The Mayor of Castro Street

[michaelflanagansf]

jim.grrr, a member of the forum who lived in SF at the time Harvey was living here was good enough to answer some questions about the city back then.  The questions are from me, and his answers follow:

Q: Do you think (or did you hear at the time) that the killings involved in a police conspiracy?

A: There was lots of speculation at the time.  I believe (no verifiable data) that his cop buddies harassed him about resigning that it pushed him into doing the act.  I strongly believe the SFPD protected him after the fact and would have allowed him to escape, if he so desired.  I think that little scrap of personal honor he had left wouldn't allow him to do it.

Q: Did you hear rumors about Dan White's sexuality at the time of the killings?

A: I can't remember anything from then and it would have been conflated with more recent speculation.  I kind of recall comments about him being a typical gay basher = repressed homo.

Q: Do you think the killings of Milk and Moscone were related to the broader issue of violence against gay people as typified by the Hillsborough killing?

A: I think that the social loathing of anything gay was responsible for his lack of inhibition to murder.  This is the same as a gang of teens beating a gay boy.

Q: What was your experience of the White Night riots - what do your remember from back then?

A: I always had the TV on and I remember a break in the program to announce the verdict.  I was furious.  I can't remember if I first went to the Castro and came down with the mob, or went straight to City Hall.  As it got dark the crowd grew larger and larger - more angry by the minute.  I went through the crowd and up the left side of the Polk Street steps to see the Chief of Police and I believe Feinstein with many aides inside.  They finally appeared on the balcony over the steps with a bullhorn.  Afterword, I learned that they were making the legal announcement declaring an unlawful assembly and ordering the crowd to disperse.  No one heard it.  The crowd became more and more angry as the night wore on.  I suspect that if a responsible leader had been able to address the mob, it could have been calmed down.  I heard shouts of "Get the computer!"  The City's DP Department was located in the basement to the left of the Polk steps.  Six or eight people tried smashing the basement windows.  The windows were wired fireproof glass, so they couldn't get in.  There were then shouts of 'Break down the doors!," which were cheered on.  The crowd began to push forward.  The men at the top of the steps as a group, and without any leadership made the decision to protect the ornate entrance.  They created a line, linked arms over shoulders about three feet in front of the doors.  That seemed to keep the crowd at bay.  That was the status quo for some time.  Finally, the TAC Squad appeared in helmets, visors, body armor, with club raised.  They marched single file through the mass from Grove Street.  The crowd parted to let them to pass.  They came up the left side of the steps and marched behind the line of men protecting the City Hall entrance.  They began swinging their clubs, hitting the line of men.  Rage erupted.  My recollection become hazy from then on.  Fear for my personal safety was mixed with my furor over the outrageous violence from the cops.  I moved down the steps and around the building on Van Ness to see and hear cop cars being set on fire.  The sirens were wailing and began to sputter.  The entire police force began to converge on City Hall followed by the fire department.  My fear overcame my anger and I retreated to home, up McAllister Street to watch the news coverage.  Some of my roommates had since come home and we debated heading for the Castro, but decided against it.

Q: You have mentioned to me that there were almost nightly demonstrations in the Castro - would you pass on any memories about that?  Also, do you feel that if Harvey had lived that there still would have been a violent incident (in other words were things coming to a clash between gays and police either way)?

A: I don't recall demonstrations after the riots.  I do remember nightly marches through the City after the Florida election.  They were led by the new Chief of Police.

Q: Also, do you have any memories of the police violence from around the time of Milk's death - the invasions of the bars, etc.?

A: The SFPD has always been and still is an occupying army from the suburbs.  The invasions of gay bars and events continued for years after "friendly" politicians were in office - including busting AIDS benefits with night sticks.  There is still no effective civilian control of the SFPD and it has cost taxpayers many millions in legal settlements, not to mention injuries to innocent citizens.

[michaelflanagansf]

As a followup to Jim's post, here's a bit about the police raid on the AIDS benefit that he referred to (in 1995):

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1996&month=12&day=05&article=METRO16043.dtl

http://www.sfweekly.com/1995-11-22/news/cop-stop/

[michaelflanagansf]

And a bit more on the Castro Sweep of 1989:

Exhibit on Castro Police Sweep

--

A decade has passed since the night of Oct. 6, 1989, when 200 San Francisco police officers swept through the Castro and broke up a peaceful march by gay and lesbian activists protesting the federal government's neglect of people with AIDS.

Officers declared the area an illegal assembly and violently cleared at least seven blocks of all pedestrians and protesters. Three years of legal proceedings followed. In the end, only one police officer was disciplined, but the city paid out $250,000 to settle lawsuits brought by victims.

To mark the 10-year anniversary, an exhibit titled "Police Riot '89: Remember the Castro Sweep" will be on display from Oct. 1 through Nov. 30 at A Different Light Bookstore, 489 Castro St. It will open with a reception and reunion of Castro Sweep survivors on Friday, Oct. 1, starting at 7:30 p.m.

The exhibit, organized by the Castro Sweep Project, will feature photographs by Rick Gerharter and Marc Geller, graphics by Boy with Arms Akimbo, and artifacts from the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California.

A web site is also being developed in conjunction with the display. Organizers invite witnesses of the Sweep to recount their memories and post them on the site. For details, visit http://members.aol.com/ SFPDRiot/sweep.html or send e-mail to SFPDRiot@aol.com.

http://www.noevalleyvoice.com/1999/October/shorttakes.html

[Nikki]

Michael, the SFPD busting AIDS benefits with night sticks is beyond reason. I just don't understand this.

[Nikki]

Thanks Jim.grrrr for your candid answers to Michael's questions.  You lived it all, and I applaud you for your participation in a historic event. It makes it come alive for those of us who are just now reading about Harvey and his time.

[michaelflanagansf]

Michael, the SFPD busting AIDS benefits with night sticks is beyond reason. I just don't understand this.

It was very strange, Nikki - but it follows the lurching pattern of San Francisco politics.  Art Agnos was the mayor of San Francisco from 1988 to 1992 - he was the mayor who followed Diane Feinstein into office and was quite liberal.  He was the first mayor to ride in the Lesbian Gay Freedom Day Parade (Feinstein never did - nor did).  He was very active in the fight against AIDS.

He was replaced in office in 1992 by Frank Jordan, who had been the Chief of Police in San Francisco.  It was a move to the right in San Francisco and was perhaps the ebb point of the influence of gay politics since Harvey's day.  Mayor Jordan was, in part, put in office to fight the rampant homelessness in San Francisco and the drug crime related to the crack epidemic.

Regardless, the notion in the city at the time was that the police could do no wrong - and I think that the officers who were involved in the 1995 raid on the AIDS benefit believe that they could do as they liked.  In that way they were very similar to the sort of attitude that was around at the time of Chief of Police Gain.  Here is another article on that raid:

http://www.sfisonline.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1996/10/10/MN16262.DTL&type=printable

Jordan and the gay community had a long record of antagonism.  In 1991 while campaigning in the Castro he was chased from the neighborhood by a group of activists upset with his role as Chief of Police during the 1989 police attacks on AIDS demonstrators and lost his shoe.

In a lot of ways the up and back between police and gays went on well into the 90s.

[Nikki]

Michael, how is the SFPD now -- have things 'mellowed' between the gay community and the cops?  Do the SFPD lurch from right to left, ajnd do the cops maintain a hands off policy regarding gays.

[dejavu]

Michael, I'm behind on reading your links because I'm preparing to go out of town this weekend -- but I'll catch up on Sunday. 
Really enjoyed reading Jim's comments about the White Night riots, and I'll be interested in your interview with Danny Nicoletta, too.

[michaelflanagansf]

Michael, how is the SFPD now -- have things 'mellowed' between the gay community and the cops?  Do the SFPD lurch from right to left, and do the cops maintain a hands off policy regarding gays.

It seems to me that things have calmed down quite a bit, Nikki - but I would caution you that I had forgotten those two incidents that Jim reminded me of - so I'm speaking 'off the cuff.'

[michaelflanagansf]

Here's a review from 'Gay Community News' - I'll post more later in the week:


The Mayor of Castro Street; The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
James, Will.  Gay Community News.  Boston:May 8, 1982.  Vol. 9,  Iss. 41,  p. 3

The Mayor of Castro Street begins with an author's note in which Randy Shilts says: The story of Harvey Milk is, to a large extent, the story of the gay movement in San Francisco, and, ultimately, the nation. This is the story of Harvey Milk, his life and times. I want to talk more about that later, but first I want to say that The Mayor of Castro Street is a wonderful biography. It is vividly written, and meticulously researched and documented. Shilts tells Harvey Milk's story in a way that is engrossing and dramatic. (Too dramatic sometimes. Shilts has an unfortunate tendency to lapse into melodrama and say things like "[He] made his rendezous with history".)

Harvey Milk lived a life filled with melodrama, unlikely coincidences and odd twists of plot. Raised on Long Island in a comfortably middle-class Jewish family, Milk became a financial analyst on Wall Street (and ardent Goldwater supporter), then a theatrical financier, then a hippie, then a shopkeeper (on a seedy and little known street called Castro) and finally a politician. Along the way he crossed paths with the famous and near famous in the growing gay rights movement. He also had a string of young, waif-like lovers who almost invariably grew suicidal. As a young man he led a highly closeted life, but by 1977 when he became the first openly gay official in a major American city he was one of the most famous homosexuals in the world. Eleven months after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he was dead. It was somehow in keeping with his life story that he should be assassinated, as he expected he would be.

Shilts has done a superb job of weaving together the threads of Milk's life and the social forces then at work. Particularly interesting is his description of San Francisco's development as a gay mecca in general, and the Castro Street phenomenon in particular. He presents Milk as he was, with all the contradictory facets of his personality: realistic, romantic, meddling, practical, theatrical, altruistic, ambitious and driven. All of this is happily free of the pop psychology that plagues so many modern biographies. In all, The Mayor of Castro Street is a well-told story of a man who was very much the right man in the right place at exactly the right time in history.

In reporting Milk's life and times, Shilts does a fine job. Unfortunately, in interpreting what it all means, he wanders onto very shaky ground, and ultimately does a great disservice to gay politics. Despite what the above quotation claims, Shilts doesn't tell the whole - or anything near the whole - story of the gay movement. Only a piece of it, albeit an important piece.

To begin with, Shilts gives us a very clear picture of Harvey Milk the politician, but it doesn't quite match his analysis of Harvey Milk the politician. He is fond of saying that Milk was a "radical" and a "populist," and I suppose he was populist in the sense that he was a grassroots candidate. But Milk had no coherent political philosophy other than a vaguely libertarian outlook and a strong desire to see gay men (particularly himself) obtain political power. What seems clear from Shilts' portrait is that Milk was not a radical in the sense of questioning existing political structures. Rather he was a maverick politician who played an old-time political game. When it was expedient, he broke the rules, but he never challenged the game itself. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being a maverick politician, but it should not be confused with - or represented as - being radical.

There are many examples of this politicking in the book, but perhaps the most telling is an incident involving another maverick politican, John Briggs, sponsor of the infamous Briggs Initiative. Shilts describes a time when Briggs and Milk met in an airport lounge, just prior to a public debate with each other: for a half-hour Briggs and Milk bantered back and forth about the campaign like two old World War II buddies reminiscing about their days in the trenches... They were two seasoned politicians who had spent years breaking all the political rules, relying on sheer showmanship for their successes, and delighting in the give-and-take of politics. It gets to be very annoying the way The Mayor of Castro Street claims to be a chronicle of the national gay political movement, but in reality deals only with San Francisco. Gay politics outside of San Francisco are either ignored or dismissed as unimportant. Nor does the book give a particularly balanced picture of gay politics in San Francisco. In his discussion of the Coors boycott, for example, Shilts gives all the credit for that boycott to Milk. In fact, Howard Wallace was the primary gay organizer behind it, but he is not even mentioned. This seems rather odd, since even the Coors Co. itself recently recognized his role as organizer by slapping him with a lawsuit.

Similarly, the lesbian-feminist community in San Francisco is ignored. Shilts says blandly that Milk didn't know many lesbians, which is true. But the point is that one cannot tell the story of the gay movement without talking about the women's movement. The two have been too closely affiliated for too long for that connection to be ignored the way it is here.

It would be one thing if Shilts said that he omitted all of this because of lack of room. He does not however. Rather he clearly dismisses as trivial, ineffectual or unimportant the gay politics that existed in cities other than San Francisco, or that revolved around people other than Milk.

One more example: throughout his political life Harvey Milk feuded with such cautious gay politicians as Rick Stokes and Jim Foster of the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club. Shilts portrays these people as fairly useless in gay politics. He is even more contemptuous toward San Francisco's radical gay community. For Shilts it was all Harvey Milk. But the fact is that it wasn't all Harvey Milk, and Shilts has missed a very important point here. Political movements do not advance on one front alone, or by the efforts of one person alone. They advance on many fronts simultaneously, and these fronts are, in fact, dependent upon each other for forward momentum. In other words, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, maddening as they must have been to work with, broke the ground that Milk was so successful in planting. Similarly, the gay radicals defined and explored important issues (such as sexism) that Milk had neither the time nor the inclination to explore.

Shilts is plainly disturbed that now, after Milk is gone, his political organization and even his political legacy seem to have been coopted entirely into mainstream San Francisco politics. Actually, this should have come as no surprise. What is more disturbing is his clear implication that there is no more gay political movement, that it all ended somehow with Harvey Milk's death and that there is no one left doing any important gay political work.

Harvey Milk's time was also our time, and San Francisco isn't the whole world, even if some people in San Francisco think it is. But we aren't the only ones reading this book. This is the big gay book of the year. It is the one that non-gay people will read, and it is the one that will sit on bookshelves for years as the chronicle of gay history. I can't help but think of Harvey Milk's proverbial gay teen-ager in Altoona, PA. Will he or she read this looking for hope, only to finish with the depressing conclusion that no one is left out there working for him or her? I wonder.

By now it probably sounds as if I am reviewing two books here. In a way I am. One, a chronicle of gay movement politics, suffers greatly from a narrow outlook and lack of perspective. The other is the compelling story of an important gay leader's life and death, and is a masterful piece of storytelling and reporting. Despite its faults, The Mayor of Castro Street succeeds as a biography. It made me feel that I knew Harvey Milk. And now, having known him, I miss him.

Article copyright Bromfield Street Educational Foundation.

[Nikki]

Here's a review from 'Gay Community News' - I'll post more later in the week:


The Mayor of Castro Street; The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
James, Will.  Gay Community News.  Boston:May 8, 1982.  Vol. 9,  Iss. 41,  p. 3

By now it probably sounds as if I am reviewing two books here. In a way I am. One, a chronicle of gay movement politics, suffers greatly from a narrow outlook and lack of perspective. The other is the compelling story of an important gay leader's life and death, and is a masterful piece of storytelling and reporting. Despite its faults, The Mayor of Castro Street succeeds as a biography. It made me feel that I knew Harvey Milk. And now, having known him, I miss him.

Article copyright Bromfield Street Educational Foundation.

Michael, this was a very interesting review.  Another reason why it's so important, to me, to read/hear what members of the gay community of that time thought about Harvey and his campaign.  Will gives the reader  two views:  a chronicle of gay movement politics....and the compelling story of an important gay leader's life and death.  The fact that he was there and knew all the participants makes this review very powerful IMO. He didn't hesitate to point out the warts and all.

   

[janjo]

Apart from the fact that the book is a biography of Harvey Milk rather than an overarching history of US gay society, it must have been as difficult for Randy Shilts to have truly appreciated Harvey's legacy from a historical point of view as it would have been Will James, purely because of the short distance of time between the events and the writing.
We see what we see, we understand what we see, from our own particular point of view. Sometimes it takes the historical perspective to see what actually happened and how things ultimately evolved.
A very interesting review.

[fritzkep]

It seems to me that things have calmed down quite a bit, Nikki - but I would caution you that I had forgotten those two incidents that Jim reminded me of - so I'm speaking 'off the cuff.'

I'm disappointed to hear about those incidents, Michael. I had gotten the impression that the SFPD was even more gay friendly than the NYPD, but apparently this is not the case.

[Nikki]

While rereading Jim.grrr's post, I felt like I was reading Shilt's book again, especially his post about the men linking arms and blocking the door at City Hall.  Heavy stuff!

[michaelflanagansf]

I'm disappointed to hear about those incidents, Michael. I had gotten the impression that the SFPD was even more gay friendly than the NYPD, but apparently this is not the case.

It's very important to remember that both of those instances were at the time where there were few drugs and little help for AIDS - when things generally were at a high emotional pitch.  As I said, not much that I could find had happened in recent years.  And it is important not to tar the whole department by the actions of a few - there are a number of gay police officers in San Francisco:

http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=1570

They are active in their own organizations:

http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?article=917&sec=news

There is an active police commission with active LGBT participation:

http://ebar.com/pride/article.php?sec=pride&article=80

And it seems as if things are on the more tolerant end now:

http://ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=3568

If you want a more complete picture of the current interactions between police and the gay community, you can go to this website:

http://ebar.com/

And enter the term 'police' in the search box.  You get around 600 articles and it gives a varied portrait of police interaction with the community in all of its complexity.