10
New home decor shop
SF sex club closing
ARTS
6
17
"Dear Evan Hansen"
25
Connie Champagne
The
www.ebar.com
Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community
Courtesy UCSF
Vol. 48 • No. 50 • December 13-19, 2018
Frida Kahlo Way unveiled at City College
AIDS 2020 Co-Chair Monica Gandhi
Activists plan alternative to AIDS 2020
by Liz Highleyman
G
lobal HIV advocates plan to hold an alternative meeting in Mexico City to coincide with the International AIDS Conference in July 2020, as organizers of that confab decline to move it out of the Bay Area. The International AIDS Society selected San Francisco and Oakland as joint host cities for AIDS 2020 in an effort to highlight San Francisco’s pioneering role in the response to the epidemic, as well as the ongoing See page 14 >>
by Alex Madison
Q
ueer students at City College of San Francisco will now see themselves represented in the community college’s address. The official unveiling of Frida Kahlo Way was held at the Diego Rivera Theatre on the college’s Ocean Campus December 7.
The internationally renowned bisexual Mexican artist’s name replaced Phelan Avenue, named after James Phelan, a wealthy banker whose son, James Duval Phelan, a former United States senator and San Francisco mayor, was known to be racist and exclusive of immigrants to California. See page 14 >>
City College of San Francisco Chancellor Mark Rocha, left, joined faculty member Leslie Simon; Angelica Campos, vice president of the Associated Students; Supervisor Norman Yee, partially obscured; and City College Trustee Shanell Williams, second from right, for the official unveiling of Frida Kahlo Way December 7. Jane Philomen Cleland
Bay Area gay political trailblazers leave office Worthington seeks new job
Yeager eyes Senate run by Matthew S. Bajko
by Matthew S. Bajko
I
A
n his 1999 book about the first LGBT people elected to public office in the U.S., Ken Yeager noted that being a politician was “an occupation where the words ‘heterosexuals only’ might as well be stamped in big letters.” For the last 34 years Yeager has worked to ensure that wasn’t the case in Santa Clara County, as the gay San Jose resident co-founded the LGBT political group known as BAYMEC, short for Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, in 1984 with an eye toward electing out people to public office in the South Bay and California’s central coast. He would go on to be the first to break through that pink political ceiling 26 years ago by winning a seat on the board that oversaw the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District. Yeager would again make LGBT political history in 2000 by becoming the first known LGBT person elected to the San Jose City Council. And six years later Yeager did it a third time after winning his race for the District 4 seat on
Jo-Lynn Otto
Supervisor Ken Yeager
the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Now, due to term limits, Yeager is returning to civilian life for the first time in nearly three decades. Yeager, who turned 66 Wednesday, December 12, celebrated with community members at a party marking not only his birthday but his anniversary of being sworn in as a supervisor a dozen years ago. His last day in office will be Monday, December 31. See page 12 >>
fter 22 years in elected office, Kriss Worthington is back to being a civilian and looking to rejoin the workforce. He has been fielding inquiries from area nonprofits and civil advocacy groups since announcing earlier this year he would not seek re-election to his seat on the Berkeley City Council. Wherever he lands, it is sure to result in a significant raise, as his take home pay is less than $30,000 as a council member. Though he has seen a near tripling in his salary since becoming the first out LGBT person to serve on the East Bay council. “I am certainly not going to retire,” Worthington, 64, told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview last Thursday about his time in office. “Our party tomorrow night is called a send off party, not a retirement party. I will continue to be an advocate on issues I care about. I am looking for a job with a social service nonprofit or a political advocate role.” Due to his yearslong push to raise the city’s
Kelly Sullivan
Former City Councilman Kriss Worthington
minimum wage to $15, one of the first jurisdictions in the country to do so, Worthington could take any number of jobs now and make more than the roughly $27,000 he said he earns as a council member. “One of my interns said I could get a job as a dishwasher and make more than a council member,” said Worthington, who first proposed raising the minimum wage in 2002. “I have saved no money as a council member. For the first half of See page 12 >>
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