Archive of Hope

by Milk, Harvey

  That Milk had indeed made a statement during the campaign is evidenced by the nearly 17,000 votes he garnered, finishing tenth in a field of thirty-two candidates. More heartening still, Milk realized that had there been district elections, voters in San Francisco’s GLBTQ neighborhoods, despite the Toklas Club’s opposition, would have delivered him to City Hall. SIR official and Vector editor William Beardemphl presciently observed in his Bay Area Reporter “Comments” column that, “Above and beyond his race for Supervisor, Harvey Milk IS opening the door to government a little wider so that all homosexuals of ability can enter politics without a destructive homosexual stigmata imposed on them.”55 Milk appears to have been emboldened by the experience and results, for he almost immediately cast his sights on the 1975 campaign and during the interim would become an even more dedicated and visible community and gay rights activist. During this period, Milk’s political vision solidified and public voice amplified more prominently as he launched biweekly columns for the Sentinel (“Waves from the Left,” February to September 1974) and Bay Area Reporter (“Milk Forum,” May 1974 until the week of his death, November 1978) and regularly took to the streets in protest against homophobic discrimination, harassment, and violence, or in celebration of and communion with his GLBTQ neighbors, friends, and allies.

  During 1974 and 1975, Milk continued his broad-based populism, but he also unmistakably sought to mobilize his own community toward seizing and consolidating its power through strength in numbers, solidarity, votes, and economic influence. In his effort at consciousness raising, Milk implored GLBTQ people that “the only important issue for homosexuals is Freedom. All else is meaningless. . . . Many people think that they are FREE because they have a lot of money and live in ‘good’ neighborhoods. But the homosexual is not free until there are NO laws on ANY books suppressing him and not until he, if he so wishes, can join the police force or any government agency as an open homosexual. It is as simple as that.”56 In his Vector editorial, among the selected documents, Milk invoked Martin Luther King, Jr., and memories of the Montgomery bus boycott to punctuate his call for “full citizenship” and struggle against homophobia: “the homosexual community is the last minority group that has received no civil rights. . . . In order for homosexuals to win our right to self-respect and equality, we must first assert our full existence and then its strength.”

  Once awakened, according to Milk’s political calculus, GLBTQ people must act collectively to concentrate and strategically wield their power, which he theorized in economic, political, and communal terms. Milk’s “Waves from the Left” column in the Sentinel on “Political Power,” included in this volume, emphasized that change only comes through the exercise of material influence. That power begins with registering to vote, which is why Milk appropriated diverse occasions for that purpose and enlisted as many volunteers as he could muster (always recruiting) to help with drives (2,000 new voters for the 1974 gubernatorial election and many more for his own campaign in 1975). For those registered, Milk urged that political power works best in withholding votes until a sense of urgency among “friendly” candidates leverages sturdier pledges rather than automatically or prematurely offering votes for the price of a trivial campaign courting appearance.57 Milk lashed out at his gay establishment nemeses for being what he called, in the selected editorial of the same name, “Aunt Marys,” the equivalent of Uncle Toms, who sold out by toadying to straight liberal politicians who forgot their GLBTQ constituents once elected. Then GLBTQ voters should cast their ballots as a bloc, the sheer size of which would likely determine the outcomes of elections, making the community’s presence unmistakable and influence palpable and in turn, quid pro quo, desirable capital. During 1974, Milk also began his practice of publishing endorsements, and disqualifications, with detailed political analysis specific to communal interests. Milk declared, “Every person in this state owes it not only to himself, but for all gay people who will follow us years from now[,] to vote for freedom.”58

  Second, Milk insisted, “Economic power is stronger than any other form of power. . . . There is tremendous amount of economic power and strength in the San Francisco gay community. It has never been effectively brought together. It looks as if it will now happen.”59 Milk’s optimism stemmed from those existing and emerging associations—Gay Chamber of Commerce, Gay Community Guild, Tavern Guild, and Golden Gate Business Association—he supported, and the Castro Village Association he founded, which welcomed 5,000 for its first Castro Street Fair in August 1974 (25,000 in 1975, 100,000 in 1976).60

  Third, Milk advocated the power of solidarity and coalition. He argued that GLBTQ people and politicians must eradicate endemic jealously and infighting; otherwise, such divisions amounted to complicity in their own oppression. In the Bay Area Reporter, Milk averred, “The day we can pick up a gay paper and not find any attacks on other gays, the movement will start to unite. It can never have full power as long as one person, for whatever reasons, attacks others in the movement . . . to go after another gay person for their doing their trip in the movement, is to attack the entire movement.”61 He convened a task force to explore paths to unification. Milk also urged the support of the Teamsters in the Coors Boycott as well as other unions, reasoning, “If we in the gay community want others to help us in our fight to end discrimination, we must help others in their fights.”62 About the neighborhood baseball challenge between the “gay all stars” and “champs of the local Twilight League,” Milk effused, “Just the playing of the game did more to bring relations between the community than any other event, act, speech, law. . . . That game was a victory for better relationships between the straight youths and the gays.”63

  Beyond this communal power vision, Milk also became bolder in his confrontation with individuals and institutions harming GLBTQ people and other San Franciscans. Milk lambasted the city government for giving taxpaying members of the Gay Freedom Day Committee the “run-a-round” regarding permits and parade routes (but not other similar groups),64 and in his Open Letter included in the volume, chided the San Francisco Chronicle for sensationalizing gay pride without sensitivity to the plight of GLBTQ people. He openly opposed political candidates like John Foran and Dianne Feinstein for their absent or phony solidarity, and ridiculed the Board of Supervisors for its failures, hypocrisy, and fawning compliance with downtown interests. “The time has come,” he insisted, “Either the Board and the city agencies give to the gay community what any other group can get or don’t come around courting our votes.”65 He unremittingly indicted police brutality and harassment, which he likened to Nazi oppression of the Jews, exemplified in his published and street protests of the Labor Day beatings at Toad Hall bar and subsequent jailing of the “Castro 14.” In the face of such homophobic discrimination and violence, and bringing together all the elements of his platform, Milk called for economic and political mobilization.66

  During the first campaign in 1973, Milk began telling reporters that some were calling him the “unofficial mayor of Castro Street,” a clever moniker. His words and actions during 1974–1975 suggest that he may have perceived himself, and perhaps was beginning to be perceived by friends and enemies alike, as the unofficial, emergent leader of a (new) GLBTQ power movement.67 Milk reflected in a New York Times interview, “I’m a left-winger, a street person. . . . Most gays are politically conservative, you know, banks, insurance, bureaucrats. So their checkbooks are out of the closet, but they’re not. So you try to get something going, and all the gay money is still supporting Republicans except on this gayness thing, so I say, ‘Gay for Gay.’ That’s my issue. That’s it. That’s the big one.”68 It is worth noting that Milk’s candidacy operated within a state and local political culture that connected economic justice, rights discourse, and identity politics. Bell explains, “From the perspective of liberal politicians experimenting with a reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and society it was inevitable that discussions of social marginalization in the
1950s and beyond would allow a widening of the left-of-center political lexicon that could be responsive to homophile activism. One of Harvey Milk’s early successes as a leading gay activist in the Castro in 1973 was to help the Teamsters extend a boycott of Coors beer into the gay bars, linking gay rights to economic issues.”69

  However, Milk suggests in his Sentinel column “Where I Stand,” among the selected documents, that any exclusive political categorization is a foolhardy venture, doomed to being inaccurate or incomplete. Note, for instance, pollster Mervin Field’s analysis in Time, in which he commented on the two tides of the 1975 election: “One is the ebbing tide of traditional liberal, labor and cultural concepts—the idea that government can do it for you. Against this is the rising tide of the ‘new conservatism’—which is related to fear about crime, the inability to get services from government, and fiscal responsibility.”70 The Harvey Milk of his second campaign, perhaps paradoxically, passionately espoused positions consonant with both tides Field identified.71 The ponytail shorn, replaced by a second-hand, two-piece suit, Milk’s hippie persona yielded to a clean-shaven one no less down to earth and outspoken but with broader visual and thus political appeal. Shilts reported that, “Milk’s appearance and demeanor became so devastatingly average that he sometimes had to fend off allegations that he was actually heterosexual. ‘If I were . . . there sure would be a lot of surprised men walking around San Francisco.’”72

  Although Milk’s second campaign has received comparatively scant attention, its significance should be understood in relation to the political traction he was gaining, the progressive muckraking he was advocating, and the gay rights agenda his visibility was advancing. The Bay Area Reporter’s preview of Milk’s campaign reveals the extent to which his vision had retained a balance and connectedness between GLBTQ concerns and those of all San Franciscans: “Milk’s four-point program calls for a ‘Fair Share’ tax for those who work in The City but don’t live here, for taxis and buses to be equipped so they can report crimes-in-progress directly to Police headquarters, for the Fire Department to be supplied with the most modern equipment available, and for ‘the Board’s present sense of priorities to be reoriented to the people and not to downtown interests.’”73 Indeed, his “Milk Forum” columns throughout 1975 not only reiterated the GLBTQ power blueprint he had been articulating but addressed a broad range of local issues, including national and city economic conditions, MUNI deficiencies, Yerba Buena development, property tax assessments and housing, bail bondsmen, the Coors boycott (again), and the police strike.

  Of course, his gay rights advocacy continued apace during the 1975 campaign. In his “Milk Forum” columns, he railed against City Hall for not providing funds for the Gay Freedom Day Committee while doing so for others, and decried the lack of media coverage of an event with more than 80,000 participants and spectators; he reminded his readers of the value of holding their vote pledges so as to get the most from their political “friends” he urged a continuation of the GLBTQ Coors boycott even after the national Teamsters eliminated the local chapter’s effort; he called for lobbying in support of AB489 and AB633, the consenting sex and fair employment legislation pending in the California Assembly.

  Significant, too, about the 1975 election is that candidates, especially for the mayoralty, courted votes and endorsements from the GLBTQ community as never before. Perhaps because of Milk’s trenchant critiques of the “gay groupie syndrome” and his passionate call for GLBTQ political power through decisive voting blocs, campaign hopefuls became increasingly attentive. How remarkable it must have been to read in the Los Angeles Times Supervisor John L. Molinari proclaiming, “The gay vote is a key element for any elected official in San Francisco.”74 Or to see mayoral candidate Dianne Feinstein chanting for the gay men’s softball team against rival police department at their fourth annual game; or to hear that Feinstein had hosted and presided over the lesbian wedding of Human Rights Committee liaison Jo Daly and her partner. Or to finally witness the passage of the state law legalizing sex between consenting adults, thus defeating sodomy’s long criminalization, thanks largely to State Senate Majority Leader and mayoral candidate George Moscone and his ally Willie Brown. Moscone’s conservative opponent in the runoff that December learned the hard way that you ignored or maligned “you people,” a term he used in a well-publicized meeting, at your political peril. Moscone publicly thanked Harvey Milk in his acceptance speech.75

  Though Milk was not victorious, he finished seventh behind six incumbents out of a twenty-nine candidate field, despite renewed opposition from gay establishment politicos, with 52,649 votes, strongly supported from the Castro (where he garnered 60–70 percent) to Haight-Ashbury and Pacific Heights.76 Jim Rivaldo, who along with Frank Robinson and Danny Nicoletta had joined Milk that year, proclaimed in light of the prescient color-coded map at Castro Camera, “We got the hippie, McGovern, and fruit voters.”77 Milk described the GLBTQ presence in this campaign season as having achieved “unprecedented political influence.”78 Despite the defeat, Milk had arrived. As Clendinen and Nagourney observe, “No one considered him a fluke anymore. He was part of a phenomenon, the sheer accumulation of gay influence in the city. . . . The boldest, most visible new element of that voting population was in the Castro, and by the end of 1975, Harvey Milk was clearly its voice—and the most public gay figure in the city.”79

  Were further proof needed of Milk’s new political capital, it came in Mayor Moscone’s appointment of him to the significant Board of Permit Appeals. (It had not hurt, of course, that Milk had publicly offered his unsolicited support to candidate Moscone in the run-off mayoral election against Supervisor John Barbagelata). Openly gay Commissioner Milk: a first in U.S. politics. As his friends and allies remembered, it certainly had a ring to it. Moscone called Milk “a pioneer.” Even better, he said Milk wouldn’t be a pioneer for long—the Bay Area Reporter headline read: “Moscone: Milk Appointment Is Just the Beginning.”80 The GLBTQ promise of the Moscone Administration was deepened by the appointment of Charles Gain as the first chief of police to publicly avow support for out cops on the force (for which Milk had been clamoring), as well as the election of District Attorney Joe Freitas, who pledged to end prosecutions for victimless crimes.81 In “Milk Forum” he gushed, “[T]he gay community now has a mayor—for the first time ever!—who is not only understanding of our particular problems, but who wants to correct the inequalities.”82

  Ever the maverick, however, Milk served the shortest recorded term on the Permit Appeals Board; the Moscone dreams quickly soured. Milk had gotten wind of a purported deal among a number of state and national politicians, including Moscone, California Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy, Congressmen Phil Burton and his brother John, and Assemblymen John Foran and Willie Brown. It was a multi-move, multilevel political orchestration that would mend rifts and solidify the new Democratic regime in California, with implications for the U.S. Congress. The last person in this political pact: Art Agnos, a McCarthy aide, who would be the heir apparent of the 16th Assembly District—Milk’s District. Board of Supervisors President Quentin Kopp memorably called this political arrangement an “Unholy Alliance.”83 That Mayor Moscone had dismissed Milk from the Board of Permit Appeals on the grounds that one could not hold such a position while campaigning—when he himself had done so a number of times—heightened the stench for some. In the Bay Guardian article entitled “Ganging Up on Harvey Milk,” Bruce Brugmann and Jerry Roberts railed against what they described as “a naked, unabashed power play. . . . The hypocrisies abound.”84

  True to political character, Milk was outraged by the machinations. As he said in his declaration of candidacy, among the selected 1976 documents: “I think representatives should be elected by the people—not appointed. I think a representative should earn his or her seat—I don’t think the seat should be awarded on the basis of service to the machine.” Given the math—what that impressive map indicated about voting patterns in Milk’s campaign
s, the 1974 vote total in the 16th District for John Foran, and the fact that Art Agnos was a political unknown—Milk’s prospects for success appeared strong. “Milk vs. The Machine” became the slogan derived from media that fanned Milk’s audacious challenge. This crusade seemed very much in keeping the vision Milk had championed since 1973. He wrote on his 1976 “Declaration of Candidacy” application: “My candidacy gives you a choice. Machine politics or an independent voice? . . . A Machine doesn’t serve people, it rewards only people who slave it. I will fight to prevent San Francisco from becoming a Chicago politically.”85

  Perhaps it is too obvious to call Milk’s Assembly campaign a transitional moment, given the requisite performance on the larger stage and greater complexities of California state politics. The transition we have in mind here, however, is toward a national political arena, one that made possible his deft leadership in engaging and exploiting the more familiar homophobic national spectacle of 1977. Although Milk had always commented on issues of national concern, in 1976 his commentaries on the impact of the Coors boycott, the Supreme Court’s homophobia,86 Nixon’s legacy, the presidential primary election, California’s Nuclear Initiative, Angola, the failed revolutionary legacy of 1776, Bob Dole, and of course on GLBTQ lives and the gay rights movement all seem to suggest an ever-expanding political vision. After his own race had ended in June, Milk focused much attention on the presidential race. A picture of Milk shaking hands with Jimmy Carter appeared in the Bay Area Reporter, and his endorsement of Carter, announced in the selected document, “’Uncertainty’ of Carter or the ‘Certainty’ of Ford,” was enthusiastic despite Carter’s discomfort and ambivalence regarding the GLBTQ community. (Milk would later challenge President Carter to address the human rights of GLBTQ people and encouraged a writing campaign to lobby the White House.) Milk counseled his readers and supporters to learn lessons from the African American community by exercising their voting power in the election, by voting as a bloc for Carter and other candidates sympathetic to gay rights.87