Harvey Milk

Wanted to discuss the movie, Milk, and it seemed an elusive subject because there are various aspects about the story of Harvey Milk that seemed -- they get jounced and jumbled in my memory because I only learned about him and his aims and accomplishments in small bits and pieces over a period of several decades.

And I guess I wasn't looking to learn about him -- the information and understanding just drifted in.  To my head.

A few years ago on You Tube I noticed there was a documentary called "The Times Of Harvey Milk."  Think I watched some of it -- and it was a surprising and emphatic moment because thought, "Oh my gosh, I haven't thought of this "Harvey Milk" in years, decades, and yet it was so clear in my head, the memory of this bizarre news story that sort of burst upon us in November 1978:  in San Francisco, one of the city supervisors, Dan White, had gone into the city hall & assassinated two people -- San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, and another city supervisor, Harvey Milk.

(A board of "city supervisors" ran things -- they're elected -- think it's like a town council but they use a different term....)

This news story would sort of flow by me as it broke and then developed -- I didn't follow the news closely -- was in college, did not have a TV, & was busy...yet I absorbed the substance of the event in little pieces, involuntarily.

Part of the reason the story would catch your attention was the name Milk.  (Milk?  That's his name.  Milk.  Even that small detail put a claim on your awareness, because you would notice it, & then you would remember some of what they were saying....)

I'm not from San Francisco, never been there -- I was clear across the country in Boston -- yet in some sense just the shadowy outlines of this story hovering near one's consciousness had a subtly gripping effect.

It was like -- What??!

These people -- two city supervisors and a mayor (along with the rest of the Board of Supervisors) -- are supposed to be in charge of things, working together to keep things going and handle any problems -- and one of them kills the other two??  What the hell?  And who gets that excited over city issues?
(Well probably lots of people, but at the age I was then, I could hardly imagine that.)

But -- the issues were not sewers or sidewalks or building permits -- Dan White seems to have been one of those people who was unhappy or uncomfortable with himself, and took it out on others.

And a component of the news stories at the time was the fact that Harvey Milk was gay.

(Did the guy kill him because he didn't like gay people?  What does that accomplish?  It made you wonder.)

Then I lost track -- thinking of other things.
And later came the trial of Dan White and the infamous "Twinkie Defense" -- a slang term coined by the press to describe how Dan White's lawyers brought in White's consumption of "junk food" as part of the defense -- he was temporarily off his rocker because of too much sugar or something.  (Or -- as one internet thing claims, it wasn't the sugar, but the idea that White had been very health-conscious and suddenly he switched to eating junk food & that showed that he was depressed enough to do something desperate.  Pretty "thin soup" either way, I think.)

(The twinkie defense may have kicked off a rolling-ride of barreling mistrust [or nagging uncertainty] of the legal system which drove the American public all the way to the train wreck that was the O.J. trial 16 years later.)

Anyway --
approx. 2008 or 9, 30 years after the murders, watching some of "The Times of Harvey Milk" the realization dawned on me that Harvey Milk was not only a S.F. city supervisor who happened to be gay -- he was a major, and enthusiastic, neighborhood organizer who -- covered gay issues, but also in general, human issues:  his concern was for the civil rights of everyone, and living together in a peaceful, positive manner.  (who-can-argue-widdat?...)

...and then watching the movie Milk a few days ago, the sentence, "he was the first openly gay man to be elected to major public office in America" made its way into my consciousness, and then -- one can kind of put the aspects together and see the big picture.

The 1978 killings sort of brought to the forefront, or at least into public consciousness, the idea of --
some people are gay but you don't know they are,
and other people are --
"openly gay."

To the gay community, the murder of Harvey Milk meant an attack on their movement for civil rights, and it made him a martyr and an icon.

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