Location
San Francisco Public Library, Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin St., San Francisco
Admission
Free
The late San Francisco artist and activist Gilbert Baker created the iconic and globally adopted rainbow flag as a symbol of the LGBTQ community in 1978. Baker’s life and work will be explored, illuminated and celebrated in this unique event organized for the release of his posthumous memoir, Rainbow Warrior: My Life in Color (Chicago Review Press, 2019). Cosponsored by the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the program will feature a short film about Baker’s life, selected readings from the memoir and a panel discussion with social justice activists. The evening will begin with a reception.
MODERATOR
Tony Bravo is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle’s Style and Datebook sections who writes about the cultural impact of fashion and LGBTQ lifestyle issues. Bravo has covered stories about San Francisco’s queer present and past that include subjects like marriage equality, femme lesbian community building, queer aesthetics, the gender binary, the drag community and the ongoing deracination of queer spaces in 2019.
PANELISTS
Terry Beswick is the executive director of the GLBT Historical Society. He has worked as a journalist, activist, fundraiser and policymaker with AIDS and LGBT-related nonprofit and governmental organizations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., including Project Inform, the Castro Country Club, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the White House Office of National HIV/AIDS Policy, the DHHS National AIDS Program Office, and the Bay Area Reporter, among others.
Kate Kendell is the Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights who started her advocacy as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. She is a nationally recognized spokesperson for LGBT rights and has appeared in major media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Advocate, NPR, and CNN.
Jeff Sheehy served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing District 8. A member of ACT UP San Francisco, Sheehy went on to serve as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s HIV/AIDS advisor, as well as the communications director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute. He is currently a Governing Board Member at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Cass Brayton is better known as Sister Mary Media. He is a longtime member of the famed Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a political street performance organization dedicated to community service and activism, raising over a million dollars for charities.
Image credit: photo of Gilbert Baker by Mark Maxwell; used with permission.