Harvey Milk: Local Legend or National Figure?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


MilkResized.jpg

Harvey Milk, the San Francisco board of supervisors member who was assassinated in 1978, never considered himself to be a local anything. Milk, who was born in New York and has a high school in Manhattan named for him, also lived in California, Florida, and Texas during his life. He held office in San Francisco for a mere 11 months, but he had dreams of becoming a mayor, a congressman, and after that, who knew? So it seems incongruous that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would decline to commemorate Harvey Milk’s birthday by deeming the first openly gay man in the nation to hold public office a “local” figure.

The Milk bill, sponsored by California assemblyman Mark Leno, sought to make Milk’s birthday (May 22) a statewide “day of significance.” The bill itself is fairly low-impact: schools and government institutions would remain open for regular business. The bill would only “encourage” educational institutions to “conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date.” In September, Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill saying that Milk’s “contributions should continue to be recognized at the local level.”

Last week Gus Van Sant’s film about Milk opened as a limited release. At the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the line to enter the movie stretched for almost two blocks. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie earned a record-breaking $1.4 million in three-day box office, or $38,375 per location. The film’s five-day Thanksgiving Weekend total gross was $1.9 million. Local level, indeed.

—Daniel Luzer

Image by flickr user Sam Spade

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate