millines@fortune.UUCP (Trish Millines) (11/09/84)
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Last night I had the wonderful experience of seeing "The Times of
Harvey Milk". In 1978 I was a college student on the east coast just
beginning to feel comfortable about being gay and I had no idea what was
going on out here. After seeing this movie, I wished that I was in San
Francisco in the 70's, just to experience the effect that Harvey Milk had on
gays, minorities, handicapped, and the elderly.
Watching documentaries is not EVEN my thing, specially if it's about
a politcal figure, so I went in with a skeptical attitude. Within 5 minutes,
the skepticism disappeared. The movie consisted of interviews with people who
worked with Milk politically and socially, footage from news broadcasts, and
snapshots from various photographers. It's hard to explain the amount of
emotion that the audience was feeling, but they were definitely feeling every
bit of those events that were shown before their eyes. - Chances are that alot
of them were there when it all happened. There was plenty of tears and
laughter to go around.
I left that movie feeling like I wanted to turn back the hands of time
just so I could meet Harvey Milk. It left me feeling proud to be a member
of the San Francisco gay/minority community and very thankful that the city
had the opportunity to enjoy Milk as a supervisor for the short time he was in
office. But seeing the outcome of the Dan White trial made me lose more
faith (the little I had) in the judicial system.
I suggest that if this movie is in your town or near you, GO SEE IT!!!
You won't be disappointed.
Trishtraining@rtech.UUCP (Training account) (06/11/85)
> > > A moving documentary about San Francisco's first openly gay Supervisor, > > > who was murdered in city hall in 1978 by a homophobic fireman ... > > Dan White, who assassinated Harvey Milk and > > Frank Moscone, was not just a fireman, he was an ex-city councilor. > White was a policeman. (He may have been a fireman also, but he > was most recently a cop, and it was this previous occupation which > was highlighted in the trial). The story is... Dan White was an right wing ex-fireman and ex-policeman who ran for city council in 1975. He won, but was trying to support his wife and kid on his City Supervisor income of $9,600 a year. Finding himself under a lot of pressure (a fact that was repeated often during the trial), he resigned his post. Immediately after resigning, his friends and family begged him to try to get the position back. White appealed to the Mayor, George Moscone, to ignore his resignation, but Moscone, who was a very liberal mayor, wanted to give the supervisorship to someone more liberal. In White's mind, Supervisor Harvey Milk was also to blame for White not getting the position back - Milk, an openly gay city supervisor, was a political opponent of White's, and a friend of Moscone's. The day White found out that he wasn't going to be reappointed, he called an aide of his and asked her to drive him to City Hall. He took his police service revolver, which was loaded, and some extra rounds of ammunition. When he got to City Hall, he started to enter, and then noticed that a metal detector had been installed at the top of the stairs (this was right after the Jonestown massacre, and death threats had been made against San Francisco city officials). He left the main entrance, went around to the side of the building, and climbed in through a basement window. He went up to Moscone's office, waited five minutes for Moscone to see him, went into Moscone's office, and shot Moscone 5 times. He reloaded his gun in Moscone's office, crossed City Hall to Milk's office, and killed Milk (but didn't reload after killing Milk). Then he called his wife, met her at Doggie Diner, and walked to Police Headquarters and turned himself in. He was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. The defense successfully contended that he didn't mean to kill Milk or Moscone; that it was not unusual for White to carry his revolver with him, that it was not unusual for people to enter City Hall through the basement windows, that it was White's police training that made him reload after killing Moscone. The basic case that his lawyer set up was that White was a good man, and that good men just don't kill people unless they are temporarily mentally unstable. Why was White temporarily unstable? He'd eaten a lot of twinkies and other junk food, and it caused sudden and drastic mood changes. Anyway, White is free now...he was released on parole in l984, and the parole expired in l985, leaving him completely free. A few more points should be made: although he disliked homosexuals, he did not kill Milk because Milk was gay. He killed Milk for the same reason he killed Moscone: Milk was a political enemy who was actively working against White's getting his post back. For a short time at the beginning of his political career, White and Milk were friends. This is only a capsule description of what was a very complex case. If anyone wants more information, "The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" does a real good job of covering all the basic issues. However, the best work on the subject is a book called "Double Play" by Mike Weiss. It's the only treatment of the case I've seen that digs up anything beyond the basics of the trial...it goes into the history of San Francisco, Moscone's background, Moscone's whoremongering, etc. etc. Robert Orenstein Relational Technology
rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (06/20/85)
I hereby apologize to Stephen Hutchison & Robert Orenstein for the personal insults & generally offensive tone of my replies to their postings. However, I don't concede the points I made, & I still think that homophobia informs their interest & opinion on Dan White, however much they may deplore this as an ad hominem attack. I'd like to note here the resurgence of an aggressive conservative revisionism that has targeted gay figures/ideas/events as well as others in often crude & prejudiced attempts to "debunk myths", attempts that often heavily rely on the ignorance of the public or the omission of obvious or compelling issues or facts. Messers Hutchison & Orenstein probably aren't conservatives & would decry the label revisionist, but their postings struck me as part of the tide of revisionism from the right that's current. My perceptions may be awry. I haven't read Mike Weiss's book on the White trial, but I wonder whether Weiss concurs with Robert Orenstein that White killed Milk only out of political reasons & not homophobia? Municipal assassination is rare in the US, but homophobic city workers, paranoid cops & firemen, dirty politics, & personal conflicts between city politicians aren't at all. The unusually brutal slayings in City Hall in 1978 suggest an unusual cause/motive/ factor: homophobia, achieving focus by the presence of an openly gay & aggressive elected official. Once again, my apologies for my rather vicious & ugly attacks on Mr. Orenstein & Hutchison. Regards, Ron Rizzo