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Who Was Harvey Milk and why is he important?

Part 2: “Power to the People!”
By Luke Gilleran

Harvey Milk’s public life was a scant 5 years in duration, all but one year of it spent running for office and being defeated three of four times. He served in elected office for only eleven months, sponsored only two pieces of legislation - one an important Gay Rights Bill, and the other a “pooperscooper” bill (Milk had said, “anyone who can solve the dog shit problem in San Francisco can be elected mayor”). How then did Harvey Milk become the most powerful and beloved gay leader and martyr; one of the most powerful political figures in California politics; one of Time Magazine’s end-of-millennium “Most Influential People of the 20th Century?” How is it that Milk’s death resulted in a spontaneous candlelight vigil attended by countless thousands in San Francisco on the night of his assassination; attendance at his memorial service by prominent officials from all over the country as well as every member of the California Supreme Court; 250,000 gays marching on Washington D.C. the following year, in his memory; the placement of a statue in San Francisco’s city hall, 30 years after his assassination; a major motion picture about his life; and successful legislation to mark his birthday as a California “Day of Recognition” (the bill was subsequently vetoed by governor Schwarzenegger last May)? How did Harvey Milk’s legacy draw such attention? The answer is, he single-handedly changed the course of the gay movement. He introduced gays to their power, convinced them they deserved it, and showed the straight community for the first time ever, it was in their best interest to recognize that what gays had to offer - or withhold – was more important than their prejudices. It’s not time yet for a gay Supervisor” (a high office in San Francisco politics), said Jim Foster, one San Francisco’s gay leaders in 1973. “When is it ever going to be time? If not now, when?” Harvey Milk responded. He refused to believe Foster was correct, even after Milk lost his first election, finishing tenth out of the field of candidates. He did receive an impressive 17,000 votes though, even with the antipathy of the gay leaders, and a lack of endorsements from gay social organizations. In fact, if the Board of Supervisors had been elected in specific city districts, as opposed to the city at large, Milk would have won the seat from the Castro district. He began to analyze the returns and saw that gays voted as a bloc. Immediately he knew this would be the source of their power. To leverage that power he would have to convince the straight world the power existed. Sadly, he had to convince gays, they deserved what that power could yield them. In 1973, when running that first political campaign, Milk was in the waning days of his hippie persona, wearing his long black ponytail, ragged blue jeans and flannel shirts. It became clear during that election his long hair was a turn-off to his potential constituents. Milk came to the realization but said “if I cut my hair in mid campaign, it might seem disingenuous”. The day after he lost the election, he cut his hair and bought a suit at the local thrift store. It is said Harvey Milk ran “by himself” in that campaign. To say that it was difficult for Milk to gain endorsements is an understatement as he couldn’t secure support from the gay social organizations and their leaders. To their chagrin, Milk implored gays to take the opposite approach to gaining rights; to come out of the closet, become visible to dispel all of the stereotypical myths, and indeed run for political office as a means of directly influencing policy. He also believed gays as political figures in power would give hope to those living in fear. Giving people hope became a theme in Milk’s campaigning and politics. In one of his now famous “Hope Speeches”, he said,

“I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of those I encounter who have lost hope, whether it be young gays, gay seniors, blacks looking for the almost-impossible-to-find-job, or Latinos trying to explain their problems and aspirations in a tongue that’s foreign to them. No, it’s not my election, it’s yours. It will mean that a green light is lit to say to all who feel lost and disenfranchised, that you can go forward. It means hope, and without hope all of us give up. One can’t live on hope alone, yet without it, life is not worth living. And we - no, you, and you, and you, and yes, you, you’ve got to give them hope.”

Milk knew that agreeing with the notion the world was not ready for gay candidates was a symptom of the underlying oppression they experienced. “Gays are so oppressed, they don’t even know they are oppressed,” he would say. He saw the gay “problem” as partly resulting from gays buying in, on some level, to the notion they were in fact, undeserving of equality. This “internalized” homophobia, as it since has been termed, was underscored in a story told by Craig Rodwell, a hero of the Stonewall unrest, and a member of one of the first underground gay groups, The Mattachine Society, in San Francisco. The Mattachine Society was the organization that made Harry Hay important in gay history and its existence dates back to the mid twentieth century. In the sixties, Rodwell proposed the Mattachine Society issue a position paper that publicly decreed gays were equal to everyone else and deserving of rights. The organization threw out the statement. Although gays of those days believed they were entitled to be left alone, to live in peace, and even have some rights, none was fighting for the notion of "equality,” which was as foreign to most gays as it was to society in general. Many, if not all gays would become straight tomorrow, if they could, and saw their orientation as a problem, not a source of pride and self-affirmation. Harvey Milk told gays they deserved equality before they believed it themselves. He knew without this belief, their hearts would be absent the desire and resolve crucial to winning that equality. While campaigning on the issues he took time to beseech gays to come out of the closet and be recognized. And, like Malcom X, Stokley Carmichael and others of the second wave of black leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, who told their followers to shed their suits and ties, dresses, straightened hair, and other attempts to “be like whites,” and believe “black is beautiful,” Harvey Milk instilled gay pride, convincing many gays that being gay was something to be proud of, not a burden to carry while attempting to gain favor with the straight world. Piercing the thick shell of internalized homophobia was no easy task, in light of how beaten down gays were. Behind the scenes, Milk often became discouraged at the lack of resolve in the gay community. “Here I am, campaigning sixteen hours a day,” he complained, “And what for? A group of people who don’t want to stand up for themselves, who don’t even seem to know they are the ones who are going to have to stand up if we’re ever going to win this thing.” Notwithstanding his private feelings, Harvey never let his public passion and enthusiasm wane. His rousing speeches chipped away at the self hate, and eventually instilled pride and entitlement, while showing gays they were a “community” (In response to Milk often using the term “gay community,” one union leader was overheard asking, “What the fuck is a gay community?”). By convincing gays they were equal and deserving of equality, he turned the “gay liberation movement” into a civil rights movement. He took a social movement and turned it into a political phenomenon. The result was the emergence of Gay Power. For the first time ever, the straight community realized there was a gay voting block and gay purchasing power. “When you possess votes and money, they’ll love you, even while they hate you,” he would quip.

Milk new that coming out of the closet would normalize gays to some extent in the eyes of the straight world. He knew that if he could be on the right side of issues affecting grass roots San Franciscans, he could win an election, not despite his gayness, but because of it. “Blacks won the right to sit anywhere in the bus for the wrong reason, but they won,” he argued. “When you want to win, it doesn’t make a difference if you win for the wrong reason. It’s better than not winning at all.” While other gay leaders were working hard to keep a low profile and quietly gain the favor of straight liberal politicians to work on their behalf, Milk was doing everything he could to draw attention to himself, his campaign, his homosexuality, and the gay community as a whole. Drawing from his producing days on Broadway, he new the value of publicity, and was considered a master at getting his name and causes in print. He knew rights would be gained by linking increased visibility to the votes and money gays possessed. Harvey Milk’s genius was his belief that the personal interests of the straight world would subsume its homophobia. He was certain rights would not be won by attempting to show straights the moral problems with discrimination. Instead, he reasoned the straight community was self centered enough to compromise their prejudices if there was something to be gained in doing so, or lost by not doing so.

What began to make Milk himself popular with straight voters was his insistence he would be represent all people, not just gays. He took a populist stand on all of the issues facing the common citizen, and convinced politicians of the day that the gay community could help or hinder their campaigns. He said, “All of the elected or campaigning politicians wishing the support of the gay community, either through votes or money, will have to respond in kind, by supporting gay rights in the legislature and funding gay issues”. His contribution to gay rights was his determination that the current strategy of asking liberal straights to fight for gay rights was ineffective and resulted in mere “crumbs” at best. “I doubt anybody is going to give us anything because they like us; we are going to have show them what’s in it for them. It’s rudimentary politics,” he would say. Harvey Milk showed gays their power and how to use it, while convincing straights that gay power existed. This, in a nutshell is his legacy.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and the groups that were the most homophobic would eventually endorse Harvey Milk’s candidacy and assist in securing his win in his fourth and final campaign. The Academy Award winning documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk, consists of interviews with people who knew and respected Milk. One of the principle interviewees is Jim Elliot, a machinist union representative who was given the task of informing the rank and file the union was leaning toward support for Milk’s candidacy. “How was I going to go back to the members and tell them the union was endorsing a fruit?” he explained in the film. He was won over by Harvey Milk’s ability to bring together emotional crowds with oppositional opinions, and by his command of people issues. “When you hear Harvey Milk talk, you listen because at some point you know he is going to talk about you,” Elliot said, making Harvey’s argument that self-interest would overcome homophobia.

The local teamsters union eventually supported Milk as well. They had been attempting a boycott of Coors beer in San Francisco bars based on the Coors Company’s staunchly anti-union position. The boycott had stalled and Milk was recruited to assist in revitalizing the effort by convincing the gay bars of San Francisco to stop selling the brand. Always a proponent of the working class and its unions, Milk agreed to get involved on the condition that the teamsters start to hire gays. The union leader was impressed that Harvey Milk did not seek an endorsement, only jobs. Milk was successful, Coors beer was removed from all of the gay bars, he received the endorsement, and the teamsters began to hire gays.

Once elected, need facilitated the expansion of Harvey Milk’s political sphere and influence. Just like the recent fight against Proposition 8 in California, thirty years ago Proposition 6 would have made it illegal to be gay and seek work in any state public school, and would have forced gay teachers back in the closet to avoid termination. Before he stepped in and led the fight against the measure, the polls indicated a strong victory for conservatives. Elsewhere in the country, Anita Bryant, a former Miss America, spokes-person for the Florida Orange Juice Commission and born-again Christian, was on a rampage, repealing gay rights wherever they had been won. So severe was the nation’s backlash against gays at the time, it looked as if Proposition 6 might win even in San Francisco, the epicenter of the gay movement. Harvey Milk raised funds and debated state senator John Briggs, the bill’s sponsor, wherever he went. Milk’s eloquence and debating skills dwarfed Briggs’ and the senator appeared absurd by comparison. At one debate, when Briggs claimed school children would be negatively influenced by gay teachers and become gay themselves, Milk responded, “I grew up with heterosexual teachers, parents and siblings, in a culture that is fiercely heterosexual and why am I not a heterosexual. No disrespect intended, but if teachers had that much influence on students, there would be a lot more nuns running around!” Harvey Milk almost singlehandedly turned around the sentiment on Proposition 6, leading it to a sound defeat by a large margin. He was at the height of his political powers, the clear leader of gay politics in California, and was gaining prominence and credibility as a true political force elsewhere. He was beginning to forge his legacy. Years after his death, evidence of Milk’s legacy was seen in San Francisco’s response to the AIDS epidemic. The political clout gays gained in California due to Harvey Milk’s work resulted in funding for AIDS in San Francisco at one-hundred times the money spent in New York, despite having one fourth the number of cases. Because of Milk’s insistence that overcoming gay oppression was accomplished by coming out of the closet and dispelling myths; and because so many gays came out in response to his speeches and ultimately his assassination, the gay community in California had no fear of visibility in raising funds and setting up organizations to help AIDS sufferers. In New York, by contrast, most gay leaders were still in hiding and the gay community had no ability to affect policy and funding (Many think Mayor Ed Koch, a confirmed bachelor, was afraid that helping gays would underscore rumors that he was gay). When the Gay Men's Health Crisis was planning its first fund raising dinner, its president, Paul Popham (who was the real Marlboro Man in cigarette ads), was so closeted, he threw out all of the invitations and had them reprinted without the reference to his name, fearing his signature as president of a gay organization would out him. A cohesive “gay community,” at least in a political sense, did not exist in New York, consequently little money was raised or appropriated, and New York gays were woefully absent in the early days of AIDS. When the epidemic finally became more than a "gay disease" and New York began to allocate meaningful resources, some three years after the outbreak, thousands of gay men were dead and countless others infected. When the city attempted to play catch-up, they used San Francisco as a model for responding to the epidemic. Throughout his political life, especially after his election win and subsequent visibility, Harvey Milk was keenly aware his life was in danger. And since his high school days, while still an unknown, he had a strange sense he would die before his 50th birthday. He often said, “I have always felt there is something sinister down the road for me.” Many believe that is why he threw himself into gay politics forsaking all efforts to plan or secure a financial future. He was all but destitute at the time of his death, earning only a $9,000 yearly salary as a Supervisor, and spending any profits from his cameras store on his campaigns. Milk knew a highly visible gay person in a position of power was an extremely popular target for a homophobic assassin. He received constant death threats, but refused to change anything about his life and mission. The night he was elected to the Board of Supervisors, he tape recorded a will that spoke to his personal choice for a potential replacement, and to his vision for the gay movement. He would modify that will several times over the next eleven months. The final version began with these prophetic words,

“This is Harvey Milk speaking on Friday November 18, 1978. This tape is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. …I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for—an activist, a gay activist—becomes the target or potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid or very disturbed…. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, at any time, I feel it’s important that some people know my thoughts, and why I did what I did. Almost everything that was done was done with an eye on the gay movement. …”

“I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad in response to my death, but I hope they will take the frustration and madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope that they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights. … All I ask. is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door…”

Harvey Bernard Milk, was assassinated in City Hall, nine days later, at age 48. In the years that have followed, his legacy has been apparent, and those that know of his accomplishments revere him. Yet there are still many in both the straight and gay communities who ask, “Who is Harvey Milk?” Much has been written about him as the first elected gay official in the United States, and although his legacy is much more than that, one must look past the brevity of his political tenure to define his legacy. He ushered in the notion of Gay Pride and helped gays everywhere begin the process of healing the effects of centuries of oppression. He showed the straight community that gays were more than the punch lines of sick jokes. He set the bar very high for all future gay rights activists by his willingness to pay the ultimate price for his beliefs, while feeling death was a certainty. The major motion picture will solidify Milk’s legacy in the minds of many people who had yet to know his name, and after watching the movie many will be wondering how Harvey Milk could, despite his accomplishments and subsequent recognition, have remained the least famous, famous person in the history of civil rights.

The Hope Speech

“Somewhere in Des Moines or San Antonio, there is a young person who realizes all of a sudden, she or he is gay; knows that if the parents find out he will be tossed out of the home, the friends and schoolmates will taunt the child, and the Anita Bryants’ and John Briggs’ are doing their hateful things on radio and T. V. The child has two options - stay in the closet or commit suicide. And then one day the child opens up the paper and reads, ‘homosexual elected in San Francisco’, and now the child has two new options - move to California, or stay in San Antonio and fight! Two days after I was elected, I received a phone call. The voice was quite young. It was from Altoona PA, and the person said, ‘thanks’. All of you have to elect gay people so that child and thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of others like that child know there is hope for a better world; there’s hope for a better tomorrow. Without hope, all of us give up. You can’t live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you and you and you, have got to give them hope”.