Brody's Scribbles... California Recognises 'The Mayor Of Castro Street'

Stuart Milk accepts the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, for his uncle Harvey Milk, August 12th, 2009  

Official Photo By Pete Souza  The White House

By Brody Levesque (Bethesda, Maryland) May 22 | Today marks the first Harvey Milk Day in California, a day of recognition for the slain gay rights activist and politician. Fellow activist and Palm Springs resident Cleve Jones, who was close friends with Milk in the 1970s, said the commemoration is long overdue. Harvey would have been 80 years old today. 
What would he think of the movement that he helped found and eventually was martyred for in 1978? Would Harvey be pleased? Gratified? Overjoyed? His old campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg, once wrote of him:

"What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us."

More-so than anything else that Harvey left as his legacy was an indelible mark on American society that being LGBT was not anymore different than the colour of one's hair. Harvey always preached that 'Hope was never silent.'

In what is generally agreed upon by historians and his closest aides as Harvey's finest speech, Milk said: 

"And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up."

"And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they'll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects ... I hope that every professional gay will say 'enough', come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help."