Harvey Milk Lives

I grew up out in the foggy western neighborhoods of San Francisco. We may have been close in distance to the Haight-Ashbury and Castro neighborhoods with their exotic hippies and queers, but culturally, we might as well have been on different planets.

When I was in high school in the mid-70s, I was riding the streetcar downtown with two of my friends, no doubt to spend some of our babysitting money at one of the shops on Union Square. As we emerged from the Twin Peaks tunnel, a man got on the streetcar. Lots of people seemed to know him; I had no idea who he was. He shook some hands, laughed and joked, and introduced himself to the three of us.

"I'm Harvey Milk," he said, and shook our hands. He said he was running for something, but I didn't pay much attention, since I wasn't old enough to vote yet.

I won't say that lightning struck, or it changed my life. I'm sure my friends and I, in our little pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirts and knee-highs, just giggled at his big ears and odd name.

A couple of years later, I heard Milk's name again, when he became the first openly gay man elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors. But I was away in college, then, and he stayed off my personal radar until a friend came up to me in the lobby of my dorm. "Someone just killed your mayor," she said.

Since the Moscones lived around the corner from my family,  my first worry was that someone might have killed him at home. I turned on the news and saw that he'd been shot at City Hall, along with Supervisor Harvey Milk, by recently-resigned Supervisor Dan White.

Having grown up as part of San Francisco's Irish-Catholic community, I knew who White was. He'd given a PAL soccer trophy to one of my cousins not long before. I was stunned.

I was in San Francisco in May of 1979 when White's verdict was announced: second degree manslaughter. For an ex-cop who had crawled in a basement window to avoid the metal detectors, brought extra ammo with him,  re-loaded his gun after killing the Mayor, and then walked down the hall and pumped several bullets into Harvey Milk's body, including one that exploded in his brain and killed him?

I heard there was a march from the Castro to City Hall, and with a couple of girlfriends, I drove down to the Civic Center. We parked several blocks away, and as we got near, we could hear shouting and the sound of sirens.

I was barely 20 years old, and although I was outraged, I was also scared. We stayed far on the outskirts of the riot, watching police cars going up in flames from a distance, smelling tear gas. One friend's eyes began to water and swell, and things were going from bad to worse, so we finally left. We almost went back to the Castro, but ended up going home to rinse out her eyes instead.

I never forgot Harvey Milk, though. His death, and the story of his life that emerged in its aftermath, made a huge impression on me. When my friend Rob Epstein made a documentary about Milk, it was nominated for, and won, an Academy Award. All of us watching the Oscars at home went nuts. When it came out on video, I bought it, and over the years forced dozens of friends, newly out or new to San Francisco, to watch it. "You need to remember this," I told them.

It never crossed my mind, never, that anyone could forget him, or his story, but I was wrong. When Gus Van Sant's "Milk" premiered this fall, I was stunned at all the people who had no idea who Harvey Milk was -- including politically active young lesbians and gay men. I interviewed the actors, and the younger ones all said they hadn't learned about Harvey at all -- including James Franco, who grew up in the Bay Area. (He played Harvey's lover, Scott Smith.) Alison Pill, who played Harvey's lesbian campaign manager and aide, Anne Kronenberg, said while researching the role she met many young LGBT people who didn't know who Harvey was. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, himself only 33, said he'd written the script because he was afraid Harvey's life was in danger of slipping off the stage of history.

But whether we knew his name or not, Harvey Milk's legacy still lives. Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of his death, and on 365Gay.com, I talk about it:

Lesbian activist Sally Gearhart told the crowd protesting White’s sentence that “Harvey Milk lives!” A demonstrator shouted back, “No, he’s dead, you fool!” And it was true. It was also true that in the months and even years after those violent events, the neighborhood-centered, grassroots politics Milk practiced vanished with him from both the city and national stages. No other leader emerged from the gay community to take his place. His legacy, like the man, appeared dead.

But was it?

At Milk’s memorial service, his successor on the Board of Supervisors, Harry Britt, told the crowd, “Something very special is going to happen in this city, and it will have Harvey Milk’s name on it…. Harvey will be in the middle of us, always, always.” It was hard to see in the aftermath of his death, but it turns out Britt was right.

When AIDS struck in the 80s, a group of street activists who later became known as ACT-UP began to organize, protest, and disrupt the institutions of commerce and government, demanding a better response to the epidemic that was killing so many in our community. Their slogan was “Silence=death,” and it’s one that Harvey, famous for both hyperbole and verbosity, would have loved.

Milk political protégé Cleve Jones went on to found the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, one of the single most successful acts of political theater and personal mourning ever conceived. It has traveled around the nation and the globe, was the subject of an Academy Award winning documentary, and is still the largest piece of community folk art in the world. It was catharsis for us as we lost countless friends and loved ones, and incited powerful sympathy and connection in people not of our community who grieved – and stood – with us.

[....]

Under the influence of [his]  admiration [for Milk], [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom defied an anti-gay state law and started issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples during San Francisco’s now-famous “winter of love.” It was that act that led to the chain of events that culminated in California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 constitutional amendment that stripped same sex couples of their newly-recognized right to civil marriage.

At first glance that might seem like a bittersweet piece of Milk’s legacy, but just as it took violence to give birth to our movement, the shocking victory of Prop 8 woke a sleeping giant. A new generation of activists poured into the streets within a day of the election, protesting the tyranny of the majority that subjected our civil rights to a popular vote.

The man may indeed be dead, but Harvey Milk unquestionably lives forever, in us.

The full piece is here -- I hope you read it, and remember.

Comments

[Red]

Absolutely fantastic article. I finally got to read the review as well. Stellar job! I can't wait to see this movie.

[Leanne]

That was a wonderful, wonderful article. I'm all teary. Great job! I can't wait to see the movie. I'd love to see the documentary too. I wonder if you can still get it anywhere...?

[Travis]

Leanne,

The documentary is on DVD and is rentable through Netflix (or something similar).

Travis

[Phil]

I have never heard of Harvey Milk until I saw the movie with Sean Penn. After knowing Mr. Milk and his life and his accomplishments, I am forever changed. I am now a stronger man. I remember you Mr. Milk, I wish I had known you when you were alive.