“We’re here! We’re Queer!”:

 The Grassroots Politics of Harvey Milk

by Bronwyn Lepore

A teenager in the 70’s, I still remember the rant of the activist parent whenever Anita Bryant, singer, orange juice queen, Christian wing nut and anti-gay crusader came on TV. “Get that hateful woman off; I can’t even look at her.” My mom was a social worker in Camden, New Jersey, and a gay co-worker, Richard Marcucci, often came by the house at night to chat. Mom baked chocolate chip cookies and the scent of a joint and the warm cookies wafted through the louvered doors, as they giggled conspiratorially in the kitchen. The 70’s were a decade of social battlefields and powerful grassroots movements, a decade when identity politics came to the forefront, and conversations around our dinner table were full of hopeful talk of the cultural changes taking place.

In a recent profile in The New Yorker (12/8/2008) Naomi Klein (activist/author of The Shock Doctrine) echoed some of my feelings, and I’m sure we’re not alone, about Obama’s candidacy and the somewhat misplaced hopes for his upcoming presidency: “ ‘I don’t want to appear too cynical, but when I first saw the ‘Yes We Can’ video…my first response was ‘Wow, finally a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike’s. The ‘Yes We Can’ slogan means whatever you want it to mean. It’s very “Just Do It.” When you hear it, you catch yourself thinking, yeah! We’re gonna end torture and shut down Guantanamo and get out of Iraq! And then you think, Wait a minute, is he really saying that? He’s not really saying that, is he? He’s saying we’re going to send more troops to Afghanistan. He’s telling regular people what they want to hear, and then in the back room he’s making deals and signing on to the status quo.” She continues, “ ‘But if people don’t like where Obama is they should move the center…get out there and say some crazy stuff! And then, suddenly, it’ll seem more reasonable for politicians to take riskier positions.’”
 
And that’s what Harvey Milk and the gay rights grassroots movement he was a part of did. They moved the center. They took risks, and won.
Milk’s was a face of 70’s radical transformation and possibility.
Obama may have cut his teeth on community organizing, but his drift has been ever rightward. Look at Obama and Biden’s stance on gay marriage (and any number of other issues) and you’ll get what I mean. Milk wasn’t referencing God and family and the middle-class or cow-towing to centrist perspectives. He was marching at the front of gay pride parades, his arm proudly around his partner, demanding equal rights and treatment for marginalized groups: gays and lesbians, minorities, the elderly and unions.

 
And so Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk brought on a shock of pleasure after weeks of increasingly disgusted feelings over Obama’s appointees, his meetings with Bush to bail out Citigroup (one of the most sickening abusers of monetary power in the world – devastators of Latin American rain forests, predatory lenders, greedy, out-of-control risk-takers), who had, of course, donated equal amounts to the McCain and Obama campaigns, his early, but predictable, betrayals of hope.  Besides telling the story of Milk’s  70’s activism (and personal life) the film highlights the possibilities of transcendent grassroots activism – thousands of gay people in the streets of San Francisco inspiring gay people all over the country in an “I am here; I am queer” statement of “fuck you if you don’t like it” solidarity.

In some ways the film is a shift for Van Sant, whose best films Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005), and Paranoid Park (2007), are non-traditional, atmospheric studies of 90’s youth-culture alienation. Milk is a conventional narrative. But maybe his intention, “in these times” of Prop 8 (whether you think marriage is a conservative cultural tradition is besides the point; it’s a civil rights issue) and conservative cultural values was to recreate and thus encourage possibilities of moving the center.  I mean, how rare is it to witness the manifestation of a politician you can actually admire, feel inspired by, would take to the streets with, who would take to the streets with you? Milk always emphasized that he was not a politician but part of a movement. But he was a pivotal, charismatic leader, who courageously fought the white power establishment, and his death inspired Van Sant and thousands of others to come out of the closet.

While Van Sant deserves the attention (he’s one of the bravest, most experimental mainstream film-makers of the past few decades) this isn’t a film review.  Go see it. Watch Rob Epstein’s 1985 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. 

Milk, a New Yorker and closeted conservative Wall Streeter in the 60’s (he tried to talk one of his boyfriends into campaigning for Barry Goldwater) moved to San Francisco in 1972 at a time when the Castro neighborhood (traditionally Irish Catholic blue-collar) was witnessing a huge influx of gay men and lesbians. By 1969, San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any other U.S. city. A port town, a lot of gay men who’d been expelled from the military settled there. Milk’s countercultural experience of a changing San Francisco encouraged him to be “out” and politicized him.

The film opens with black and white archival footage of police raiding a Miami gay bar, the men shoved into paddy wagons like cattle, a reminder of the harassment gays faced and why so many stayed in the closet. Dade County, Florida, Anita Bryant country, was a pivotal battleground for gay rights.

Milk opened Castro Cameras and started organizing the neighborhood. Strategically turning conservative tactics against the opposition, he created blacklists of businesses hostile to gays. He organized gay bars to support the Teamster’s strike by boycotting Coors and convinced the Teamsters to hire gay drivers. The camera store became a hubbub for neighborhood organizing, but police and other harassment of gays continued, and Milk decided the only real way to gain clout was to become part of the political structure of the city. After 3 tries, during which he and supporters hit the streets and each run gained him more supporters, and changes brought about by Mayor George Moscone who granted more autonomy and decision-making power to neighborhoods - supervisors could be elected by district - Milk was elected to San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1977, becoming the first open gay elected to public office in the U.S.  And his campaign did this with barely any money, and with what one campaign coordinator called a team that was “anything but normal”; grassroots volunteers of all ages, races, shapes, sizes and sexual orientations. It was also the first time a feminist, a black, and a Chinese candidate were elected in San Francisco.  

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Inspired by the anti-gay victories of Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” Christian movement, California state legislator John Briggs created a ballot initiative for November 78, Prop 6, which would ban gays, lesbians and gay rights supporters from working in California public schools. Initially, public sentiment supported the ban, but buoyed by Milk’s win, with networks already in place, progressive, grassroots activists, gays, feminists, rank and file union members, mobilized, and thousands spread out across the state garnering door-to-door support against the initiative. Milk believed the only way to win was to come out, to families, to neighbors, to co-workers, thus the above slogan. A huge risk, personally, socially and economically, Milk’s encouragement was key to turning the tide and to opening up dialogue for what he called “the sensitivities of all people,” and their win was the first defeat against Bryant’s scourge.

Milk knew that as a gay activist he was always a target of hate. A year before he was killed, he recorded a will, announcing: “if a bullet should enter my brain may it knock down every closet door.” On November 27, 1978 Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk were assassinated by the disgruntled, and just resigned city supervisor Dan White. On the night of Milk’s death tens of thousands took the streets in a silent, candle light vigil from the Castro to City Hall. In the infamous “Twinkie defense” case White got off with a 5-year sentence, inciting the White Nights riots that rampaged the city for days. Years later, for Van Sant’s film shoot in the Castro, thousands volunteered for free as extras and as advisors in honor of Milk’s legacy.

Cleve Jones, an organizer for Milk and gay rights, who advised Van Sant stated, “I think it’s important to know that Harvey Milk is not a saint, but he was courageous, he truly cared about people, and he gives an example of how an ordinary person can change the world.” Milk fought for rent control, for senior citizen rights, for parks and schools, “anything that effected little people.” Mostly he fought for the disenfranchised, the voiceless. A nurturer with a temper and a sense of humor who made people feel worthy, the Mayor of Castro Street’s legacy and Van Sant’s film remind us not of the “yes, we can” of the opportunistic politician – years back Nutter promised to defend Philly’s libraries – who bends to the corporate will and holds tight to the center – but of the power of real grassroots activism from below. An independent San Fran weekly in the late 70’s was called “Harvey Milk vs. the Machine.” He was in the streets among the people, fighting the powers that be.