Fundraiser aims for bench to honor Ken Jones
A caregiver for the late gay activist Ken Jones is raising $15,000 via an online fundraiser to have a bench installed and dedicated to him at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
The fundraiser has raised $3,710 toward its goal as of the afternoon of January 25. As the Bay Area Reporter reported last January, Jones was a Black man who was key to the desegregation of LGBTQ activism.
Jones was a core volunteer at the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation, which became the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; created and managed the first hundred-mile AIDS Bike-a-Thon from San Francisco to the Russian River; was the first Black chair of the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee; brought visibility to disenfranchised groups as part of Pride's outreach; and served on the citizen review board of the BART Police Department following the BART police killing of Oscar Grant.
At the time of Jones' death from cancer, Sanjai Moses — who Jones helped to raise — was taking care of him. Moses, who is queer, told the B.A.R.
