The Mayor of Castro Street

[CellarDweller115]

15.) Harvey became central in the fight against the Briggs Initiative.  Do you think that he was essential in winning the campaign against the Briggs Initiative?  What do you think of his campaign - was it a good idea to debate Briggs in Fullerton and throughout the state?  Do you think it was a good idea for him to form his own group to fight prop 6 - as opposed to joining the radicals or the moderates?  Do you like the way he turns the words on the Statue of Liberty and the Declaration of Independence against Bryant and Briggs?  Do you think that it was essential to have a central figure to fight Briggs?  Do you think we could learn lessons from this campaign in fighting against initiatives like California's Proposition 8?

I think it was a stroke of genius for Harvey to form his own group.  Harvey had a huge following in the gay community.  While both the moderates and radicals were initially stung by the fact that Harvey choose not to join either group, he knew that in the end, he would unite them all on election day, and get the outcome that was needed.

Debating Briggs was a huge step for in the right direction, and Harvey was the man to do it.  He was someone who wanted people to see the gay community as strong, so he was willing to fight Briggs on a public forum, and represent a vision of strength for the gay community.  Harvey was someone who was smart enough, and quick witted enough to take on someone like Briggs, and maintain a sense of strength through it all.

It is said that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  I do believe we need to learn from history, and we as a community should review all that Harvey Milk did when he battled "Prop 6" and work those actions into our battles against "Prop 8".

[CellarDweller115]

16.) In the midst of the fight against Proposition 6 Jack Lira committed suicide.  Do you think that it is worthwhile to ask why he did this - or was this the irrational act of a depressed and alcoholic person?  Do you think he was striking out at Harvey?  Shilts talks about co-dependence regarding Harvey and Jack's relationship.  Does this make sense to you?  Do you think this is true of all of Harvey's love relationships?  Were you surprised that given this death that Harvey was able to continue to work on the fight against Proposition 6?

To be honest, I was not surprised by Jack's suicide.  He came across as a conflicted individual.  He wanted to be acknowledged as someone important in Harvey's life, but when the cameras were on, he'd run in another direction.  He wanted to mix socially with the political crowd, but felt he couldn't keep up with them conversationally.   When you add to this mix his depression and alcoholism, it was a tragedy waiting to happen.  In some odd way, I think he wanted his death to be public, to be seen as someone who couldn't deal with the sense of impending doom that was hanging over his head with "Prop 6" and that perhaps his death would do something to change the tides.

I was not surprised that Harvey continued on with the campaign against "Prop 6".  He was basically done with Jack.  His anger over Jack's actions show that he saw Jack as a failure on some level, and Harvey needed to succeed, and he would do so with his campaigns.   

[Nikki]

24.)Two dozen of Harvey's friends, lovers and cronies put their bodies between the crowd and city hall.  Do you think this message was lost in the riot - that there were people who stood up and prevented further violence to city hall?

The message was probably lost to City Hall and the police, besides who would have thought that gays would have defended City Hall with their bodies against their own? I was amazed that Harvey's friends and lovers were able to contain the crowd who were, by then, at fever pitch. I wondered if this riot got media coverage nationally.  I thought it was touching that Smith remembered how Harvey loved the building and would have 'considered it desecration.'

There are actually some forum members who were there Nikki - one of them told me about this before I read the book.  I'm going to try to get them to post some comments - but they are hard to get out of lurkdom....

Michael, I would be very interested to hear what those people have to say.  They could post here anonymously, if they were reluctant to use their [user] names.  It's more important, to me, to hear what they remember, than for us to regurgitate back the facts from the book even though I'm enjoying the book very much.   I'd like to hear about Harvey from ones who knew him also.  I often lurk on the gay threads, but don't remember if anyone there posted about Harvey -- I could have missed it.

[Nikki]

  I also don’t think the “Twinkie Defense” would fly today – however, I read in one of Michael’s links that that defense is actually misunderstood. According to that link, Twinkies weren’t claimed to have caused the murders; rather, White was up all night planning the murders because his mental state made him unable to sleep, and as a result, he ate Twinkies all night. 

Yeah, he was on a sugar high eating Twinkies and drinking Coke! The defense would prob be laughed out of court today.

[Nikki]

28.)  In the epilogue Randy Shilts questions the implications of what happened after Milk's death.  He seems to indicate that the changes in the Castro did not follow the path Harvey would have desired and that the Democratic club with Harvey's name would not have supported a candidate who was abrasively anti-machine, like Harvey.  Do you think he is correct?  If this is the case does this mean that Harvey's struggles were in vain - or perhaps that the struggle had just evolved in the following years?  Do you think that the placards at the national march on Washington in October 1979 with Harvey's portrait show that by that point his struggle and his impact would be stronger on the nation at large - and is this true today?

According to Shilts, the leaders of The Harvey Milk Demo Club learned the art of power brokering and compromise...they learned how to play ball with political bosses and machines. Harvey was a man for his time.  He was abrasive, outspoken, and flamboyant, as well as a dynamic, shrewd, and charismatic leader. A man like this comes along once in a lifetime at the right time and in the right place.  He successors had learned politics from him, but their's was a more modern, polished style.  Times were changing and, to get things done, they had to be more pragmatic -- they used brochures with Harvey's dressed up quotes, and his status as a martyr to gain concessions from the Democratic party.

I don't think Harvey's struggles were in vain.  His successors learned how to play politics in the modern arena -- it was important to have a gay representative on every slate, it was no longer strange to see gays in City Hall, and they were included in the civil service bureaucracy.  I think the struggle did evolve there was only one place to go, and that was forward, otherwise it would have imploded.  Of course, this was Harvey's legacy, because without him his successors would have just been part of the crowd.

In the  1979 march on Washington, Harvey was the new martyr for the cause.  He was the quintessential icon for a community in need of a martyr, and his life resonated with many gays of that era.  Today, his struggle would probably have an impact on the gay community, especially the young gays.  However, I don't think the mainstream will be/is as affected by his struggle for gay rights.  They will probably look on him as an interesting part of gay history, or a trouble maker depending on their religious/socio attitude.  Of course, the film may garner some interest, but IMO he will be forgotten except by the ones who knew and worked with him. This is not to sound harsh, it's just the way things are. 

[dejavu]

25.)  Given the level of violence in the White Night riots why do you think the police didn't attack the crowd?  Are you surprised that no one was prosecuted for the riots?  Why, given the restraint shown at City Hall, do you think the police attacked the Elephant Walk?  Why do you think that (given their ignoring him in the previous weeks) they obeyed Chief Gain and left the Castro?

I think the police held back at City Hall because they didn’t want to raise the level of violence in an area where expensive and symbolic city property could be destroyed.  Police did attack initially with nightsticks and tear gas, but were outnumbered.  After police reinforcements appeared, Chief Gain ordered the officers to just “hold their ground,” essentially to prevent the building from being invaded.  The situation was already on the verge of getting out of control, with the police cars burning.  If the police had shown more violence, the whole situation could have escalated to the point where people might have been killed on both sides.  After the crowd began to break up, there were some skirmishes between police and small knots of rioters, but nothing major.   

The attack on gays at the Elephant Walk gave the frustrated police officers a chance to fight back and take out their anger.  Their sentiments were captured by the shouting of one cop:  “The faggots had their day … We’ll get ours.”  Police didn’t mind seeing property destroyed in the Castro, because it was not their neighborhood and they didn’t have to worry about the clean-up.  I think they obeyed Chief Gain and left the Castro not because they respected his authority, but because they had accomplished the “pay-back” which they had intended to dole out here.

I’m not surprised that no one among the gays was prosecuted for the White Night Riots, because the issue lost importance in comparison with the upcoming 1979 municipal elections.  People running for re-election needed support from the gay voters.  I’m even less surprised that no police officers were disciplined for what happened at Elephant Walk, despite Chief Gain’s recognition that he hadn’t authorized that attack, and with some of the police action caught on videotape by reporters.  It’s always hard to get enough support in a city to discipline police officers, and with the victims being people at a gay bar, it would have been nearly impossible.

[dejavu]

26.)  After Diane Feinstein was forced into a runoff with Quentin Kopp she apologized for her 'community standards' comment.  Why do you think she waited till she was forced into a runoff election?  Do you think that she bet that gays would lose clout after the White Night riot?

I think it was the way the timing of several events worked in tandem that forced Feinstein’s apology.  Her comment about “community standards” was made well before the White Night riot.  She was not worried about offending gay voters at that time, when she originally made the comment, probably because she didn’t expect any stiff competition in her race for re-election.  She didn’t think she would need gay support to win.  After the riot, she may have expected gays to lose clout, and therefore didn’t feel that courting gay voters would do her any good politically.

But gay political power did not wane after the riots.  In fact, it was the strong showing of an unknown gay mayoral candidate, David Scott, which forced her into the runoff with Kopp in the first place.  After that, she probably decided that she needed to court whatever voters might possibly be persuaded to come to her side.  By then, the gay vote was taking on importance because it could operate as a bloc of swing voters.  Gays would not be likely to vote for the more conservative Kopp, so if she could woo them back, Feinstein stood a good chance of benefitting from having their votes.  So, in an effort to smooth the process of making up with these voters, she apologized for her earlier comment.  The strategy worked, because she won by lopsided percentages in gay precincts.

[dejavu]

27.)  Both Russ Cone's speculations about the implications of the Milk & Moscone murders on the police discrimination suit and Warren Hinkle's article about the role of politics and homophobia in the trial didn't reach the press in San Francisco.  Given San Francisco's liberal reputation, why do you think this was?

San Francisco had a liberal reputation, but in the aftermath of the Milk & Moscone murders, the liberalism of Harvey’s days appeared to be on the wane.  He had stood for neighborhood-oriented politics, as epitomized by the idea of district elections for supervisor.  Voters repealed district elections in the summer of 1980.  Mayor Feinstein also gave business and real estate developers a friendly ear in City Hall after winning her own election as mayor in City Hall, and she appointed a more conservative police chief, an Irish Catholic from the ranks.  These changes would likely not have come about had Milk and Moscone remained alive, so printing stories related to their murders would have reopened wounds, and did not fit into the current political climate.

Both Cone’s and Hinckle’s stories could have fueled speculation about a possible conspiracy behind the murders.  Cone’s story suggested how the police discrimination suit no longer had a chance for a pro-minority settlement now that Moscone, who had pushed the settlement, and Milk, who would have voted for it, were out of the way.  This line of thinking might have suggested a conspiracy by police to prevent the settlement from taking place.  Hinckle’s story opened up questions not just about homophobia, but about why the prosecution had put on such a weak case in general.  Again, if there had been some sort of conspiracy, and Dan White had been chosen as the one to carry it out, the prosecution might have been intentionally going easy on White because someone, somewhere didn’t want him punished too severely for having carried out a good deed.  I don’t necessarily agree with the conspiracy theories, but I believe that other newspaper readers might have, had these stories been published.

Certain reporters were in a mood to dig into these possibilities, but the city’s major newspapers must have been tied closely enough to the political powers-that-be, that they did not want to open up speculation of this sort. 

[michaelflanagansf]

4.)  Jack Lira behaved strangely at the inaugural dinner - yet Harvey told Tory Hartmann that he was 'the love of his life.'  Why do you think Harvey was attracted to him?  Do you think Lira's odd behavior made Harvey feel needed?  How do you compare the relationship with Lira to the relationship with Scott Smith?

Harvey was attracted to younger men, that seemed to be his primary requirement.  For that, Jack Lira fit the bill.  When you add to it that he was (for lack of a better term) "messed up", that would make him like a magnet to Harvey.  Often throughout the book, Harvey mentions "hope" and how "you have to give them hope."  Harvey wanted to help people, and Jack Lira needed a lot of help.  At one point, Harvey defends Jack to his detractors, saying "I'm out to help people just like Jack, to give them hope,"  I believe that Harvey was seeing the success he was having in the political arena, and was sure he could translate it to Jack Lira and his personal troubles as well.

With many of his boyfriends he seemed to want to save them as well (and with Jack that included trying to save him from himself as well).  I'm not really sure that he thought his political success would transfer to saving Jack from his personal troubles, however.  By the point that Lira came into his life he was already pretty much burning the candle at both ends, with both his politicking and his attempts to get himself into the papers.  I think he didn't have a clear 'end game' for his relationship with Lira - he was just letting it happen.

Now I think he said that he was out to help people like Lira - but I also think that Lira needed help far beyond what Harvey had the time to give.  First off he would have needed to dry out in order to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.  Lira was a real lost soul, imo, I don't think Harvey knew what to do about him once he got into the relationship.

The romantic in me thinks it's a shame that he didn't get back together with Scott Smith before his death.  But by this time I think the relationship had moved on to where they were trying to deal with one another as friends.

[michaelflanagansf]

26.)  After Diane Feinstein was forced into a runoff with Quentin Kopp she apologized for her 'community standards' comment.  Why do you think she waited till she was forced into a runoff election?  Do you think that she bet that gays would lose clout after the White Night riot?

I think she did believe that gays would lose clout. However, her remarks may have helped.  She lunched daily in the Castro, promised a gay commissioner and she did gain 'lopsided percentages' in the gay community to win as mayor.  Once she was elected it did seem like business as usual at City Hall, although the new police chief promised to keep Gain's progressive policies toward the gay community.

It continued after this Nikki - she cruelly vetoed the extension of health benefits to domestic partners in 1982 and rejected the recommendation of her own task force to extend health benefits to city employees in 1984:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=950DEFD9163DF932A05756C0A96F948260

Although she was elected to two terms as mayor she certainly had a large group of people who did not like her administration - she faced (and defeated) a recall election as mayor in 1984.

[michaelflanagansf]

It is said that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  I do believe we need to learn from history, and we as a community should review all that Harvey Milk did when he battled "Prop 6" and work those actions into our battles against "Prop 8".

One of the things which is a real conundrum about this Chuck is that it seems like a lot of what happened with Prop 6 had to do with force of personality - Briggs in a negative way, Harvey in a positive way.  There certainly was no one central person in the Prop 8 campaign who was the 'go to' person in the way Harvey was in prop 6.  Harvey certainly did a whole lot more outreach to non-traditional groups (like appearing in Fullerton) than the Prop 6 people did.

It's hard to know how effective the prop 8 campaign could be without a central character like Harvey.  It didn't hurt that he had been running campaigns for about 5 years by the time Prop 6 came along, either.

[CellarDweller115]

One of the things which is a real conundrum about this Chuck is that it seems like a lot of what happened with Prop 6 had to do with force of personality - Briggs in a negative way, Harvey in a positive way.  There certainly was no one central person in the Prop 8 campaign who was the 'go to' person in the way Harvey was in prop 6.  Harvey certainly did a whole lot more outreach to non-traditional groups (like appearing in Fullerton) than the Prop 6 people did.

It's hard to know how effective the prop 8 campaign could be without a central character like Harvey.  It didn't hurt that he had been running campaigns for about 5 years by the time Prop 6 came along, either.

I agree.  Since there is no central character, it makes me wonder if the movement will be as effective as it could be.  However, has the opposition a central character?

[dejavu]

28.)  In the epilogue Randy Shilts questions the implications of what happened after Milk's death.  He seems to indicate that the changes in the Castro did not follow the path Harvey would have desired and that the Democratic club with Harvey's name would not have supported a candidate who was abrasively anti-machine, like Harvey.  Do you think he is correct?  If this is the case does this mean that Harvey's struggles were in vain - or perhaps that the struggle had just evolved in the following years?  Do you think that the placards at the national march on Washington in October 1979 with Harvey's portrait show that by that point his struggle and his impact would be stronger on the nation at large - and is this true today?

Harvey’s dream for the Castro did not live on in the near term, if Shilts is correct that it became more of a gay tourist trap than a small town with both gay and heterosexual residents.  Even though I’ve been there, I can’t say what its real character is today.  There have been so many changes in American society since 1979 that it’s hard to judge. 

I have a clearer opinion on the part of this question that deals with Harvey’s political legacy.  Harvey was anti-machine when he was a gay outsider running against a heterosexual political establishment.  After gays achieved enough power that they could develop their own style of machine politics, I actually think Harvey would have approved, at least in part.  He still would have preferred that individual voters in the neighborhoods hold the power, but if a machine which truly represented them could consolidate power and operate in a more modern and efficient fashion against opposing political forces in the city, I can see him supporting their methods, even if that meant working with other machines.  He recognized the importance of power, and I think he would have been adaptable to changing times.

I don’t think Harvey’s struggles were in vain, at all.  He did some important work in a short time, like defeating the Briggs Initiative in California.  He showed that gays could be elected to public office and serve well.  He did provide hope to many young people who saw by his example that they could have a better future.  He encouraged people to come out of the closet and be honest with themselves and those around them.  After he died, many more gays in San Francisco followed in his path by becoming political candidates or civil service employees.  Despite Shilts’ argument that things fell back to the way they had been after Harvey died, and that he didn’t really live on, there’s once sentence from this section (p. 348) which I really like:  “Because he so dumbly believed he could change the world, Harvey Milk did.”

The placards in Washington with Harvey’s picture on them showed that he did have national recognition, and had achieved a state of martyrdom among many.  Is this true today?  I would say that the movie “Milk” is an attempt to reawaken memories of Harvey so that a new generation may see him as a role model, a hero and a martyr.  Other gay men have said on this forum that when they were growing up, even though they were too young to remember Harvey Milk, they saw his name in books about the important gay people in history, so he must have been a role model to some of those people.  This is similar to the way young girls might read about important women in history, or young black people might hear of important blacks during Black History Month.  So I think Harvey will always be a meaningful figure to people who can look to his life for an example of what is possible. 

[dejavu]

The romantic in me thinks it's a shame that he didn't get back together with Scott Smith before his death.  But by this time I think the relationship had moved on to where they were trying to deal with one another as friends.

Well, I guess it's the romantic in me, too, Michael, but I really wish they had.  I keep wondering whether there's any way the story could have had a different outcome for both of them (with Harvey having been murdered, and Scott Smith dying from AIDS) if they had just stayed together all along.

[michaelflanagansf]

I agree.  Since there is no central character, it makes me wonder if the movement will be as effective as it could be.  However, has the opposition a central character?

No, but I don't think they need to.  Briggs actually did damage to the campaign for Prop 6 - that's part of the reason he tried to get into the Halloween party on Polk Street (imo).  The religious right thinks that their central character is Jesus, so they don't really need an organizing principle - they've got that.