WI Legislator: Is Harvey Milk a real person?

And if they really don't know who he is they should not be holding public office and should just shut the fuck up.

I was born in '63 and have always lived over 5000 miles from San Francisco, across both the whole of the US and the Atlantic, and even I know who Harvey Milk was! 

I’m glad to see people know the name Harvey Milk.  But do you know what he accomplished?  If you don’t why not?

How about these folks, Marsha P. Johnson, Larry Kramer, Bayard Rustin, & Randy Wicker.  Do you know who they are?  These folks were LGBTQ activists during Harvey Milk’s time of the 1960s & 1970s.  If you know who Harvey Milk was shouldn’t you know their names as well and what they did?

Yes a movie was made about Harvey Milk’s life.  It starred Sean Penn who received an Academy Award for Best Actor.  The movie also received an Academy Award for writing and a nomination for Best Picture.  But the gross worldwide gross ticket sales were only $54M.  Which means it might have been a well made movie but few people went to see it.  

My point is that it is unrealistic to expect people to know everything.  It’s unrealistic to expect people to remember every single event that happened since they were kids. And it’s arrogant for one to think someone should absolutely know something or who some is just because YOU (general YOU) think they should.

The woman was rude and dismissive in her comments but other than that. 🤷🏻‍♀️

He was known as “the Mayor of Castro Street.” He was THE leader of the gay community in SF during all the changes of the tumultuous ’70s. San Francisco itself was a leader of the changes during that decade.

The others were activists. He was the leader. AND he sacrificed himself for the cause, and his name is nationally (internationally) known, for anyone of that age with even a vague interest in current events.

I know who Larry Kramer was. I’m familiar with some of the other names although I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what they did. But I can tell you one thing (and I’m not a state legislator who ought to have enough sense to not 100% humiliate herself in public by saying stupid sh*t) … if someone asked me my thoughts on teaching about about a person whom they were obviously presenting as a historical figure, even if I’d never heard of them in my life, I’d have the sense not to say, “Is that a real person?” and then giggle a bit for good measure.

Either she was deliberately snubbing the memory of Harvey Milk, or she’s an incredibly stupid and/or deliberately uneducated person. Either way, she shouldn’t be making rules for other people to live by.


P.S. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at her.

From the Trial of Dan White…. link

“On November 10, 1978, Dan White sent a letter to Mayor George Moscone announcing his resignation from the Board of Supervisors. He cited as a reason "personal responsibilities" which he felt "must take precedent over my legislative duties." A combination of financial pressures and feelings of frustration with his work on the board were the real reasons behind the resignation. News of White's decision to resign made Harvey Milk ecstatic: the balance of power on an eleven-member board with a six-member conservative majority would now tip in Milk's direction. Milk, learning the news in his camera shop in the Castro, told a friend, "It's just too good to believe. Now I've got my sixth vote."

Eight days after his resignation, White met with leaders of the Police Officers' Association and the Board of Realtors. Told by leaders of these organizations that his vote on the Board was critical to their interests, White reconsidered his decision. He asked the mayor to reappoint him to his seat. Moscone handed back to White his letter of resignation and said to reporters on November 18, "As far as I am concerned, Dan White is the supervisor from District 8. . . A man has a right to change his mind."

Fearing his dreams of a new liberal majority would be dashed with White's reappointment, Milk quickly arranged a meeting with Mayor Moscone. Milk stressed that reappointment would jeopardize the mayor's agenda and suggested that it might also cause a loss of support for the mayor in the city's gay community, a constituency that had thrown its support behind Moscone in the last election. After meeting with Milk, Moscone decided to back away from his earlier promise to White to reappoint him. He told White that his reappointment would only happen if he could show that he retained the substantial support of the voters in his district. Later White would tell detectives, "I could see the game that was being played, they were going to use me as a scapegoat, whether I was a good supervisor or not, was not the point. This was a political opportunity and they were going to degrade me and my family and the job that I had tried to do and, and more or less hang me out to dry."

In fact, Moscone had already made his decision. He would appoint someone else to fill White's seat. Within a few days after White asked for his job back, the mayor decided to offer it instead to Dan Horanzey. Meanwhile, White's supporters gathered signatures from voters in his district urging the mayor to reappoint White. Eventually a pile of petitions about an inch high would be accumulated.”

From Wikipedia….link


Race for State Assembly

Keeping his promise to Milk, newly elected Mayor George Moscone appointed him to the Board of Permit Appeals in 1976, making him the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk considered seeking a position in the California State Assembly. The district was weighted heavily in his favor, as much of it was based in neighborhoods surrounding Castro Street, where Milk's sympathizers voted. In the previous race for supervisor, Milk received more votes than the currently seated assemblyman. However, Moscone had made a deal with the assembly speaker that another candidate should run—Art Agnos.

[55] Furthermore, by order of the mayor, neither appointed nor elected officials were allowed to run a campaign while performing their duties.[56]

By the time of Milk's 1975 campaign, he had decided to cut his hair and wear suits. Here, Milk (far right) is campaigning with longshoremen in San Francisco during his 1976 race for the California State Assembly.

Milk spent five weeks on the Board of Permit Appeals before Moscone was forced to fire him when he announced he would run for the California State Assembly. Rick Stokes replaced him. Milk's firing, and the backroom deal made between Moscone, the assembly speaker, and Agnos, fueled his campaign as he took on the identity of a political underdog.[57] He railed that high officers in the city and state governments were against him. He complained that the prevailing gay political establishment, particularly the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, were shutting him out; he referred to Jim Foster and Stokes as gay "Uncle Toms".[36] He enthusiastically embraced a local independent weekly magazine's headline: "Harvey Milk vs. The Machine".[5] The Alice B. Toklas Club made no endorsement in the primary — neither Milk nor Agnos — while other gay-aligned clubs and groups endorsed Agnos or did dual endorsements.[58]

Milk's continuing campaign, run from the storefront of Castro Camera, was a study in disorganization. Although the older Irish grandmothers and gay men who volunteered were plentiful and happy to send out mass mailings, Milk's notes and volunteer lists were kept on scrap papers. Any time the campaign required funds, the money came from the cash register without any consideration for accounting.[57] The campaign manager's assistant was an 11-year-old neighborhood girl.[59] Milk himself was hyperactive and prone to fantastic outbursts of temper, only to recover quickly and shout excitedly about something else. Many of his rants were directed at his lover, Scott Smith, who was becoming disillusioned with the man who was no longer the laid-back hippie he had fallen in love with.[57]

If the candidate was manic, he was also dedicated and filled with good humor, and he had a particular genius for getting media attention.[60] He spent long hours registering voters and shaking hands at bus stops and movie theater lines. He took whatever opportunity came along to promote himself. He thoroughly enjoyed campaigning, and his success was evident.[36] With the large numbers of volunteers, he had dozens at a time stand along the busy thoroughfare of Market Street as human billboards, holding "Milk for Assembly" signs while commuters drove into the heart of the city to work.[61] He distributed his campaign literature anywhere he could, including one of the most influential political groups in the city, the Peoples Temple. Milk accepted Temple volunteers to work his phones. On February 19, 1978, Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter defending cult leader Jim Jones as "a man of the highest character" when asked.[62][63][64] Milk's relationship with the Temple was similar to other politicians' in Northern California. According to The San Francisco Examiner, Jones and his parishioners were a "potent political force", helping to elect Moscone (who appointed him to the Housing Authority), District Attorney Joseph Freitas, and Sheriff Richard Hongisto.[65] When Milk learned Jones was backing both him and Art Agnos in 1976, he told friend Michael Wong, "Well fuck him. I'll take his workers, but, that's the game Jim Jones plays."[66] But to his volunteers, he said: "Make sure you're always nice to the Peoples Temple. If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it."

The race was close, and Milk lost by fewer than 4,000 votes.[67][68] Agnos taught Milk a valuable lesson when he criticized Milk's campaign speeches as "a downer ... You talk about how you're gonna throw the bums out, but how are you gonna fix things—other than beat me? You shouldn't leave your audience on a down."[69] In the wake of his loss, Milk, realizing that the Toklas Club would never support him politically, co-founded the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.[70]”

The 847th reason I am glad I no longer live in Wisconsin.

I didn’t know exactly who Milk was BUT I know that it was someone I ought to know and I ought to keep my mouth shut until I check who.

Although, I think if anyone blurted out a full name, any full name, like that to me I’d probably keep quiet until I checked, if I were in a public televised hearing.


I know I do not know everything.

I was woefully under-educated about the Move bombing until my DD asked me about it. I’m old enough that I should have better knowledge if it. I mean, I have a vague recollection of those events, enough not to deny it happened. IMO I should have a ‘where was I when’ memory of that but to my embarrassment I did not. I can reconstruct why I don’t have that kind of memory of that event, but it’s a flimsy excuse at best in my own opinion. So now it’s on my ‘everyone should google & read about’ list so I mention it whenever the opportunity presents itself.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadelphia-bombing-1985-move
www.google.com/amp/s/www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/move-bombing-philadelphia-remains-aftermath-20210604.html%3foutputType=amp

The moral of the story is, when you don’t know something don’t say something stupid & offensive, especially in a public hearing. Just listen & learn before opening your mouth.

That thought occurred to me,  too, that because of his last name, maybe her first thought was connected to dairy and she misunderstood.  No excuse for being rude and disrespectful.

I’m not sure I would say he sacrificed himself for the cause.

While reading  the three articles above it downed on me he figured out the best way to get change is be part of the decision making in government.  I was surprised how many times he ran for office.  Then to work to change how supervisors were elected by making it by districts he all but guaranteed he would be elected to represent the Castro District.

All the work he did in that camera shop was laying the ground work to get elected to public office.  The deals and coalitions he made, the groups he formed was almost like reading out of Politics 101.  Harvey Milk was a politician because he felt that was the best way to get change.  I’ve always said if you want change you vote.  He took it one step further, you want change you become part of the government so you can be part of the decision making process.

Ultimately he was so focused on doing what he felt he needed to do to keep a liberal agenda not just for the gay community but all the folks in SF he ended up playing politics with a man crazier then a loon.

So no I don’t see him as a man killed because he was gay but as a politician who had no way of knowing the person he was stopping from getting his seat back on Board of Supervisors was nuts.

The sad thing is we will never know how far he could have gone.  I could see him being elected to the state legislature but not sure he could have run a successful statewide election in the late 70s & the 80s.  

Because all what he did was on a local level I think it’s unrealistic for everyone to know who he was.  IMO.  So we are going to disagree on this.

But I do agree about that woman in that she was rude and dismissive.