The Mayor of Castro Street (58 page)

So the challenge of the 80s will be to awaken the consciousness of industry and commerce to the part they must play in saving the cities which nourished them. Every company realizes it must constantly invest in its own physical plant to remain healthy and grow. Well, the cities are a part of that plant and the people who live in them are part of the cities. They're all connected; What affects one affects the others.

In short, the cheapest place to manufacture a product may not be the cheapest at all if it results in throwing your customers out of work. There's no sense in making television sets in Japan if the customers in the United States haven't the money to buy them. Industry must actively seek to employ those without work, to train those who have no skills. “Labor intensive” is not a dirty word, not every job is done better by machine. It has become the job of industry not only to create the product, but also to create the customer.

Costly? I don't think so. It's far less expensive than the problem of fully loaded docks and no customers. And there are additional returns: lower rates of crime, smaller welfare loads. And having your friends and neighbors sitting on that well-polished front stoop.

Industry and business has made our country the greatest military and economic power in the world. Now I think it's time to look at our future with a realistic eye. I don't think the American Dream necessarily includes two cars in every garage and a disposal in every kitchen. What it does need is an educational system with incentives. To spend twelve years at school—almost a fifth of your life—without a job at the other end is meaningless. Every ghetto child has the right to ask: Education for what?

It's time for our system to mature, to face the problems it's created, to take responsibility for the problems it's ignored. Criminals aren't born, they're made—made by a socioeconomic system that has turned crime into a production line phenomenon. “In 1977, there were so many burglaries per second, so many murders per hour.…”

It also sounds simplistic to constantly say that jobs are part of the answer. But there are things to consider. As huge as they are, corporations frequently have more flexibility than the people who work for them. A company headquarters can leave town, a factory can literally pull up stakes and move someplace else. But the workers they leave behind frequently can't. The scar that's left isn't just the empty office building or the now-vacant lot; it's the worker who can no longer provide for his family, the teenager who suddenly awakens from the American Dream to find that all the jobs have gone south for the duration.

It was an expensive move the company made. You see the empty buildings but you don't see the hopelessness, the loss of pride, the anger. You've done a lot more than just lose a customer. And when I say losing a customer, I don't mean just your customer. There are other businesses and when they move or shift, the people they leave behind are also your customers, just like yours are theirs.

I think, perhaps, many companies feel that helping the city is a form of charity. I think it more accurate to consider it a part of the cost of doing business, that it should be entered on the books as amortizing the future. I would like to see business and industry consider it as such, because I think there's more creativity, more competence perhaps, in business than there is in government. I think that business could turn the south of Market Area not only into an industrial park but a neighborhood as well. To coin a pun, too many of our cities have a complex, in fact, too many complexes. We don't need another concrete jungle that dies the moment you turn off the lights in the evening. What we need is a neighborhood where people can walk to work, raise their kids, enjoy life.

That simple.

And now, I suspect, some of the business people in this room are figuring—perhaps rightly—that they've heard all this before. Why is it always business that's supposed to save the city? Why us? Why isn't somebody else doing something? How about you, for a change, Harvey? What the hell are the rest of the people in this room doing? And you've got a point. But I merely suggest that business must help, that we must open up a dialogue that involves all of us. A businessperson's decisions aren't his alone, for the simple reason that they affect far more people than just himself. And we have to consider those other people. Those are the ghosts that sit on your board of directors and they must be respected.

And now I think it's time that everybody faced reality. Real reality. So for the next few minutes, it's going to be slightly down and dirty.

A small item in the newspaper the other day indicated what the future might be like. Mayor Koch of New York turned his back on the elegance of Gracie Mansion and opted for the comforts of his three-room apartment—and I'll refrain from any comparison to our good Governor. Mr. Koch chose his three-room apartment because he likes it. Nothing more complicated than that. He likes it.

And believe it or not, that's the wave of the future. The cities will be saved. The cities will be governed. But they won't be run from three thousand miles away in Washington, they won't be run from the statehouse, and most of all, they won't be run by the carpetbaggers who have fled to the suburbs. You can't run a city by people who don't live there, any more than you can have an effective police force made up of people who don't live there. In either case, what you've got is an occupying army.

The cities will be saved. The cities will be run. They'll be saved and they'll be run by the people who live in them, by the people who
like
to live in them. You can see it in parts of Manhattan, you can see it along Armitage Street and on the far North Side of Chicago, and you can certainly see it in San Francisco.

Who's done the most for housing in our city? The federal government? The state? Who's actually renovating this city? Who's buying the houses and using their own sweat and funds to restore them and make them liveable? And just how many homes do you think that includes by now? How many thousands? The people who are doing this are doing it out of love for the city. They're renovating not only the physical plant, they're renovating the spirit of the city as well.

The cities will not be saved by the people who feel condemned to live in them, who can hardly wait to move to Marin or San Jose—or Evanston or Westchester. The cities will be saved by the people who like it here. The people who prefer the neighborhood stores to the shopping mall, who go to the plays and eat in the restaurants and go to the discos and worry about the education the kids are getting even if they have no kids of their own.

That's not just the city of the future; it's the city of today. It means new directions, new alliances, new solutions for ancient problems. The typical American family with two cars and 2.2 kids doesn't live here anymore. It hasn't for years. The demographics are different now and we all know it. The city is a city of singles and young marrieds, the city of the retired and the poor, a city of many colors who speak in many tongues.

The city will run itself, it will create its own solutions. District elections was not the end. It was just the beginning. We'll solve our problems—with your help, if we can, without it if we must. We need your help. I don't deny that. But you also need us. We're your customers. We're your future.

I'm riding into that future and frankly I don't know if I'm wearing the fabled helm of Mambrino on my head or if I'm wearing a barber's basin. I guess we wear what we want to wear and we fight what we want to fight. Maybe I see dragons where there are only windmills. But something tells me the dragons are for real and if I shatter a lance or two on a whirling blade, maybe I'll catch a dragon in the bargain.

So I'm asking you to take a chance and ride with me against the windmills—and against the dragons, too. To make the quality of life in San Francisco what it should be, to help our city set an example, to set the style, to show the rest of the country what a city can really be. To prove that Miami's vote was a step backwards and that San Francisco's was two steps forward.

Yesterday, my esteemed colleague on the Board said we cannot live on hope alone. I know that, but I strongly feel the important thing is not that we cannot live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it. If the story of Don Quixote means anything, it means that the spirit of life is just as important as its substance. What others may see as a barber's basin, you and I know is that glittering, legendary helmet.

III. The Hope Speech

The following address represents the quintessential stump speech Milk used as he traveled around both California and the nation as the country's first openly gay city official. This particular speech—the keynote address at a San Diego dinner of the gay caucus of the California Democratic Council on March 10, 1978—is perhaps the best example of Milk's extemporaneous oration included here, since it is not taken from Milk's prepared notes (like the other speeches in this appendix) but from an actual tape recording of the event. The standard opening joke, Milk's characteristic run-on sentences, and his occasional non sequiturs, therefore, remain intact. The most powerful section of the speech comes in the final minutes when Milk returned to the theme he had honed through his 1977 campaign and his year in office—hope. Milk aides dubbed this routine pitch “The Hope Speech” and it became the supervisor's political trademark. (The tape was provided by Elmer Wilhelm, past president of the Minuteman—now the Stonewall—Democratic Club of San Francisco.)

My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you.

I've been saving this one for years. It's a political joke. I can't help it—I've got to tell it. I've never been able to talk to this many political people before, so if I tell you nothing else you may be able to go home laughing a bit.

This ocean liner was going across the ocean and it sank. And there was one little piece of wood floating and three people swam to it and they realized only one person could hold on to it. So they had a little debate about which was the person. It so happened the three people were the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley. The Pope said he was titular head of one of the great religions of the world and he was spiritual adviser to many, many millions and he went on and pontificated and they thought it was a good argument. Then the President said he was leader of the largest and most powerful nation of the world. What takes place in this country affects the whole world and they thought that was a good argument. And Mayor Daley said he was mayor of the backbone of the United States and what took place in Chicago affected the world, and what took place in the archdiocese of Chicago affected Catholicism. And they thought that was a good argument. So they did it the democratic way and voted. And Daley won, seven to two.

About six months ago, Anita Bryant in her speaking to God said that the drought in California was because of the gay people. On November 9, the day after I got elected, it started to rain. On the day I got sworn in, we walked to City Hall and it was kinda nice, and as soon as I said the word “I do,” it started to rain again. It's been raining since then and the people of San Francisco figure the only way to stop it is to do a recall petition. That's a local joke.

So much for that. Why are we here? Why are gay people here? And what's happening? What's happening to me is the antithesis of what you read about in the papers and what you hear about on the radio. You hear about and read about this movement to the right. That we must band together and fight back this movement to the right. And I'm here to go ahead and say that what you hear and read is what they want you to think because it's not happening. The major media in this country has talked about the movement to the right so much that they've got even us thinking that way. Because they want the legislators to think that there is indeed a movement to the right and that the Congress and the legislators and the city councils will start to move to the right the way the major media want them. So they keep on talking about this move to the right.

So let's look at 1977 and see if there was indeed a move to the right. In 1977, gay people had their rights taken away from them in Miami. But you must remember that in the week before Miami and the week after that, the word homosexual or gay appeared in every single newspaper in this nation in articles both pro and con. In every radio station, in every TV station and every household. For the first time in the history of the world, everybody was talking about it, good or bad. Unless you have dialogue, unless you open the walls of dialogue, you can never reach to change people's opinion. In those two weeks, more good and bad, but
more
about the word homosexual and gay was written than probably in the history of mankind. Once you have dialogue starting, you know you can break down the prejudice. In 1977 we saw a dialogue start. In 1977, we saw a gay person elected in San Francisco. In 1977 we saw the state of Mississippi decriminalize marijuana. In 1977, we saw the convention of conventions in Houston. And I want to know where the movement to the right is happening.

What that is is a record of what happened last year. What we must do is make sure that 1978 continues the movement that is really happening that the media don't want you to know about, that is the movement to the left. It's up to CDC to put the pressures on Sacramento—not to just bring flowers to Sacramento—but to break down the walls and the barriers so the movement to the left continues and progress continues in the nation. We have before us coming up several issues we must speak out on. Probably the most important issue outside the Briggs—which we will come to—but we do know what will take place this June. We know there's an issue on the ballot called Jarvis-Gann. We hear the taxpayers talk about it on both sides. But what you don't hear is that it's probably the most racist issue on the ballot in a long time. In the city and county of San Francisco, if it passes and we indeed have to lay off people, who will they be? The last in, not the first in, and who are the last in but the minorities? Jarvis-Gann is a racist issue. We must address that issue. We must not talk away from it. We must not allow them to talk about the money it's going to save, because look at who's going to save the money and who's going to get hurt.