Sexual Freedom League
In 1963, he founded the Sexual Freedom League in New York City with Leo Koch. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and focused his organizing efforts at the University of California, Berkeley. Poland founded various chapters, including ones in the East Bay, San Francisco, Berkeley and San Diego. However, he did not run these organizations himself; he would found them and then turn them over to others.
Poland, calling himself "Jefferson Fuck Poland" and identifying as bisexual, participated in the first known LGBT rights demonstration in the United States. Poland, along with organizer Randy Wicker and several others, picketed the Whitehall Induction Center in New York City to protest the US military's exclusion of homosexuals from military service and the violation of confidentiality of gay men's draft records. Sources differ on the date of this demonstration, with some citing 1963 and others 1964.
Poland first made national news in August 1965 with the "Nude Wade-in" he led with Ina Saslow and Shirley Einseidel at Aquatic Park, a public beach in San Francisco. This event was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and Time.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Read more about this topic: Jefferson Poland
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