January 15, 2003

MATT GONZALEZ, newly elected president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is spearheading a campaign to create a City Hall memorial to assassinated gay-rights leader Harvey Milk. Elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 after three unsuccessful attempts to win public office, Milk was gunned down a year later, along with then-mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White.

The City Hall memorial, most likely a bust, should pay tribute to Milk not only as the city's first elected openly gay official but also as an out and proud radical Jewish queer who opposed the Vietnam War and built coalitions with other oppressed groups. The absence of a plaque accompanying the bust that explains what Milk stood for would be a tragedy. Having a bust of Milk in City Hall is no achievement if the man's politics are forgotten.

But that's what generally happens when we do these sorts of things – often we preserve the image but not the reason why the person deserves to be set in stone.

It's fitting that Gonzalez is leading the drive to memorialize Milk. Gonzalez is a politician cut from the same cloth as Milk, because he is a solid progressive and because he bucked the Democratic Party big-time by changing his party affiliation to Green during his District Five supervisorial campaign three years ago – and won by a landslide. In fact, he is now the top-ranking Green in the country. Gonzalez is also a maverick who's not afraid to do the right thing, even if it's unpopular.

Milk was the same way.

Which is why I laughed when I read recent comments in the queer press that the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club is dishonoring the memory of its namesake with its radical politics that include backing progressive candidates, opposing the war in Iraq, and supporting the day laborer program. Dishonoring a man who bucked the mainstream gay establishment by running for supervisor against its chosen candidate? Dishonoring a man who bucked the Democratic machine time and time again by refusing to follow its dictates? Dishonoring a man who was never supported by the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club because he was too radical? Dishonoring a man who marched with farmworkers in the Mission District and stood with Filipinos being evicted from the I-Hotel?

Had Milk been a mainstream gay and not gone against the grain, would we remember him now? Had he touted the party line and let the political machine tell him who should run and when, would we remember him now? Had he not successfully challenged Proposition Six (the Briggs Initiative), which would have banned LGBT folks from being teachers, would we remember him now?

In all the hoopla this bust is sure to generate in the months to come, let us not forget that the man we are honoring was a thorn in the side of a gay establishment that believed its power came from the Democratic machine. Milk saw power coming directly from the people.

As progressives we should not allow Milk's memorial to be turned into an occasion for cheap sentiment or a glitzy City Hall party attended by the usual moneyed guests. Instead, we should use this occasion to inspire a new generation of young people to question authority; to challenge war, racism, and bigotry; and to fight like hell to create a world in which all people have affordable housing, universal health care, and living-wage jobs. A world without hunger or exploitation.

That is the struggle we celebrate with this memorial.