Happy Birthday, Harvey Milk

by Michael Jones · 2009-05-22 06:06:00 UTC
Topics:

Milk

Yesterday we marked the 30th anniversary of the White Night Rights, the demonstrations that took place after Harvey Milk's assassin, Dan White, was given a slap on the wrist for murdering Milk and SF Mayor George Moscone.

Coincidentally, the day after the riots - May 22 - is Harvey Milk's birthday.  He would have been 79 today.

As Milk's legacy has been given more and more attention this past year, efforts have redoubled in California to officially establish May 22 as "Harvey Milk Day."  The California State Senate recently passed legislation to commemorate Milk on this day, and if the bill sails through the House and gets the approval of Governor Schwarzenegger (who stupidly vetoed the bill last year), come May 22, 2010, we'll be officially celebrating today as "Harvey Milk Day."

The California LGBT caucus will be remembering Milk today, and a number of vigils around California will celebrate his life and legacy too.  If you don't live in California, or you can't make it to a vigil and you find yourself with an extra 88 minutes free, why not catapult over to hulu.com, and watch for free "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk," the Oscar-winning documentary about Milk's political life.  You won't regret watching it.  It's also the film from which Dustin Lance Black and Gus Van Sant borrowed some footage from this past year's "Milk" movie.

And lastly, to close with some famous words from Harvey himself:

"It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions."

I think that rhetoric and that political legacy is exactly what Milk would want commemorated on this day.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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