David Mixner
Encyclopedia
David Mixner is a civil rights activist and best-selling author. He is best known for his work in anti-war
and gay rights advocacy.
in southern New Jersey. His father Ben worked on a corporate farm, and his mother Mary worked shifts at a local glass factory and later took a job as a bookkeeper for the local John Deere dealership. David has two older siblings, Patsy Mixner Annison and Melvin Mixner.
Mixner attended Daretown Elementary School, then Woodstown High School
, where he got involved in the Civil Rights movement
, by participating in picketing and sending his own money to Martin Luther King, Jr.
In his bestselling memoir, Stranger Among Friends, Mixner explains that his parents were “livid” over his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, claiming his activism embarrassed them. When Mixner told them he wanted to go south during the summer of 1963 after following the events in Birmingham, Alabama
, his parents forbade him.
in Tempe, Arizona
, where he soon became heavily involved in civil rights and anti-war activism, including helping to organize protests against a speech by General William Westmoreland
. Prompted by an article he read in The Arizona Republic
about city garbage workers who were seeking the right to unionize, in the fall of 1966, Mixner organized from start to finish the first of many protests he would organize over the next thirty years. Mixner rallied hundreds of workers, students and professors and led a march on City Hall
. Although the city successfully broke the strike, the workers eventually earned the right to unionize.
Mixner also experienced his first same-sex relationship at ASU, with a man whom he refers to as Kit in his memoirs. A year into their relationship, Kit was killed in an automobile accident. Mixner did not attend the funeral, and Kit’s parents never discovered that their son was gay.
Soon after Kit’s death, Mixner decided to transfer to the University of Maryland
in order to be closer to Washington, D.C., where he would be able to get more involved in anti-war protests.
Mixner found himself much more interested in activism than in pursuing a college degree. While at Maryland, Mixner was a grassroots organizer for the 1967 march on the Pentagon
, which was later captured in Norman Mailer
’s Armies of the Night
.
. One of Mixner’s first assignments was organizing the Minnesota operation, helping McCarthy win the Minnesota caucus, defeating incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson
. Later, Mixner and other members of McCarthy’s campaign team went to Georgia to help select an alternative delegation to send to the national convention in Chicago, challenging Governor Lestor Maddox’s hand-picked delegation, which included only seven African-Americans in the 117 person delegation. The Georgia Democratic Party Forum, which sought to challenge Maddox’s delegation, held its own convention in Macon, where Congressman John Conyers
(D–MI) keynoted their convention before turning over the floor to Julian Bond
, the first African-American elected to the Georgia legislature, who would later become Chairman of the NAACP.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention
in Chicago, Mixner was beaten by police during the protests held outside the convention center. After Humphrey claimed the nomination, Mixner began seeking out new outlets for his activism. He soon befriended Doris Kearns Goodwin
, who introduced Mixner to Senator Ted Kennedy
, who would become a lifelong friend.
of Oklahoma was supposed to invite Mixner to join the less powerful Rules Committee, he nonetheless made his mark on the twenty-eight member body, which included Warren Christopher
, who would later become Secretary of State, Senator Birch Bayh
of Indiana, Senator Harold Hughes
of Iowa, Senator Adlai Stevenson III
of Illinois and Senator George McGovern
of South Dakota, who served as the Committee’s Chairman.
By virtue of his inadvertent inclusion on the Delegate Selection Committee, Mixner served as his generation’s lone voice, and he intended the use the platform to raise the issue of the violence at the previous year’s convention. When Senator Kennedy, a close friend of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley
and the party’s front-runner for the 1972 Presidential nomination, took the witness stand, Mixner used the opportunity to ask Kennedy if he would publicly condemn both the tactics used by the Chicago police and the Mayor for his involvement. Kennedy dodged the question. Subsequently, Adlai Stevenson III sought to exclude Mixner from a committee meeting in Chicago where Mayor Daley was scheduled to testify. McGovern called Mixner, asking him not to attend, but Mixner refused. When he arrived for the meeting, drawing the ire of Senator Stevenson, McGovern offered him a compromise, promising to ask Daley to apologize for the violence and offer all those arrested amnesty if Mixner agreed to stay quiet. The resulting exchange between McGovern and Daley, included Daley’s insistence that "If people violate the law they should accept the consequences of the law."
The McGovern Commission, which had set out to reform the Presidential nomination process in order to avoid a repeat of the 1968 Convention, eventually issued its recommendations, including the requirement that all delegates be directly elected by the people, eviscerating the power of political bosses to control the nomination process.
. The idea was prompted by Jerome Grossman
, a Massachusetts businessman active in the peace movement. Grossman proposed to Sam Brown, a close friend of Mixner, that they set aside a day in 1969 where “business as usual” would come to a halt, essentially engaging in a strike against everything. Brown decided that the word “moratorium” would be less threatening than “strike” to middle-class Americans, and set to work, setting aside October 15, 1969 as the day of the moratorium. Brown soon enlisted the help of Mixner, David Hawk, another young activist, and Marge Sklencar, who they knew from the McCarthy campaign. Brown, Mixner, Hawk and Sklencar then set about organizing the event.
In September 1969, shortly before the Moratorium, Mixner headed to Martha’s Vineyard to meet with fellow activists, many of whom had also worked on the McCarthy campaign. Among those in attendance was Bill Clinton
, who had been invited by one of Mixner’s friends. At the time, Clinton was studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship
, attending the Martha’s Vineyard retreat with fellow Rhodes Scholars Rick Stearns and Strobe Talbott
. Mixner and Clinton were fast friends, and Mixner would play a significant role twenty-three years later in getting the LGBT community to support Clinton.
As the date of the Moratorium approached, it began gathering a great deal of momentum, with Time
, Life
, and Newsweek
magazines featuring it in cover stories. When Clinton subsequently visited the headquarters of the Moratorium and saw what he would be missing by being in London on October 15, he suggested to Mixner that he organize a parallel protest at Oxford. This protest, in which about a thousand people gathered in front of the American embassy in London, would later be a significant issue in his presidential campaign, with President George H. Bush telling Larry King
on CNN
in October 1992, "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but to go to a foreign country and demonstrate against your own country when your sons and daughters are dying halfway around the world, I am sorry but I think that is wrong."
The Moratorium drew millions of people throughout the country, who gathered in public places and read the names of the soldiers killed in Vietnam aloud. The day was capped off by a march at the Washington Monument, where Coretta Scott King
, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about her late husband’s passion for ending the war.
, the mayor of Los Angeles who was seeking reelection, so while he worked to raise funds for MECLA, his involvement was kept secret because of the potential for his sexuality to become an issue in Bradley’s campaign.
State Senator John Briggs
that would make it illegal for gays and lesbians to be schoolteachers. Similar initiatives had recently passed throughout the country when Mixner turned his focus to fighting Proposition 6, creating the “NO on 6” organization to fight it; through the process, he would publicly come out of the closet
. Mixner and his lover Peter Scott secured a meeting with then-Governor Ronald Reagan, whom they convinced to oppose the initiative publicly. As a result, and through the work of Mixner, Scott, legendary gay rights activist and San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk
, and others, Proposition 6 was defeated by over a million votes, the first ballot initiative of its sort to be shot down.
As a result of this huge success, Mixner and Scott experienced a huge upturn in business for their fledgling political consulting firm, Mixner/Scott, and were asked by Bill Clinton, then running for governor of Arkansas, to host a reception for Clinton at their Los Angeles home.
The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, which Mixner would later call his “biggest political failure and [his] biggest regret” ultimately left Los Angeles on March 1, 1986 with only 1200 marchers. Mixner would spend many years paying the consequences, which included fighting lawsuits and paying employment taxes for his employees. The lore of the march lives on, however, immortalized in songs, books, and film.
, a ballot initiative proposed by Lyndon LaRouche that would require quarantining people with AIDS, Mixner learned that his long-time lover and business partner, Peter Scott, had AIDS. Scott would fight the disease for four years; he died on May 13, 1989. While Scott fought the disease, Mixner formed an organization that spearheaded legislation that would create a California alternative to the FDA, enabling California to deal more aggressively with the AIDS epidemic than the federal government. Mixner’s group enlisted the support of California Attorney General John Van de Kamp
, then convinced Governor George Deukmejian
to sign AB 1952, which, as described by van de Kamp, “mandates the director of DHS to implement the drug testing and sale authority that he had under existing law, for the purpose of approving the testing and sale either of an AIDS vaccine, or of new drugs that offer a reasonable possibility of treating people who have been infected with the AIDS virus.”
, Clinton’s campaign chairman, soon asked Mixner to join the National Executive Committee of the Clinton for President campaign, the first openly gay person to become a public face of a presidential campaign.
After Clinton was elected, Mixner helped with the transition team, though he publicly declared that he would not seek an appointment with the new administration. Although he spoke at an event at the inaugural ball, introduced by his old friend Ted Kennedy, Mixner soon thrust himself in the middle of the furor over the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy proposed by Clinton, which represented a total betrayal to Mixner and many in the gay community.
When Mixner went on Nightline to complain about Clinton’s rapid shift away from allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, his calls to the White House stopped being returned and his consulting business began to tank, as he was no longer perceived as someone who had influence with the new administration.
Shortly thereafter, Mixner participated in a march in Washington for the Campaign for Military Service, which advocated lifting the bans on gays in the military. When Clinton announced the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on July 19, 1993, Mixner organized a march with CMS and was very publicly arrested outside the White House, for which he received a great deal of publicity because of his personal relationship with Clinton. Mixner and Clinton later healed the rift, but Clinton never again revisited the policy during his Presidency.
officially created the David Benjamin Mixner collection, which houses his personal collection of books, papers, films and other materials relating to his involvement in civil rights issues.
, where he lived in a bright yellow house with his two cats, Sheba and Uganda. In 2009, Mixner moved to Hell's Kitchen in New York City. He posts blog entries daily on his website, davidmixner.com. His home was featured in the Real Estate section of the New York Times in an article entitled, "Do Ask, Do Tell." David is the keynote speaker for the Empire State Pride Agenda's 2007 fall dinner. In 2009, Mixner moved back to New York City, where he currently resides near Times Square.
In October 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown
and his wife Sarah Brown
honored Mixner with a luncheon at 10 Downing Street
. The luncheon in Mixner's honor represented the first time a British Prime Minister honored an LGBT activist in this manor.
Also in October 2008, Mixner was invited to debate American politics by the Oxford Union
, Britain's second oldest university union.
Mixner was featured in Ask Not, a 2008 documentary film about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
In May 2009, Mixner used his blog to call for a March on Washington to protest the LGBT
community's lack of equal rights. Cleve Jones
, spurred by Mixner's call to march, led the organizational efforts for the National Equality March
, scheduled for October 10–11, 2009. Mixner and Jones both will be featured speakers at a rally in front of the Capitol after the March. Over 200,000 people marched on Washington on October 11, 2009.
Mixner was honored by the Point Foundation (LGBT)
, an organization that provides college scholarships to LGBT students, with its Legend Award at the foundation's 2009 Honors Gala in New York City. The award was presented to Mixner by Victoria Reggie Kennedy
, the widow of Ted Kennedy
.
In 2011, the Theater at Dixon Place announced a one man show starring Mixner, From the Front porch. The show is a benefit for Dixon Place and the Ali Forney
Center, an organization benefitting LGBT homeless youth.
Mixner is releasing a memoir of his time in Turkey Hollow, At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow, in September 2011. The memoir will be published by Magnus Books.
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
and gay rights advocacy.
Childhood
David Benjamin Mixner was born on August 16, 1946, near the town of ElmerElmer, New Jersey
Elmer is a Borough in Salem County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the borough population was 1,395, making it the 520th largest city in New Jersey....
in southern New Jersey. His father Ben worked on a corporate farm, and his mother Mary worked shifts at a local glass factory and later took a job as a bookkeeper for the local John Deere dealership. David has two older siblings, Patsy Mixner Annison and Melvin Mixner.
Mixner attended Daretown Elementary School, then Woodstown High School
Woodstown High School
Woodstown High School is a comprehensive community public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grade from the City of Woodstown, in Salem County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Woodstown-Pilesgrove Regional School District.Students from neighboring Alloway...
, where he got involved in the Civil Rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, by participating in picketing and sending his own money to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
In his bestselling memoir, Stranger Among Friends, Mixner explains that his parents were “livid” over his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, claiming his activism embarrassed them. When Mixner told them he wanted to go south during the summer of 1963 after following the events in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, his parents forbade him.
College and Early Activism
In the fall of 1964, Mixner enrolled at Arizona State UniversityArizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
in Tempe, Arizona
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2010 population of 161,719. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in the East Valley section of metropolitan Phoenix; it is bordered by Phoenix and Guadalupe on the west, Scottsdale...
, where he soon became heavily involved in civil rights and anti-war activism, including helping to organize protests against a speech by General William Westmoreland
William Westmoreland
William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army General, who commanded US military operations in the Vietnam War at its peak , during the Tet Offensive. He adopted a strategy of attrition against the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army. He later served as...
. Prompted by an article he read in The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Republic is a daily newspaper published in Phoenix. Circulated throughout Arizona, it is the state's largest newspaper. Since 2000, it has been owned by the Gannett newspaper chain. It was ranked tenth in US daily newspapers by circulation in 2007.-Early years:The newspaper was founded...
about city garbage workers who were seeking the right to unionize, in the fall of 1966, Mixner organized from start to finish the first of many protests he would organize over the next thirty years. Mixner rallied hundreds of workers, students and professors and led a march on City Hall
City hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall or a municipal building or civic centre, is the chief administrative building of a city...
. Although the city successfully broke the strike, the workers eventually earned the right to unionize.
Mixner also experienced his first same-sex relationship at ASU, with a man whom he refers to as Kit in his memoirs. A year into their relationship, Kit was killed in an automobile accident. Mixner did not attend the funeral, and Kit’s parents never discovered that their son was gay.
Soon after Kit’s death, Mixner decided to transfer to the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
in order to be closer to Washington, D.C., where he would be able to get more involved in anti-war protests.
Mixner found himself much more interested in activism than in pursuing a college degree. While at Maryland, Mixner was a grassroots organizer for the 1967 march on the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
, which was later captured in Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
’s Armies of the Night
Armies of the Night
The Armies of the Night is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning nonfiction novel written by Norman Mailer and sub-titled History as a Novel/The Novel as History. Mailer essentially creates his own genre for the narrative, split into historicized and novelized accounts of the October...
.
McCarthy Presidential Campaign
Later that year, Mixner dropped out of college and began working for the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthyEugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
. One of Mixner’s first assignments was organizing the Minnesota operation, helping McCarthy win the Minnesota caucus, defeating incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
. Later, Mixner and other members of McCarthy’s campaign team went to Georgia to help select an alternative delegation to send to the national convention in Chicago, challenging Governor Lestor Maddox’s hand-picked delegation, which included only seven African-Americans in the 117 person delegation. The Georgia Democratic Party Forum, which sought to challenge Maddox’s delegation, held its own convention in Macon, where Congressman John Conyers
John Conyers
John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(D–MI) keynoted their convention before turning over the floor to Julian Bond
Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond , known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
, the first African-American elected to the Georgia legislature, who would later become Chairman of the NAACP.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, from August 26 to August 29, 1968. Because Democratic President Lyndon Johnson had announced he would not seek a second term, the purpose of the convention was to...
in Chicago, Mixner was beaten by police during the protests held outside the convention center. After Humphrey claimed the nomination, Mixner began seeking out new outlets for his activism. He soon befriended Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer and historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S...
, who introduced Mixner to Senator Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
, who would become a lifelong friend.
Democratic Party Delegate Selection Committee
In early 1969, Mixner was invited to join the Delegate Selection Committee, which had been created during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Although Mixner’s appointment turned out to be a mistake, as Senator Fred R. HarrisFred R. Harris
Fred Roy Harris is a former Democratic United States Senator from the state of Oklahoma. He served from 1964 until 1973.-Biography:...
of Oklahoma was supposed to invite Mixner to join the less powerful Rules Committee, he nonetheless made his mark on the twenty-eight member body, which included Warren Christopher
Warren Christopher
Warren Minor Christopher was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician. During Bill Clinton's first term as President, Christopher served as the 63rd Secretary of State. He also served as Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson administration, and as Deputy Secretary of State in the Jimmy...
, who would later become Secretary of State, Senator Birch Bayh
Birch Bayh
Birch Evans Bayh II is a former United States Senator from Indiana, having served from 1963 to 1981. He was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in the 1976 election, but lost to Jimmy Carter. He is the father of former Indiana Governor and former U.S. Senator Evan Bayh.-Life...
of Indiana, Senator Harold Hughes
Harold Hughes
Harold Everett Hughes was the 36th Governor of Iowa from 1963 until 1969; he had been a Republican earlier in his life. He also served as a Democratic United States Senator from 1969 until 1975.-Background:...
of Iowa, Senator Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Stevenson III
Adlai Ewing Stevenson III is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented the state of Illinois in the United States Senate from 1970 until 1981.-Education, military service, and early career:...
of Illinois and Senator George McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
of South Dakota, who served as the Committee’s Chairman.
By virtue of his inadvertent inclusion on the Delegate Selection Committee, Mixner served as his generation’s lone voice, and he intended the use the platform to raise the issue of the violence at the previous year’s convention. When Senator Kennedy, a close friend of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley
Richard J. Daley
Richard Joseph Daley served for 21 years as the mayor and undisputed Democratic boss of Chicago and is considered by historians to be the "last of the big city bosses." He played a major role in the history of the Democratic Party, especially with his support of John F...
and the party’s front-runner for the 1972 Presidential nomination, took the witness stand, Mixner used the opportunity to ask Kennedy if he would publicly condemn both the tactics used by the Chicago police and the Mayor for his involvement. Kennedy dodged the question. Subsequently, Adlai Stevenson III sought to exclude Mixner from a committee meeting in Chicago where Mayor Daley was scheduled to testify. McGovern called Mixner, asking him not to attend, but Mixner refused. When he arrived for the meeting, drawing the ire of Senator Stevenson, McGovern offered him a compromise, promising to ask Daley to apologize for the violence and offer all those arrested amnesty if Mixner agreed to stay quiet. The resulting exchange between McGovern and Daley, included Daley’s insistence that "If people violate the law they should accept the consequences of the law."
The McGovern Commission, which had set out to reform the Presidential nomination process in order to avoid a repeat of the 1968 Convention, eventually issued its recommendations, including the requirement that all delegates be directly elected by the people, eviscerating the power of political bosses to control the nomination process.
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam
Mixner’s most significant contribution to the anti-Vietnam War effort was his role as one of the head organizers of the Moratorium to End the War in VietnamMoratorium to End the War in Vietnam
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a large demonstration against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War that took place across the United States on October 15, 1969. The Moratorium developed from Jerome Grossman's April 20, 1969, call for a general strike if the war had not...
. The idea was prompted by Jerome Grossman
Jerome Grossman
Jerome Grossman is a political activist and commentator, particularly on the issues of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons...
, a Massachusetts businessman active in the peace movement. Grossman proposed to Sam Brown, a close friend of Mixner, that they set aside a day in 1969 where “business as usual” would come to a halt, essentially engaging in a strike against everything. Brown decided that the word “moratorium” would be less threatening than “strike” to middle-class Americans, and set to work, setting aside October 15, 1969 as the day of the moratorium. Brown soon enlisted the help of Mixner, David Hawk, another young activist, and Marge Sklencar, who they knew from the McCarthy campaign. Brown, Mixner, Hawk and Sklencar then set about organizing the event.
In September 1969, shortly before the Moratorium, Mixner headed to Martha’s Vineyard to meet with fellow activists, many of whom had also worked on the McCarthy campaign. Among those in attendance was Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, who had been invited by one of Mixner’s friends. At the time, Clinton was studying at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship
Rhodes Scholarship
The Rhodes Scholarship, named after Cecil Rhodes, is an international postgraduate award for study at the University of Oxford. It was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships, and is widely considered the "world's most prestigious scholarship" by many public sources such as...
, attending the Martha’s Vineyard retreat with fellow Rhodes Scholars Rick Stearns and Strobe Talbott
Strobe Talbott
Nelson Strobridge "Strobe" Talbott III is an American foreign policy analyst associated with Yale University and the Brookings Institution, a former journalist associated with Time magazine and diplomat who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001.-Early life:Born in Dayton, Ohio...
. Mixner and Clinton were fast friends, and Mixner would play a significant role twenty-three years later in getting the LGBT community to support Clinton.
As the date of the Moratorium approached, it began gathering a great deal of momentum, with Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, and Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazines featuring it in cover stories. When Clinton subsequently visited the headquarters of the Moratorium and saw what he would be missing by being in London on October 15, he suggested to Mixner that he organize a parallel protest at Oxford. This protest, in which about a thousand people gathered in front of the American embassy in London, would later be a significant issue in his presidential campaign, with President George H. Bush telling Larry King
Larry King
Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards....
on CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
in October 1992, "Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but to go to a foreign country and demonstrate against your own country when your sons and daughters are dying halfway around the world, I am sorry but I think that is wrong."
The Moratorium drew millions of people throughout the country, who gathered in public places and read the names of the soldiers killed in Vietnam aloud. The day was capped off by a march at the Washington Monument, where Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.Mrs...
, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about her late husband’s passion for ending the war.
MECLA (Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles)
In 1976, Mixner began the process of coming out of the closet, and soon thereafter was a founding member of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), the nation’s first gay and lesbian Political Action Committee. At the time, very few candidates were willing to accept donations from openly gay individuals or gay-affiliated organizations. At the time, Mixner was also serving as the campaign manager for Tom BradleyTom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
, the mayor of Los Angeles who was seeking reelection, so while he worked to raise funds for MECLA, his involvement was kept secret because of the potential for his sexuality to become an issue in Bradley’s campaign.
NO on 6
Soon after Bradley won reelection easily, Mixner turned his focus to fighting Proposition 6, an initiative placed on the California ballot by Orange CountyOrange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
State Senator John Briggs
John Briggs (politician)
John V. Briggs is a retired California state politician who served in the California State Assembly and the California State Senate. He is perhaps best known for sponsoring Proposition 6 in 1978, also known as the Briggs Initiative, which attempted to remove all gay or lesbian school employees or...
that would make it illegal for gays and lesbians to be schoolteachers. Similar initiatives had recently passed throughout the country when Mixner turned his focus to fighting Proposition 6, creating the “NO on 6” organization to fight it; through the process, he would publicly come out of the closet
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
. Mixner and his lover Peter Scott secured a meeting with then-Governor Ronald Reagan, whom they convinced to oppose the initiative publicly. As a result, and through the work of Mixner, Scott, legendary gay rights activist and San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...
, and others, Proposition 6 was defeated by over a million votes, the first ballot initiative of its sort to be shot down.
As a result of this huge success, Mixner and Scott experienced a huge upturn in business for their fledgling political consulting firm, Mixner/Scott, and were asked by Bill Clinton, then running for governor of Arkansas, to host a reception for Clinton at their Los Angeles home.
The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament
In late 1984, after years of devastation in his personal life resulting from the AIDS crisis, Mixner decided to focus his energy on combating nuclear proliferation, creating an organization named PRO Peace. Mixner envisioned finding five thousand Americans who would take a year out of their lives to walk across America to advocate for disarmament, holding rallies throughout the country.The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, which Mixner would later call his “biggest political failure and [his] biggest regret” ultimately left Los Angeles on March 1, 1986 with only 1200 marchers. Mixner would spend many years paying the consequences, which included fighting lawsuits and paying employment taxes for his employees. The lore of the march lives on, however, immortalized in songs, books, and film.
AIDS
Shortly after Mixner experienced professional success in 1985, helping defeat Proposition 64California Proposition 64 (1986)
Proposition 64 was a proposition in the state of California on the November 4, 1986 ballot. It was an initiative statute that would have restored Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome to the list of communicable diseases...
, a ballot initiative proposed by Lyndon LaRouche that would require quarantining people with AIDS, Mixner learned that his long-time lover and business partner, Peter Scott, had AIDS. Scott would fight the disease for four years; he died on May 13, 1989. While Scott fought the disease, Mixner formed an organization that spearheaded legislation that would create a California alternative to the FDA, enabling California to deal more aggressively with the AIDS epidemic than the federal government. Mixner’s group enlisted the support of California Attorney General John Van de Kamp
John Van de Kamp
John Kalar Van de Kamp is an American politician. He served as Los Angeles County District Attorney from 1975 until 1981, and then as 28th Attorney General of California from 1983 until 1991....
, then convinced Governor George Deukmejian
George Deukmejian
Courken George Deukmejian, Jr. born June 6, 1928) is an Armenian American politician from California who as a Republican served as the 35th Governor of California and as California Attorney General .-Early life:...
to sign AB 1952, which, as described by van de Kamp, “mandates the director of DHS to implement the drug testing and sale authority that he had under existing law, for the purpose of approving the testing and sale either of an AIDS vaccine, or of new drugs that offer a reasonable possibility of treating people who have been infected with the AIDS virus.”
Clinton Campaign – Don’t ask, don’t tell
Four years after a fundraiser for the Dukakis campaign told Mixner that Governor Dukakis would not accept the million dollars Mixner and his friends planned to raise for him, Mixner found hope in the candidacy of his old friend, Bill Clinton. After Clinton promised Mixner that he would support both an end to the ban on gays in the military and increased funds to find a cure for AIDS, Mixner began raising money for Clinton enthusiastically. Mickey KantorMickey Kantor
Michael "Mickey" Kantor is an American politician and lawyer. After serving as the Clinton-Gore campaign chair in 1992, Kantor was appointed United States Trade Representative, holding that office from 1993 to 1997. He was, in 1996 and 1997, United States Secretary of Commerce.-Life and...
, Clinton’s campaign chairman, soon asked Mixner to join the National Executive Committee of the Clinton for President campaign, the first openly gay person to become a public face of a presidential campaign.
After Clinton was elected, Mixner helped with the transition team, though he publicly declared that he would not seek an appointment with the new administration. Although he spoke at an event at the inaugural ball, introduced by his old friend Ted Kennedy, Mixner soon thrust himself in the middle of the furor over the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy proposed by Clinton, which represented a total betrayal to Mixner and many in the gay community.
When Mixner went on Nightline to complain about Clinton’s rapid shift away from allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, his calls to the White House stopped being returned and his consulting business began to tank, as he was no longer perceived as someone who had influence with the new administration.
Shortly thereafter, Mixner participated in a march in Washington for the Campaign for Military Service, which advocated lifting the bans on gays in the military. When Clinton announced the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on July 19, 1993, Mixner organized a march with CMS and was very publicly arrested outside the White House, for which he received a great deal of publicity because of his personal relationship with Clinton. Mixner and Clinton later healed the rift, but Clinton never again revisited the policy during his Presidency.
Books
David is the bestselling author of Stranger Among Friends, an autobiography published in 1996, and Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage, published in 2001.Yale David Mixner Collection
On November 3, 2005, the Yale University LibraryYale University Library
Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. It is the second-largest academic library in the North America, with approximately 12.5 million volumes housed in 20 buildings on campus...
officially created the David Benjamin Mixner collection, which houses his personal collection of books, papers, films and other materials relating to his involvement in civil rights issues.
Today
In 2006, Mixner moved to Turkey Hollow in Sullivan County, New YorkSullivan County, New York
Sullivan County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 77,547. The county seat is Monticello. The name is in honor of Major General John Sullivan, who was a hero in the American Revolutionary War...
, where he lived in a bright yellow house with his two cats, Sheba and Uganda. In 2009, Mixner moved to Hell's Kitchen in New York City. He posts blog entries daily on his website, davidmixner.com. His home was featured in the Real Estate section of the New York Times in an article entitled, "Do Ask, Do Tell." David is the keynote speaker for the Empire State Pride Agenda's 2007 fall dinner. In 2009, Mixner moved back to New York City, where he currently resides near Times Square.
In October 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
and his wife Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
Sarah Joy Brown is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for originating the role of Carly Corinthos, which she portrayed on the American daytime drama General Hospital from 1996 to 2001, and which earned her three Daytime Emmy Awards. In 2008, she returned to General Hospital in a...
honored Mixner with a luncheon at 10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street, colloquially known in the United Kingdom as "Number 10", is the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is now always the Prime Minister....
. The luncheon in Mixner's honor represented the first time a British Prime Minister honored an LGBT activist in this manor.
Also in October 2008, Mixner was invited to debate American politics by the Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
, Britain's second oldest university union.
Mixner was featured in Ask Not, a 2008 documentary film about the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
In May 2009, Mixner used his blog to call for a March on Washington to protest the LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
community's lack of equal rights. Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones
Cleve Jones is an American AIDS and LGBT rights activist. He conceived of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt which has become, at 54 tons, the world's largest piece of community folk art as of 2009...
, spurred by Mixner's call to march, led the organizational efforts for the National Equality March
National Equality March
The National Equality March was a national political rally that occurred October 11, 2009 in Washington, D.C.. It called for equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states and the District of Columbia...
, scheduled for October 10–11, 2009. Mixner and Jones both will be featured speakers at a rally in front of the Capitol after the March. Over 200,000 people marched on Washington on October 11, 2009.
Mixner was honored by the Point Foundation (LGBT)
Point Foundation (LGBT)
The Point Foundation is the first and largest national foundation to support academic achievement in higher education among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students by providing financial support, mentoring and hope to meritorious students who are marginalized due to sexual orientation,...
, an organization that provides college scholarships to LGBT students, with its Legend Award at the foundation's 2009 Honors Gala in New York City. The award was presented to Mixner by Victoria Reggie Kennedy
Victoria Reggie Kennedy
Victoria Reggie "Vicki" Kennedy is an American lawyer and the widow of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.-Early life and education:...
, the widow of Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
.
In 2011, the Theater at Dixon Place announced a one man show starring Mixner, From the Front porch. The show is a benefit for Dixon Place and the Ali Forney
Ali Forney
Ali He’shun Forney was an African-American gay and transgender youth who also used the name Luscious. He was a peer counselor of and advocate for homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth and was killed on the street in Harlem...
Center, an organization benefitting LGBT homeless youth.
Mixner is releasing a memoir of his time in Turkey Hollow, At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow, in September 2011. The memoir will be published by Magnus Books.