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Saturday, May 18, 2013
Sacramento Celebrates Harvey Milk Day, May 22nd
by Ken Pierce, published on May 6, 2012 at 9:26 PM
Storyline: Equality Action Now
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This year Harvey Milk Day will be marked with several events here in Sacramento.
Harvey Milk was a leader in the gay rights movement who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. This made him the nation’s first openly gay man elected to public office in a major U.S. city. Milk, along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone was assassinated by ousted Supervisor Dan White, November 27, 1978.
On October 12, 2009, Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill (SB 572) establishing “Harvey Milk Day” to take place each May 22nd, Milk’s birthday. This year, during the week of May 21 – 25, schools are encouraged to educate students about a leader whose courageous work helped to end discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning community in the 1970’s and set the stage for many of advances of civil rights today.
Two places to research Harvey Milk and order resource materials are the Gay Straight Alliance Network web site and a workbook for grades 5-12 titled, “A Celebration of Harvey Milk” by Sacramento 5th grade teacher, Angela F. Luna.
An early event happens May 15th. The Harvey Milk Foundation and Equality California host’s a celebration at The California Museum, 1020 O Street, Sacramento. A VIP, $100 a person reception begins at 5:30pm. The public is invited to attend a FREE discussion of the FAIR Education Act from 6:00pm – 7:00pm. An after-party is scheduled at Hot Italian. For more information and tickets visit the Harvey Milk Foundation.
On Tuesday, Harvey Milk Day, May 22nd, there are three major events scheduled. The public can attend all three if they wish, making it a full Harvey Milk Day for the whole family.
The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus will be on the west steps of the California State Capitol building at 4:00pm where they will premiere the new Harvey Milk Day Anthem: “Give ‘Em Hope!”. This is a free event.
From 6-8pm, Equality Action NOW (EAN), a local grassroots civil rights organization is hosting their 3rd Annual Harvey Milk Day Celebration at Mulvaney’s Next Door to the B&L, 1215 19th Street, Sacramento from 6:00pm – 8:00pm. During a short program, special guest, California Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) who sponsored the bill that created Harvey Milk Day will receive EAN’s “Spirit of Harvey Milk” award. Five other community members will also receive the award.
The staff at Mulvany’s will provide a delicious buffet. Local popular spoken word entertainer; Jovi Radtke will perform an original piece especially for the event. An after-party is being planned for Badlands in Midtown Sacramento. Tickets are $25 online at the Equality Action NOW web site through May 19th and $30 at the door. For more information contact Event Coordinator, Chris Packey at cjpackey@yahoo.com.
Beginning at 8:0pm, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus makes a stop on their “California Freedom Tour 2012” with the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus as their special guests. The chorus will perform at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 2620 Capitol Ave., Sacramento. The concert will benefit the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center. Tickets are $35 reserved, $25 general, $10 students and seniors. At the door it will be $40/$30/$10. Reserve your seats at the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center's web site.
Disclosure:
Ken Pierce is President of the Board of Directors and Communications Director for Equality Action NOW, a local Sacramento grassroots civil rights organization. You can reach Mr. Pierce by email at: ken@equalityactionnow.org
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In addition to his practices in the bedroom, he was an outspoken advocate for a group of marginalized people. He spoke of creating hope in young people, the same young people who continue to kill themselves today because of bullying and harassment. He set aside his own well-being and ultimately sacrificed his own life, in the hope of creating a world that was better for others, regardless of the cost to himself.
You may not like Harvey Milks sexual orientation or his politics, but please do not disrespect him by minimizing and consolidating the sum of all of his deeds into a single act of sexual behavior. I'm confident that if you look into your own past you will find moments of poor judgment, I hope you are not condemned to be defined by those individual acts, as you have just condemned Harvey Milk. Instead I hope you are remembered as an educator and a person who inspired young people, just as Harvey Milk did, and continues to do today. Shame on you for pissing on that legacy with such a petty and narrow-minded view of humanity.
As a final note, I don't believe that anything in this article exposed any children to Harvey Milk's or anyone else's "bedroom choices" until YOU did. Perhaps it is you who should consider what you do and do not expose children to. I for one intend to expose children to the Harvey Milk that told young people to not be afraid, to not kill themselves, and to not ever stop fighting for basic human dignity and human rights. If you would rather talk about sex, that's your choice.
Society's belief about the point at which one becomes mature enough to consent to sexual relations has changed over the years. In the past it was acceptable or at least tolerated, even if it was sometimes deemed in poor taste, for a man to have a wife or lover much younger than themselves. My own grandmother was 16 years old when she ran off and married my granddad who was 38 years old. Their family was not particularly happy with them at the time but they went on to raise six children and by all accounts had a very happy and long marriage.
Beyond the pedophilia, Harvey Milk was a sleazy and nasty man, and had he not been killed by the tightly wound sore loser Dan White, who actually shot Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone because of political backstabbing, not Milk's homosexuality, Milk would have gone out of office in scandal, above all for his deep involvement with the People's Temple criminal cult.
Before the congregants of the Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones’s deadly Kool-Aid, Harvey Milk and much of San Francisco’s ruling class had already figuratively imbibed it. Milk occasionally spoke at Jones’s San Francisco–based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted “volunteers” for Milk’s campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones’s criminal endeavors.
“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Supervisor Milk wrote President Jimmy Carter seven months before the Jonestown carnage. The purpose of Milk’s letter was to aid and abet his powerful supporter’s abduction of a six-year-old boy. Milk’s missive to the president prophetically continued: “Not only is the life of a child at stake, who currently has loving and protective parents in the Rev. and Mrs. Jones, but our official relations with Guyana could stand to be jeopardized, to the potentially great embarrassment of our State Department.” John Stoen, the boy whose actual parents Milk libeled to the president as purveyors of “bold-faced lies” and blackmail attempts, perished at Jonestown. This, the only remarkable episode in Milk’s brief tenure on the San Francisco board of supervisors, is swept under the rug by his hagiographers.
Reports of abuse of Temple members, and stalking of those with the sense to leave the Temple, were reported years before Jonestown. But Jones and his followers walked precincts and voted en masse for Harvey Milk, so he looked the other way at the abuses.
Sorry if the truth hurts. There are better role models to give kids, to say the least.
In an age when kids don't even have the basics down, to push this sort of "education" on minors in K-12 is yet another example of exactly what is wrong with California.
As far as the Jim Jones thing, I think you're being egregiously selective in your telling of the story. You've turned Milk into some central character in the saga and insinuated that he should have apparently known – when apparently no one else knew – what Jim Jones' ultimate plan was. You seem to have left out the part about Harvey describing the Jones people in the following way: “They’re weird and they’re dangerous, and you never want to be on their bad side.” (See Talbot, David. 2012. Season of the Witch. New York: Free Press [Simon & Schuster])
If you are concerned about "better role models" for kids, I assume the following flawed characters are also on your black list:
George Washington – slave owner
Thomas Jefferson – slave owner and produced a whole "shadow family" with one of his slaves, so he was also an adulterer too
Ronald Reagan – traded arms with Iran in exchange for hostages, which was at the very least illegal and was arguably treasonous as well
John F Kennedy – adulterer
Should I keep going? Ah, why bother? Harvey Milk is not disqualified as a role model because of the the things that you purport he did. The thing that actually disqualifies him is that he was a leader for gay civil rights. Those other things you've listed are just window dressing and can be found in the comments section of dozens of right-wing blogs. Thank you for reproducing them for us here and reducing a prominent man's life to a couple of unflattering details.
So my grandfather and many other people’s grandfathers and great grandfathers were all pedophiles? Give me a break. Its ridiculous how many ill-informed people throw around terms that they really have no clue what they mean.
Wikipedia: As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia, is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents (persons age 16 or older) typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children (generally age 13 years or younger, though onset of puberty may vary).
Milk was never a member of People's Temple and therefore he not privy to the inner workings of the church and no one at the time of his campaign for State Senate could have known what would later transpire in South America. To try and say he was intimately connected to them is intellectually dishonest at best. And since we have a secret ballot you have no clue if they actually voted en mass for him or not. Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones supported both candidates. And while Temple members did work his phones and Milk (along with other candidates) did speak at the Temple that hardly indicates he was an ardent supporter. Rather it shows he was a candidate running for office and trying to get every vote he can- like all politicians do.
BTW Milk joined the United States Navy during the Korean War and served aboard the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake (ASR-13) as a diving officer. In 1955, he was discharged from the Navy at the rank of lieutenant, junior grade.
The "shattered reality" of many the aging, fearful, paranoid and gullible Americans would be humorous if it were not so sad because the Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Savage, Noory, Robertson and Jones' of this world are pretendertainers leading them down the rabbit hole and taking their money to the bank.