No Apologies: Remembering the White Night Riots
6 PM Wednesday June 24th at Et al. Books at 2831a Mission St, San Francisco, CA
A conversation on lessons from the riot with a panel of veteran organizers and journalists, hosted by Pinko Magazine and Left in the Bay.
🔥🚓🔥🚓🔥🚓🔥🚓🔥🚓🔥
The murder of Harvey Milk and George Moscone and the infamous lenient sentencing of Dan White in 1979 spurred one of the largest riots in San Francisco history. The enduring image of the White Night Riots is a burning SFPD cruiser, immortalized on a Dead Kennedys album cover and in Dan Mavrides’ stylized “NO APOLOGIES” poster, created to raise money for the legal defense of those arrested. But beyond these vivid icons, this landmark in the legacy of San Francisco queer struggle still isn’t well understood. Radicals, liberals, cops, dykes, leathermen, street kids, sex workers, homophiles and anarchists all fought it out on the streets around City Hall and all found themselves in a different position than they had started in that night. By the morning after the riot, modern San Francisco was born.
This panel will convene veterans of the riot Ruth Mahaney, Gwenn Craig, Charlie Hinton, and Randy Alfred, to discuss their memories and its legacy. Join us on the 24th for a major conversation.
Panelists:
Randy Alfred is widely known for his detailed 1980 probe into the biased and unfair portrayal of San Francisco’s gay community in CBS Reports’ “Gay Power, Gay Politics,” an investigation that resulted in CBS making a rare public apology for its failed coverage.He was twice editor of the S.F Sentinel and co-founded the S.F. Bay Times. Alfred produced and hosted KSAN'spublic-affairs radio show The Gay Life from 1979 to 1984. He was a founding member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and entered its Hall of Fame in 2015.
Gwenn Craig is a longtime political activist, having worked on the 1977 supervisorial campaign of Harvey Milk, San Franciscans Against Proposition 6, the citywide campaign against the 1978 Briggs Initiative. Gwenn also served in
influential roles on the campaigns to elect and re-elect Supervisor Harry Britt,
Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, and several others, especially during her tenure as president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.
Charlie Hinton was a member of Bay Area Gay Liberation from its founding meeting till its last, and was part of the gay magazine collective, Magnus. He has worked on campaigns to Free Leonard Peltier and end World Bank/IMF hegemony over the global economy, and is currently a member of NorCal TPS Coalition, Haiti Action Committee and the Drop LWOP Coalition. He’s written a book and a solo performance, both called Life Wish, and a play, Solitary Man: A Visit to Pelican Bay State Prison. He’s working on a new project called Charlie Kirk Meets Jesus.
Ruth Mahaney is a radical, lesbian leftist heavily involved in the movement for gay rights as well as antiwar and various other leftist causes. She was a member of the Modern Times Bookstore collective and a professor in the LGBTQ Studies department at City College of San Francisco.