Cross-posted at Pam's House Blend
Today would have been Harvey Milk's 81st birthday. His famous "Hope Speech" was given at a San Diego dinner of the gay caucus of the California Democratic Caucus on March 10, 1978. In light of last night's vote in Minnesota, here is an excerpt of that speech.
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 the legislators 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 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.
Once you have a dialogue starting, you know you can break down prejudice. If we are going to win in Minnesota, and likely in North Carolina, we must, must come out. This has not changed in the 33 years since the Briggs initiative. The youth of this country are growing up with knowledge of their lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered friends, family members, parents, and yes, role models. For the first time ever, a Gallup poll show that a majority in this country favors marriage equality. That's great, but it's not enough. This is another uphill battle. We cannot count on the DNC establishment to help us fight this atrocity. We cannot count on Democratic candidates to speak out against this. We cannot count on a huge coalition of progressive religious allies to speak out and raise millions of dollars to fight this.
What can we count on? With the Republican drive to disenfranchise voters who trend progressive, we can count on more difficult GOTV efforts. We can count on Maggie and Brian to recycle ads saying that LGBT people hurt children. We can count on millions of dollars of mormon and catholic money to pour into the state, along with a lengthy court battle to disguise donor identities.
But we can also count on ourselves. We have the legacy of Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin, Frank Kameny, Barbara Jordan, Leonard Matlovich, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, and Sylvia Rivera to uphold. The current generation has its own heroes and trailblazers such as Kim Coco Iwamoto, Kecia Cunningham, Pedro Zamora, Micah Kellner, and Anthony Woods. We as a community have come further in the last 30 years than anyone would have thought possible. We have fought prejudice and discrimination enshrined into law, we have fought AIDS and the stigma and silence surrounding it, we have fought Don't Ask, Don't Tell, we have fought for our families and our lives time and time again. We will continue to fight, and we will still be here long after Maggie and her hateful minions have gone from this earth.
We're still here, still fighting, still carrying the movement forward. Happy Birthday, Harvey.
A statement from the Harvey Milk Foundation is below the fold.
Milk Foundation Statement on 2nd Anniversary of Harvey Milk Day
2nd Official Harvey Milk Day Statement, May 22, 2011 by Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk and Founder and President of the Harvey B. Milk Foundation
Today my uncle would have been 81 years old. However he gave us his life 32 years ago, knowing that the first of any civil rights movement, who so clearly and loudly proclaim their right to equality, most often meets a violent and sudden end. I am frequently asked if I am deeply saddened that my uncle Harvey did not get to see all those elected officials who would come to stand on his shoulders or all the places where the light of equality burns brighter than the darkness of antiquated prejudice, and I have long replied, he did see those open and proud candidates running for office and winning and he did see those cities and states and nations that would etch equality into both their laws and their societal values, for he could not have given his life without seeing and visualizing that dream, for he would leave us with a compass based on hope, hope born of bullets, not smashing into his brain, but smashing our masks and our fear of authenticity.
81 years ago Harvey came into this world with all the promise and potential that my grandparents Minnie and Bill could have imagined, and he also came into a world that soon would be rocked by a global war driven at its very core by fear, division, and separation. My uncle was profoundly affected by the capacity of communities and nations to turn on each other when the narrative of lies and the myths of prejudice were fed around the globe during WWII. He also was able to see at a young age, visible through his college writing, that we could learn through collaboration, understanding and inclusiveness that we are not weakened by our differences, in fact that our potential is only reached when the full diversity of all those that make up our communities are celebrated. And today it is this celebration of our diversity that Harvey dreamed, the celebration of all of us, not in-spite of our differences, but because of our differences. Today is the celebration not of a people or community or nation being better then another, but a celebration of the knowledge that we are so much less when we do not embrace, without qualification, all members of our unique and varied humanity.
My uncle’s legacy has many monuments, all those openly LGBT elected officials, all those who live an authentic and open life, all those strong allies, like Leader Nancy Pelosi, that fight to keep us embraced, and the books and the plays, and the operas, and the movies–both the academy award winning 1984 Documentary, “The Times of Harvey Milk and 2008’s MILK have given new generations the central story of Harvey, of his dream, of his willingness to give his life for that dream, and by telling his story, young people just starting out in life, those of us in the middle of life, and even the elders of our communities were all given a strong reminder of hope, the hope to fulfill our potential of equality. President Obama said it best, “Harvey gave us hope, All of us, Hope unashamed, Hope unafraid” when he gave me Harvey’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even more monumental has been the number of openly LGBT Presidential appointments made in these past two years and the unprecedented level of inclusiveness this White House has shown, not just to Americans but the global LGBT community. My uncle was very much with us as we watched the President and then Speaker Pelosi sign the Matthew Shepard Act and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or when the President’s Department of Justice declared that laws that discriminate against LGBT Americans must be reviewed with a higher level of scrutiny in Federal courts to provide greater protection against discrimination. These are the tangible monuments to Harvey’s legacy that have the impact to effect change, real societal change.
Today California is joined with fair minded communities across the country and out onto the global stage in celebrating not only the birthday of my uncle but also his dream, a dream that remains alive in so many of us. The Harvey Milk Foundation set out this year to grow the recognition of Harvey’s story and the hope it inspires and to encourage a national and global celebration of that hope. With a group of some 25 dedicated volunteers from around the country, mostly young, mostly filled with the belief in the possible. With no paid staff the Foundation set out to reach around the globe in the belief that Harvey Milk Day can give hope to everyone, everyone who has ever felt different, or has felt that they did not belong, or were not welcome as who they really are. It is a day of recognition and appreciation of our own authenticity and that of others, a day to collaborate and reach out to those who still struggle with either self acceptance or societal acceptance. A day to put hate and separation in their place, a place of learning of wrongs righted and reminders not to repeat them, a day to create the dream and vision of what is possible, even in the all too many places around the world where it is still so very hard to visualize that dream, as it was in the time is the US when my uncle spoke out over 35 years ago. I humbly thank all of us who work collaboratively in dreaming what my uncle dreamed, for seeing, visualizing and striving to reach that day of full equality, equality that is unqualified.