Join us for the fourth in our new series of Lavender Talks—produced in partnership with San Francisco Pride, which is celebrating 50 years in 2020.

In this program, we will feature a conversation with two of our Pride 50 awardees—Cleve Jones (Gilbert Baker Pride Founders Award) and Mike Wong (Audrey Joseph LGBTQ Entertainment Award).

Cleve Jones is an American human rights activist, author and lecturer. Jones joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s. He was mentored by pioneering LGBT activist Harvey Milk and worked in Milk’s San Francisco City Hall office as a student intern until Milk’s assassination in 1978. Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and founded The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the world’s largest community arts projects, in 1987. HarperCollins published his first book, Stitching a Revolution, in 2000. He was the historical consultant for the production of Gus Van Sant’s Oscar-winning 2008 film, Milk. Jones led the 2009 National March for Equality in Washington, D.C., and served on the Advisory Board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged California’s Proposition 8 in the U.S. Supreme Court. His memoir, When We Rise, published in November 2016, inspired the 2017 ABC mini-series. Jones works as an organizer for the hospitality workers’ union, UNITE HERE.

Michael J. Wong is the first artistic director of the Marching & Pep Bands for the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band. A third-generation San Franciscan, Mike joined the band in 1998, while he was a teenager studying physics and music at U.C. Berkeley. He has literally grown up in the band, taking on the roles of horn section manager, music librarian, drum major, and volunteer marching director and assistant conductor, before being appointed to the position of artistic director of the Marching & Pep Bands in 2016.