Working Class Heroes: The Mayor of Castro Street

The name Harvey Milk will invoke a raised eyebrow from most people, activists and progressives included.

The name Harvey Milk will invoke a raised eyebrow from most people, activists and progressives included. To those who know of him, his legacy is reduced to a foot note that may look something like this: Harvey Milk, a queer rights activist, was born May 22, 1930 and was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978 by Dan White, who received only seven years in prison sparking the White Night riots of San Francisco. This article will pay Milk a little bit more justice, which he so strongly deserves.

Harvey Milk was indeed primarily motivated by the queer rights movement, but to limit his profound and penetrating political message to this alone is to do him a huge disservice. Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972. At that time homosexuality was a “crime against nature” punishable by 10 years incarceration and homosexuals were persecuted by police and vilified by the public. The Stonewall riots of 1969 sparked a heightened and agitated consciousness to the gay community, which migrated west. In the city of San Francisco (less than 700,000 people at the time) about 1 in 5 adults were gay. Political Action Committees, set up by queer activists, sought to break down stereotypes and gain allies in public figures. It is here that Harvey Milk became politicized.

San Francisco had many immigrant communities that founded ethnic minority merchant associations to empower their neighborhoods. Milk organized the Castro Valley Association (CVA), the gay communities first autonomous source of political power. As president Milk organized boycotts and pickets in support of the cities largest unions. Milk’s message at the time was to make homosexuals visible in order to combat myths and stigmas. Milk viewed codified laws against homosexuality as a Judeo-Christian-Religious proscription over individual liberty and a violation of the separation between church and state (a message still relevant for reproductive and queer activists). These messages quickly evolved into more concrete political action. Milk believed homosexuals couldn’t rely on friends in office and must run for office themselves. The goal of asserting gay pride through political empowerment was not to make people accept “homosexuality” but rather homosexuals as human beings with rights. When Milk later ran for supervisor in 1973 he gained support of the Teamsters and Longshoremen’s Unions. Although he lost, he gained more support in 1975, and finally won in 1977 after serving on the Board of Permit Appeals in 1976.

Once in office Milk put forward a populist agenda that included the needs of all minorities. Inner party politics and public interest groups did not hinder Milk. He was the antithesis of professional politicians, which he claimed were representatives of the interest groups to which they mortgaged their campaigns. Milk always defended the rights of the individual and personal liberties while at the same time he pointed out the socio-economic crisis in America. He criticized the deindustrialization of American cities and the gentrification of ethnic neighborhoods, demolished to make room for offices of finance and management. He noted that this transformation was turning the entire urban infrastructure of America into a gunpowder keg. But Harvey Milk must be remembered for more than just being an insightful critic.
From 1973 to 1977 Milk had made plans to reconcile what he saw as the contradictions between the haves and have-nots. Milk advocated rebuilding neighborhoods in order to revitalize cities. He sharply criticized the government for bribing the urban poor with welfare programs and making them dependent rather than empowering them. Milk’s solutions for America’s cities were very advanced and revolutionary. He wanted cities to only employ residents to keep money circulating within the city and to stop suburban commuters from taking income out and not paying taxes in. He wanted guaranteed employment as a reward for completing a comprehensive education. He wanted increased participation of individuals in the political process as well as increased control of communities over themselves. Of that he stated, “You can’t run a city by people who don’t live there any more than you can have an effective police force made up of people who don’t live there. In either case, what you’ve got is an occupying army.”

Harvey Milk is more than just a martyr for queer rights. His history and his message belong to all working class people and all oppressed people. Although queer oppression was very specific in its targets, although it was central to his identity, his values of solidarity and unity turned his call of liberation into a mass slogan of universal rights for all. Milk always depicted the struggle for gay rights as "the fight to preserve your democracy." His populist agenda would have large ramifications if the broad movement of today adopted it. Perhaps this is why his message has been affectively silenced by everyone who has tried to belittle, downplay, or forget him.

An interesting aspect of Milk’s description of a good city and its leaders is that it contradicts the chief criterion of capitalism, which he hints at. This quotation still addresses the demands of today: “That is the route that has little room for political payoffs and 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 non-moneyed 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.”

Konrad Cukla is a student at New York University, a member of the national committee of the YCL and part of the editorial team of Dynamic.

Illustration by Brandon Slattery