.

And it may not be possible.

I feel that we're in a really, really dangerous place right now.

I know we are, you know, we are, we know what's happening.

So that's when I find myself really missing Gilbert a lot.

And my god, we had so many epic fights, but you know, we always made up and anytime something happened, you know, (mumbles) can you believe it?

I miss that a lot.

- Hi, I'd also like to thank you for the work that you're doing and I've been trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to ask this question, but Cleve, I've heard you speak before when you interviewed Gilbert about the flag for the GLBT Historical Society.

And I remember something that was said about the corporatization of the flag and how he had in some ways engineered that because in order to get it produced, it had to be sort of corporatized.

And so what do you think about the way that so many different corporations will have this sort of, you know, June pride thing going on and do all of this rainbow washing, but then not actually like, say the word pride or talk about LGBT people in their lives.

And like, what do you think about the sort of line that as a group we have to walk in order to get ourselves noticed so that we can participate in society, but then have to deal with groups that want to make money off of us, but not actually interact with us.

Does that make sense?

- Oh, yeah.

I mean, this is a complicated problem and one aspect of it is that because the people now call it LGBTQ+, most of us grow up believing that we have no value.

And so we perhaps overly value allyship.

And knew I refer to yourself as an ally so this is not about any specific wonderful human being who's doing the right thing, but I'm not looking for allies, I'm looking for comrades.

I'm looking for people that are shoulder to shoulder with me because we share the same values.

Just this last week, the National Organization of LGBTQ lawyers held a meeting in Seattle and gave their top honor to a woman, a lesbian woman who is the general counsel of Starbucks.

Starbucks is engaged in one of the most brutal anti-union campaigns in the country.

So Gilbert made the choice to give his symbol to the world.

And of course, capitalism is going to take the symbol and make money off of it.

And then you have another little wrinkle to it, which are the people that put on the pride, what we're now called pride celebrations.

And I'm by the way, part of a little hardy group of volunteers in Guerneville and we want you to all come and see us on next Sunday, October 15th, we're reviving Guerneville Pride and the corporate issue came up right away, which is kind of silly because there's not many corporations that are going to invest in Guerneville, but we did get a big pharmaceutical company to give us a nice little chunk of change and we balanced that with a bunch of labor unions.

But if you're organizing, say San Francisco's Pride celebration, on the one hand you've got people that want Beyonce and the stage and the sound to go with her and insurance costs have skyrocketed.

And then on the other hand, you have the people that want to defund the police and have no corporate logos in the parade.

And so the folks, people get caught in the middle.

To me, the solution is to look at your ideology and to understand these connections.

I am not interested in an LGBTQ movement that stands alone.

If this is just about us then it's a shallow little movement.

And this has been, I think for me, a fairly disheartening reality is that when I was young, I believed that because we were born into every color of skin and every faith, background and because we are everywhere, that maybe we had a special and unique role that we could assume in the global struggle for peace and justice, that we could be the bridge-builders.

I think that was naive and we're going to really have to be on guard right now that about our... Magnus Hirschfeld back in 18 whenever wrote about it.

He said, "organizing homosexuals is almost impossible because they have no sense of solidarity."

So whenever I hear these things raised up, whether it's about which variety of the flag you want or the corporatization, or the rest of it, I just think get down to what are your actual values here?

FDR and Stalin were briefly allies.

Good thing, you know?

Stopped Hitler.

And I will accept, I will march gladly with anybody to take on what's coming down, but it's got to be based on values, not our identities.

And I'm rambling a bit here and I apologize, but it's an important question you've raised and it kind of sets me off in a bunch of different directions all at once.

- The only thing I'll add to that is just... First of all, I mean, Gilbert used to just kind of shrug when he walked down Commercial Street in Provincetown and you'd see all the rainbow coffee cups in shops 'cause you'd just be like, oh my God, what did I unleash?

But as far as the corporations, yeah, I mean, he was aware that corporations did a big part in spreading this symbol and spreading it as a symbol of visibility.

This is really important and this is why I tell people the rainbow flag is different than any other flag in the world because we're people that are born in a dark closet and we need to come out of the darkness into the sunshine to find our authentic true selves.

And the rainbow flag is a beacon, it's a beacon of hope.

It needs to be out and visible, to be meaningful and to work, to do that job, to get people to, you know?

I've heard so many stories, especially even these stories from kids in the Middle East and stuff when I was in Malta about, you know, it's because they saw a rainbow flag in a coffee shop or on a bumper sticker, they got brave, you know?

So it's a unique symbol that way, so in a weird way where corporations to spread this symbol around and make it visible, works in our favor a lot.

President Erdogan of Turkey walked into the United Nations, I think just last week and went livid and ballistic because they had put what he thought where he saw rainbow colors up in the assembly.

And it wasn't, they had some various colored curtains up for what was it, global environmental or something.

But, you know, so for some people they get triggered into like violent hate by seeing it.

But the visibility is really important.

So we can't ever, you know, we have to be grateful for the people who will fly it.

On the other hand, you know, when Budweiser was putting out their rainbow bottle two years ago and we found out they were donating to anti-trans politicians, Stacey Lentz called me up, she's the owner of Stonewall Inn, and we had a big event and we were sitting there pouring Budweiser into the gutter, you know, in a whole bank of cameras across the street doing an action.

So yeah, we as a foundation try to take care of that symbol and we're very quick to call out people who will wave the flag with one hand and donate money to our enemies with the other.

And as far as the corporatization of pride, (sighs) it's capitalism and it's ridiculous to have, you know, a parade that has all these corporations in New York, if you're a corporation, you can pay to have a big contingent at the front of the parade, all in your T-Mobile T-shirts, and then all the activists are at the back of a 12-hour parade, you know, and they can't pay to be up in the front.

- I mean, you know, clearly it's a good thing when employers of thousands of people have a policy that says it's okay to be queer.

- Yes.

- This is a good thing.

But I'll tell you this corporate DEI, this diversity, equity and inclusion, every giant corporation now has a vice president for DEI and people get to be their authentic selves and show their spouse's photos at the office while they pillage and destroy the planet.

(chuckles) So it's just progress, you know?

(attendees laughing) And I hate to end this on such a sarcastic note.

I want to thank you all for showing up.

And I want to say one more quick thing as we approach this coming election year in which the future of our democracy is at stake, to please consider what you're going to do to be part of that.

And I'm not here to tell you what to do, but you must do something.

And I'm quite confident that each and every one of you within you has some special, unique gift that you can bring to this struggle that will make a difference and also probably bring you a little bit of joy and connect you with other decent human beings who want nothing more than to share our beautiful planet in peace with justice.

So that's what it's all about for me.

And it must be about that to you to some extent, or you wouldn't have bothered to show up here on a Friday night in Napa.

Thank you very much for showing up.

- Thank you so much.

- [Greg] Charlie Beal and Cleve Jones.

Thank you very, very much and thank you all for being with us tonight.

(attendees applauding) (uplifting music) (bright music)