American activist and writer Cleve Jones was BOTD in 1954. Born in West Lafayette Indiana and raised in Arizona, he fled to San Francisco at 19, working briefly as a rent boy before befriending gay politician Harvey Milk. He studied political science while interning for Milk and working on his political campaigns. Following Milk’s assassination in 1979, Jones became a mainstay of political activism in San Francisco. Recognising the impending threat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1982. After being diagnosed HIV+, he participated in early drug trials and was heavily involved in activism for effective AIDS treatment and testing, chronicled in Randy Shilts‘ book And the Band Played On. He is best known as the creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, making the first quilt panel in 1987 in honour of his friend Marvin Feldman. With affiliate projects adopted worldwide, the Quilt Project is now the world’s largest community arts programme, and was nominated for the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. Jones was played by Emil Hirsch in the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk. His 2016 memoir When We Rise: My Life in the Movement formed the basis for a 2017 TV series, written and produced by Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and starring Guy Pearce. He also made a cameo appearance as himself in Andrew Haigh‘s 2016 TV film Looking. He currently works for hospitality workers’ union UNITE. In 2022, he and his partner Brenden Chadwick made headlines fighting eviction from their Castro apartment, following exponential rent increases in the area.