by Randy Shilts
Appendix
I. A Populist Looks at the City
On September 10, 1973, in the midst of his first political campaign, Harvey Milk laid out his basic populist platform at the endorsement session of the San Francisco local of the Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union. The basic themes of this speech remained the core of Milk’s four campaigns and his year in office. (The speech manuscript was provided by the Estate of Harvey Milk.)
A city, any city, can take one of several approaches to the future; whichever approach it takes not only affects the citizens of today but also greatly affects the children of tomorrow—the citizens of tomorrow.
San Francisco, like any other major city, has that choice, and before we get too far down any route we must be sure that it is the route we really want to travel. The present leadership seems to have taken the money route: bigness and wealth. They would like to be remembered as making San Francisco a major money center: a big bankbook. The trouble with this approach is that there is no way whatsoever that this city can ever gain anywhere near the wealth that the New Yorks, the Chicagos have. No matter how much we try we will always be somewhere down on the list. If someone ever wants to add up the bank accounts of our cities, New York is always going to come out on top.
Or our city could take the route of becoming the seat of learning. But, there is no way we will be able to surpass the Bostons … there are just too many great universities throughout the land. We can never become the seat of learning.
Then there is the route that, for some reason or other, no major city has ever tried. That is the route that has little room for political pay-offs, deals … that is the route that leaves little in the way of power politics … that is the route of making a city an exciting place for all to live: not just an exciting place for a few to live! A place for the individual and individual rights. There is no political gain in this nonmonied route and, thus you do not find people with high political ambitions leading this way. There are no statistics to quote … no miles of highways built to brag about, no statistics of giant buildings built under your administration. What you have instead is a city that breathes, one that is alive, where the people are more important than highways.
How does this route stand with our present leadership? They are more impressed with statistics than with life. I want a city that is not trying to become a great bankbook.
San Francisco can start right now to become number one. We can set examples so that others will follow. We can start overnight. We don’t have to wait for budgets to be passed, surveys to be made, political wheelings and dealings … for it takes no money … it takes no compromising to give the people their rights … it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression.
We can start immediately by rereading the Constitution of the United States. We can start immediately by no longer trying to legislate morality. The Constitution calls for the separation of the church and the state … and, yet we find that our legislators end up spending millions of dollars and years of their lives legislating morality.… That money, that time, that energy should be spent in making the city a place for all people. When our Supervisors are more concerned about tearing down a freeway than dental care for the elderly or child-care centers, when our Supervisors are more concerned about the Muni drivers’ benefits and not the least bit concerned about improving service for the riders, when our Supervisors are more concerned about building a multi-million dollar tourist-and-convention center instead of putting that money into an “Operation Bootstrap” to teach the unemployed of San Francisco skills so that there will not be the need to rely on the tourist for jobs, when our Supervisors realize that the best way to attract visitors is not through convention centers but through giving the people of San Francisco real job opportunity so that we can beat poverty, when such a consciousness takes place, when such a human sense of priorities gains hold, we will indeed be number one.
We can start immediately by giving the people of San Francisco and not the people who live in Marin first priorities.… We can start immediately by giving the people who live here and not the tourists first priorities. When we hire someone from outside the city to work for the city that person takes our tax money and spends it in Marin.… He can not be loyal towards the city for he does not live here. The rent he pays, the food he buys, the products for his home … all that is purchased with San Francisco tax money from business outside the city. He does not understand the problems of the city.… How could he? … He does not live here at nighttime. To make the city a better place … to lower the city’s unemployment rate, all city employees must be residents of the city. The policeman who works in the city during the day is not involved in the city’s nighttime problems. Right now San Francisco has seen an increase in the police force, an increase in the police budget, an increase in stolen cars, an increase in burglary and a decrease in our population! Why? Two reasons: 1. Many police do not live in the city.… I never want to hear what I heard last week … a police officer in the downtown sector made this comment to me: “I wouldn’t live in this city if you paid me!” … We do pay him! The second reason is that half of the police budget and effort is wasted on trying to enforce victimless crime laws.… That is like trying to bring back Prohibition! All prohibition did was to create the greatest crime waves and syndicates this country has ever had … and it created a lot of murder. AND ALL IN THE NAME OF MORALITY!! Can’t we learn? It was the moralists of the 20s that created Crime Inc., and now these same moralistic types are once again, in their blindness, trying to force their morality on others, creating organized crime … can they not learn? Do they ever read history? Because of the failure of their family, of their church, they are attempting to make the police force into ministers, while crimes against victims increases.… This false morality is against the Constitution. If they do not like the Constitution, let them amend it. Let them scrap the Declaration of Independence and in the meantime let them go back to God with their morality and become ministers … true ministers. Instead of spending time trying to get the death penalty passed let them reread the Ten Commandments. Let them teach the Commandment: Thou Shall Not Kill. I know of no Commandment that says Thous Shall Not Smoke Marijuana. I know of no Commandment that says: Thou Shall Not Read Dirty Books. I know of no Commandment that says: Thou Shall Not Walk Around Naked. Why are they such moralists when it comes to man-made Commandments and such anti-moralists when it comes to God’s Commandments?
Let me have my tax money go for my protection and not for my prosecution. Let my tax money go for the protection of me. Protect my home, protect my streets, protect my car, protect my life, protect my property. Let my minister worry about my playing bar dice. Let my minister and not some policeman worry about my moral life. Worry about gun control and not marijuana control.… worry about dental care for the elderly and not about hookers … worry about child-care centers and not about what books I might want to read … worry about becoming a human being and not about how you can prevent others from enjoying their lives because of your own inabilities to adjust to life.
II. A City of Neighborhoods
Though California Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally was the keynote speaker at the fundraising dinner the day after Harvey Milk’s inauguration, the new supervisor stole the show with this speech outlining his vision of San Francisco’s future. (The speech manuscript was provided by the Estate of Harvey Milk.)
In 1977, a large seaport city on the East Coast voted to take away the rights of some people. Later that year, another large seaport city, this time on the West Coast, voted into office one of those same people. That same West Coast city once had a frightening nightmare of the future—and the next morning promptly voted against Richard Nixon. Soon a nation followed the lead. That same city voted to decriminalize marijuana and now sees states like Mississippi follow its lead.
That city, our city—San Francisco—has now broken the last
major dam of prejudice in this country and in doing so has done what no other city has done before.
How does one thank a city? I hope, with all my heart, that I can do the job that I have been charged to do and do it so well that the questions raised by my election will be buried once and forever—and that other cities will once again follow San Francisco’s lead.
I understand very well that my election was not alone a question of my gayness, but a question of what I represent. In a very real sense, Harvey Milk represented the spirit of the neighborhoods of San Francisco. For the past few years, my fight to make the voice of the neighborhoods of this city be heard was not unlike the fight to make the voice of the cities themselves be heard.
Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps—whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city—and talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.
Progress is not America’s only business—and certainly not its most important. Isn’t it strange that as technology advances, the quality of life so frequently declines? Oh, washing the dishes is easier. Dinner itself is easier—just heat and serve, though it might be more nourishing if we ate the ads and threw the food away. And we no longer fear spots on our glassware when guests come over. But then, of course, the guests don’t come, because our friends are too afraid to come to our house and it’s not safe to go to theirs.
And I hardly need to tell you that in that 19- or 24-inch view of the world, cleanliness has long since eclipsed godliness. Soon we’ll all smell, look, and actually be laboratory clean, as sterile on the inside as on the out. The perfect consumer, surrounded by the latest appliances. The perfect audience, with a ringside seat to almost any event in the world, without smell, without taste, without feel—alone and unhappy in the vast wasteland of our living rooms. I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop and talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound.
There’s something missing in the sanitized life we lead. Something that our leaders in Washington can never supply by simple edict, something that the commercials on television never advertise because nobody’s yet found a way to bottle it or box it or can it. What’s missing is the touch, the warmth, the meaning of life. A four-color spread in Time is no substitute for it. Neither is a 30-second commercial or a reassuring Washington press conference.
I spent many years on both Wall Street and Montgomery Street and I fully understand the debt and responsibility that major corporations owe their shareholders. I also fully understand the urban battlefields of New York and Cleveland and Detroit. I see the faces of the unemployed—and the unemployable—of this city. I’ve seen the faces in Chinatown, Hunters Point, the Mission, and the Tenderloin … and I don’t like what I see.
Oddly, I’m also reminded of the most successful slogan a business ever coined: The customer is always right.
What’s been forgotten is that those people of the Tenderloin and Hunters Point, those people in the streets, are the customers, certainly potential ones, and they must be treated as such. Government cannot ignore them and neither can business ignore them. What sense is there in making products if the would-be customer can’t afford them? It’s not alone a question of price, it’s a question of ability to pay. For a man with no money, 99¢ reduced from $1.29 is still a fortune.
American business must realize that while the shareholders always come first, the care and feeding of their customer is a close second. They have a debt and a responsibility to that customer and the city in which he or she lives, the cities in which the business itself lives or in which it grew up. To throw away a senior citizen after they’ve nursed you through childhood is wrong. To treat a city as disposable once your business has prospered is equally wrong and even more short-sighted.
Unfortunately for those who would like to flee them, the problems of the cities don’t stop at the city limits. There are no moats around our cities that keep the problems in. What happens in New York or San Francisco will eventually happen in San Jose. It’s just a matter of time. And like the flu, it usually gets worse the further it travels. Our cities must not be abandoned. They’re worth fighting for, not just by those who live in them, but by industry, commerce, unions, everyone. Not alone because they represent the past, but because they also represent the future. Your children will live there and hopefully, so will your grandchildren. For all practical purposes, the eastern corridor from Boston to Newark will be one vast strip city. So will the area from Milwaukee to Gary, Indiana. In California, it will be that fertile crescent of asphalt and neon that stretches from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Will urban blight travel the arteries of the freeways? Of course it will—unless we stop it.
So the challenge of the 80s will be to awaken the consciousness of industry and commerce to the part they must play in saving the cities which nourished them. Every company realizes it must constantly invest in its own physical plant to remain healthy and grow. Well, the cities are a part of that plant and the people who live in them are part of the cities. They’re all connected; What affects one affects the others.
In short, the cheapest place to manufacture a product may not be the cheapest at all if it results in throwing your customers out of work. There’s no sense in making television sets in Japan if the customers in the United States haven’t the money to buy them. Industry must actively seek to employ those without work, to train those who have no skills. “Labor intensive” is not a dirty word, not every job is done better by machine. It has become the job of industry not only to create the product, but also to create the customer.
Costly? I don’t think so. It’s far less expensive than the problem of fully loaded docks and no customers. And there are additional returns: lower rates of crime, smaller welfare loads. And having your friends and neighbors sitting on that well-polished front stoop.
Industry and business has made our country the greatest military and economic power in the world. Now I think it’s time to look at our future with a realistic eye. I don’t think the American Dream necessarily includes two cars in every garage and a disposal in every kitchen. What it does need is an educational system with incentives. To spend twelve years at school—almost a fifth of your life—without a job at the other end is meaningless. Every ghetto child has the right to ask: Education for what?
It’s time for our system to mature, to face the problems it’s created, to take responsibility for the problems it’s ignored. Criminals aren’t born, they’re made—made by a socioeconomic system that has turned crime into a production line phenomenon. “In 1977, there were so many burglaries per second, so many murders per hour.…”
It also sounds simplistic to constantly say that jobs are part of the answer. But there are things to consider. As huge as they are, corporations frequently have more flexibility than the people who work for them. A company headquarters can leave town, a factory can literally pull up stakes and move someplace else. But the workers they leave behind frequently can’t. The scar that’s left isn’t just the empty office building or the now-vacant lot; it’s the worker who can no longer provide for his family, the teenager who suddenly awakens from the American Dream to find that all the jobs have gone south for the duration.
It was an expensive move the company made. You see the empty buildings but you don’t see the hopelessness, the loss of pride, the anger. You’ve done a lot more than just lose a customer. And when I say losing a customer, I don’t mean just your customer. There are other businesses and when they move or shift, the people they leave behind are also your custom
ers, just like yours are theirs.
I think, perhaps, many companies feel that helping the city is a form of charity. I think it more accurate to consider it a part of the cost of doing business, that it should be entered on the books as amortizing the future. I would like to see business and industry consider it as such, because I think there’s more creativity, more competence perhaps, in business than there is in government. I think that business could turn the south of Market Area not only into an industrial park but a neighborhood as well. To coin a pun, too many of our cities have a complex, in fact, too many complexes. We don’t need another concrete jungle that dies the moment you turn off the lights in the evening. What we need is a neighborhood where people can walk to work, raise their kids, enjoy life.
That simple.
And now, I suspect, some of the business people in this room are figuring—perhaps rightly—that they’ve heard all this before. Why is it always business that’s supposed to save the city? Why us? Why isn’t somebody else doing something? How about you, for a change, Harvey? What the hell are the rest of the people in this room doing? And you’ve got a point. But I merely suggest that business must help, that we must open up a dialogue that involves all of us. A businessperson’s decisions aren’t his alone, for the simple reason that they affect far more people than just himself. And we have to consider those other people. Those are the ghosts that sit on your board of directors and they must be respected.