When We Rise

No synopsis

1972: Three people—an Arizona peace activist named Cleve Jones, an African-American sailor Ken Jones in Vietnam, and a Boston women's activist Roma Guy—all move to San Francisco to join the nascent gay community.

Roma helps take a stand against the National Organization for Women's attempts to purge lesbians from their ranks. Ken comes to accept—and fight for—his sexuality. After struggling to find San Francisco less welcoming than he'd hoped,…

1978–79: Roma sees the establishment of The Women's Building. Harvey Milk runs for the Board of Supervisors against a backdrop of Anita Bryant's Moral Majority and John Briggs's statewide initiative to ban gay people and allies from…

1981: A new disease, initially named gay-related immune deficiency, starts spreading among gay men and drug users in San Francisco. Roma and Diane start a family.

1992: A decade after the advent of the AIDS Crisis, Cleve (now played by Guy Pearce) unveils the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, D.C., and visits ACT UP in New York as they fight for early clinical trials of new drugs.…

1997: Ken relies on Cecilia Chung's support as he struggles with addiction at a VA hospital. Cleve visits the Human Rights Campaign in D.C., where Richard Socarides lobbies for Bill Clinton to do better than "don't ask, don't tell" and…

2008: As Barack Obama is elected president, California Proposition 8 revokes California's recently-acquired marriage equality, starting Cleve to help organise the National Equality March on Washington, D.C., and advocate for equal rights.…

2009–13: Cleve takes the battle against Prop 8 through the federal courts all the way to the Supreme Court. Ken works with Cecilia Chung to get support for his church. Roma and Diane decide to get married if the Supreme Court allows it.

A young peace activist escapes his repressive life in Phoenix and heads to San Francisco, hoping to find refuge and community, but finds that the struggle for survival is just as difficult as it was back home. Elsewhere, NOW purges…

Ken, Cleve, and Roma fight an initiative that would ban gays from working in California public schools, while Cleve works on the campaign to elect Harvey Milk as San Francisco City Supervisor. But soon a disease starts killing gay men all…

AIDS continues to ravage the gay community. Cleve creates the AIDS quilt in order to get the President's attention, while Diane's daughter Annie struggles with her identity as the child of a lesbian couple and a gay man.

An energized Cleve inspires a group of young activists to organize a march on Washington to demand full LGBTQ civil rights, while Roma uses her skills to reform healthcare in San Francisco. Elsewhere, a group forms to try overturning…