Thanksgiving San Francisco 1978

Thanksgiving of 1978 came and went like most of the other Thanksgivings of my childhood in the 1970s. My mother, brother and I had spent the holiday with a group of my mother's friends either at our house or somewhere in the Bay Area. Other than my mother's pies, the holiday had not been particularly memorable, but it was about the only thing that had occurred that month in the city where I grew up that might have been described as normal.

In November of 1978, I was a child, albeit a progressive child of 1970s San Francisco, so on Thanksgiving that year my mind was on baseball, my friends, school, my upcoming birthday and other preoccupations of childhood. I was not focused on the recent mass suicide by members of the People's Temple, who had relocated to Guyana from San Francisco, that had been a blow to my city and had dominated Thanksgiving table conversations throughout San Francisco that year. San Franciscans of all ages had no way of knowing that those events would not even be the most traumatic thing to happen to our city that month or that the Jonestown Massacre was only the beginning of a tough decade for our town, one where the we were severely impacted by the AIDS epidemic, spending cuts in health and other social services during the Reagan years, increased costs of living and, just when the city was beginning to turn things around, the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, thirty years ago today, however, that San Francisco again changed forever. That afternoon when I returned from lunch to my sixth grade science class, the nun who was our teacher was visibly distraught about something. She began class that day by somberly announcing that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had been assassinated. Some of us were as upset and shaken by the news as our teacher was. However, more than a few of my classmates greeted this news with cheers of celebration and even exuberant shouts of "they killed that f*g."

While he was alive, Harvey Milk had not been a major presence in my life. I was too young to be involved in city politics and was not deeply aware of all of the political struggles going on around me. Nonethelesss, I was horrified and more than a little frightened by this reaction from the other boys in my class. At home I had learned that Harvey Milk was one of the good guys-and one of us. Now Milk, who like my family was Jewish and from New York, had been killed; and my classmates were cheering at his death.

San Francisco was a different town thirty years ago. It still had not become the city that Harvey Milk helped build, but never saw. San Francisco in 1978 was a city in transition; and Dan White, the man who had assassinated the Mayor and Harvey Milk was fighting against that transition and that progress. Dan White represented the reactionary and hateful elements that feared Harvey Milk who, in turn, feared nobody. Thirty years later, it is hard to imagine that San Francisco of the late 1970s was a city that was in some real ways was still divided. While the City Hall demonstrations against Dan White remain important images from that period, it is occasionally forgotten that strong reservoirs of support remained in several parts of San Francisco for the policeman turned city supervisor turned cold-blooded killer.

The controversy or spin, a word we didn't use back then, surrounding the assassinations of Moscone and Milk and the subsequent trial of Dan White, who had been angry that Mayor Moscone had decided not to reappoint him to the Board of Supervisors, began almost right away. Over the next few months at school it was common to hear students, particularly in my older brother's class, saying that Dan White had led an exemplary life and should not be punished too much for making just one mistake. At home the one time when my brother or I made the mistake of repeating this line of reasoning, to use that term very loosely, out on my mother, we didn't get very far.

The famous and strange trial that followed the assassination, the now famous Twinkie defense, the slap on the wrist given to Dan White and his subsequent suicide after being released from prison are well known. While the justice system failed the memories of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, the City of San Francisco, and gay and lesbian people everywhere, ultimately Harvey Milk's San Francisco defeated Dan White's San Francisco. Within only a few years of Harvey Milk's death, gay and lesbian elected officials were no longer unusual in San Francisco as the political power that Milk had sought to create in the gay and lesbian community became institutionalized. The city has become responsive to gays and lesbians and has been at the cutting edge of most civil and human rights issues.

Harvey Milk's impact, of course, goes far beyond his adopted hometown. In his famous "Hope Speech", Milk spoke about the "young gay person who all the sudden realizes that he or she is gay; knows that if their parents find out they will be tossed out of the house, their classmates will taunt the child...and that child has several options: staying in the closet, and suicide..." Because of the work of Milk and other like him that child now had "two new options: the option is to go to California (read San Francisco), or stay in San Antonio and fight." Milk's greatest legacy is that all across America people chose to do both. While the forces of hate are still out there, and still winning some battles, such as the discriminatory Proposition 8 in California, because of the work of Harvey Milk and millions of other lesser known heroes, those same forces of hate will lose their war. Harvey Milk's America will defeat Dan White's America.

As we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners tonight, progressives have a lot to be thankful for this year, but lets take a minute to remember that great San Franciscan and great American Harvey Milk and the work we all still have to do.

Comments

[LMPE]

As I understand it, Jim Jones had used some of his members to infiltrate San Francisco's city government, and both Harvey Milk and George Moscone owed political favors to the People's Temple.

[goldcoastsailor]

Unfortunately, it was this event that ignited Diane Feinstein's political career, making her mayor and later senator. White had resigned and wanted his post back, when Moscone refused, White shot him and almost as an afterthought shot Milk, who's office was just down the hall. This was a personal vendetta. I was living in the city when all this occurred.

[jbm106]

How unfortunate that in the responses to an eloquent piece commemorating the assassination of Milk and Moscone we have to be treated to a pedantic lecture from someone who thinks that the comments section is a bully pulpit. Please let the rest of us mourn, heal, reflect, and build upon this legacy constructively and in peace.

[samguy]

A man not just killed two people in cold blood, but assanated the mayor of a major American city, let alone a supervisor and he only gets 5 years???? Hello? What's wrong wtih this picture?

[FloaterBall]

It seems that to be a hero, a person of positive and lasting influence in this country, one has to die violently in the prime of life. I can't tell if this is reality (surely there are plenty of people doing great things without getting killed for them) or perception (the Kennedys and MLK still get a lot of press). After all, I'm just another consumer of our information culture. It is distressing in any case.

I'd like to think that those who care and can act mustn't pay with their very lives.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

Was Harvey Milk a shooting victim because he was gay?

Is this why Dan White shot him?

Did you know that Dan White's top political advisor and business partner (Ray Sloan) was also gay, and presumeably still is?

If Dan White's motivation for shooting Milk was that Milk was gay, why didn't White shoot Sloan? If this was White's motivation, why didn't he shoot any other gays in San Francisco? Weren't there any to be found? If this was truly Dan White's motivation, couldn't he find any more? Couldn't he, for example, have found another politician at City Hall, Carol Ruth Silver? And why did he shoot Mayor George Moscone? Certainly Moscone wasn't gay and the published news stories and other literature doesn't indicate that the gay-community has ever claimed that he was.

Did Dan White shoot Harvey Milk because Milk was Jewish and from New York (as well as gay)? The answer has to be: not really. He shot Moscone during the same connected incident, and Moscone certainly was not Jewish and from New York.

Wasn't White influential in helping get Milk appointed as the chairman of the Streets and Transportation Committee? Milk had an agenda. Anyone who is familiar with the voting records of Milk and White would know that White initially voted in favor of Milk's proposals time and time again. Didn't White know that Milk was gay at the time? Or that his votes would favor Milk's agenda and the district that Milk represented?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

An addendum:

Did you know that when Milk promoted a "gay rights" bill, White supported his efforts while the bill was in committee?

What caused a falling out between them? Could it be that an important item on White's agenda was to oppose the development of a psychiatric center in his District, that Milk led him to believe that he would vote with White and four other Supervisors to block it, and that Milk then switched his vote?

Could it be that White, a Viet Nam combat veteran, was suffering from post-traumatic stress, a term not readily used and understood in the 70's? Could it be that his inability to cope in a way that psychiatrists would call normal caused him to snap?

[Balancement]

Yes, all of that justifies cold-blooded (twinkie-fueled) murder. White never showed any remorse--and for killing two people he was only found guilty by a conservative all-white, all-straight jury of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve a mere seven and two-thirds years. Yes, poor, poor Dan White.

I see that people--after all these years--are still trying to promote the idea that if it's a gay person, brutality and murder are all right.

Sad.

[teachnotpreach]

I don't think it's out of the question that as a vet he might have had Post-traumatic Stress Disorder--- which does not in any way excuse his heart-breaking & deplorable act. Milk is greatly missed.

But PTSD does help explain why White lost it so quickly. *Most* homophobes don't murder. Most racists don't murder. Hate & fear does not necessarily lead directly to violence. I think something else is often wrong when people go that far.

I think it's odd that PTSD is rarely ever mentioned in relation to this murder when shedding light on PTSD could be yet another argument to help us stop war. We don't hear nearly enough about this disease w/ vets from Iraq...Ehy does the issue of why Milk was killed have to be black and white? Sh*t is complicated sometimes.

[kevinmcd]

Regardless of whether Milk was killed because he was gay, this post accurately describes the typical reaction many straight people had to his death. It also accurately describes the taunting of anyone who was perceived to have been gay. While the horrible taunting of kids still goes on, we have come a long way overall. On top of that, Milk is still a hero because of his bravery in speaking out for himself and other gay people.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

If taunting is so bad that you would condemn it, please be advised that Harvey Milk used to regularly taunt Dan White during their Board of Supervisors meetings. It began after White expressed his uncontrollable rage at his perceived betrayal by Milk and his vote on the psychiatric center.

Thereafter, when they sat at the Board of Supervisor meetings and Dan White would speak, Harvey Milk began the taunting process by repeating the same words spoken by White but in a falsetto voice while rocking his head from side to side. This amused MIlk, but not White. Milk didn't mock and taunt White every time every time that he spoke, but he did it often enough so that White could expect it even if he didn't know when it was going to happen. After a while, it got so bad that the taunting and mocking silenced White somewhat so that he stopped participating as much in the meetings. Everyone could see the tension. Milk continued to taunt him anyway.

[Smith808]

White was the ONLY supervisor who voted against Milk's gay rights ordinance.
His first campaign advisor told reporters that White was, in fact, a homophobe and that Milk represented what was "wrong" with society.

The other tragedy here, is that he "got off" on a junk food excuse.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

Yes. After White felt betrayed and sandbagged by Milk's switched vote on the psychiatric center, White never voted in favor of any of Milk's proposals again. After that, it would be accurate to say that White became a Milk-ophobe.

Although the MSM represented his attorney's defense theory as the "Twinkie defense," the jury who heard all the evidence never let him off (or at least never let him off on the murder one charge) solely on the grounds that he ate Twinkies. His attorney presented enough evidence to convince them that Dan White was a more than a little unbalanced. The fact that he had swings in his blood sugar was part of that, but not the only part.

For those who want to believe that his attorney defended White solely on the ground that he ate Twinkies, they will believe that no matter what. It is an irrational concept that some people simply want to believe. His attorney was very competent, but even he didn't have that magical power. No one does.

The fact is that MIlk was a shooting victim. The jury convicted White of manslaughter because the evidence before them led them to believe that he had mental problems which ultimately led to the shooting. The MSM created its own "Twinkie defense" myth. If you want to believe that White got off because of if and no facts presented to the jury otherwise showed that he had bona fide mental problems, go ahead and believe it.

[Balancement]

When I think of Harvey Milk I'm reminded of a line from the opera "The Mother of Us All" by the gay composer Virgil Thomson, and his lesbian librettist, Gertrude Stein:

"Susan B. Anthony was right. And she was right because she was right."

For the gay movement, Harvey is the Father of Us All. I remember, and I'm thankful.

[flyingmonkey]

I'm sure Mr. Milk would be thrilled to know that he's remembered this Thanksgiving. Even if it is to promote a movie.