David Benjamin Mixner (August 16, 1946 – March 11, 2024) was an American political activist and author. He was best known for his work in anti-war and gay rights advocacy.
Mixner played a key role in defeating Proposition 6 in California, which sought to ban gays and lesbians from being schoolteachers. He also organized the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in 1969, drawing millions of protesters nationwide. Mixner later became involved in Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns but criticized Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which led to a rift between them.
Mixner continued his activism throughout his life, focusing on issues like nuclear disarmament, AIDS awareness, and LGBT rights. He was honored for his activism and writing, including receiving an honorary doctorate from Washington College in 2015.
Early life Mixner was born in Bridgeton, New Jersey, on August 16, 1946, and was raised nearby in the small town of Elmer.Mixner, David. "Turkey Hollow Almanac: My Birthday" , DavidMixner.com, August 17, 2008. Accessed April 28, 2015. 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. Mixner had two older siblings, Patsy Mixner Annison and Melvin Mixner. He was raised in the Catholic faith and said that Pope John XXIII, the Vatican, and liberation theology had a great influence on him.
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 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.Mixner, D. (1996) Stranger Among Friends. New York: Bantam Books.
Career
College and early activism In the fall of 1964, Mixner enrolled at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, where he soon became 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 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 found himself much more interested in activism, including LGBTQ rights, than in pursuing a college degree. While at the University of 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.
McCarthy presidential campaign Later that year, Mixner dropped out of college and began working for the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. 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 Lester 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 allegedly beaten by police during the protests held outside the convention center. After Vice President Hubert 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 he claimed would become a lifelong friend.
Democratic Party Delegate Selection Committee In early 1969, Mixner was invited to join the Delegate Selection Committee, where he served as his generation's voice, and he intended to use the platform to raise the issue of the violence at the previous year's convention.
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam Mixner served as an organizer of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam. 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, whom they knew from the McCarthy campaign.The Movement and the "Madman". American Experience, March 28, 2023.
Bill Clinton, at the time a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, visited the headquarters of the moratorium and suggested to Mixner that he organize a parallel protest at Oxford. This protest of about a thousand people gathered in front of the American embassy in London would later be a significant issue in Clinton's presidential campaign, with President George H. W. 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."Kelly, Michael. "The 1992 Campaign". The New York Times, Oct. 9. 1992.
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.
Mixner's commentary on the Moratorium is featured in the documentary, The Movement and the "Madman," which debuted on the PBS series American Experience in 2023.
Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA) 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 Bradley, 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" campaign Soon after Bradley won reelection easily, Mixner turned his focus to fighting Proposition 6, an initiative placed on the California ballot by Orange County 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 former Governor and future President 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 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."5,000 Sought for Anti-Nuclear Trek in 1986", Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1985, Part I, page 22.
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. The marchers reached as far as Barstow, California before unpaid debts to employees forced the group to a halt, leaving many in the group stranded. Two weeks later, 500 members of the group continued onwards and eventually reached Washington, D.C.
AIDS activism Shortly after Mixner experienced professional success in 1985, helping defeat Proposition 64, a ballot initiative proposed by Lyndon LaRouche that would require quarantining people with AIDS, Mixner learned that his long-time friend 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 California 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 campaign and "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" Four years after a fundraiser for the Dukakis campaign told Mixner that Massachusetts Governor Michael 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. He reportedly assisted Clinton in every election he took part in from 1974 up to the time leading to the White House. 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 Kantor, 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.