An Archive of Hope. Harvey Milk
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