The Municipal Reform of Harvey Milk

5.22.2025 / Essay / Daisy Dale

From “Milk” Dir. Gus Van Sant, 2008

May 22nd has been recognized as Harvey Milk Day throughout the country. The formal recognition of the holiday in the State of California in 2009 builds onto the slain civil rights leader’s enduring remembrance, whether by the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award that same year, his own biopic directed by Gus Van Sant in 2008, or his name making it in Time Magazine’s 100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century in 1998. As the first openly gay man to hold public office in California, his achievements in his own city continue to be a source of inspiration for activists working on a local level.

Harvey Milk’s work in San Francisco was short-lived due to the assassination of him and Mayor George Moscone. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (a position equivalent to a city council-member in other cities) but he only served that role for 11-months. His major accomplishments on a state and national level included his campaign against the Briggs Initiative, a proposition that would have made it illegal for gays to be teachers in California, and his public opposition to Anita Bryant, a singer best known for several orange juice commercials and her outspoken homophobic stances.

This isn’t to say that his activism has been mythologized, or that his image has been flattened, but the originality in what he was doing in San Francisco has been greatly overlooked. As we’re thinking now more than ever about where we can find institutional leverage, given how bleak the news continues to be, Milk holds up as a politician who drew more interest in local politics by his nearby City Hall than for the sort of politics that begin and end in Washington.

San Francisco had become a mecca for the gay community. The Castro area in particular evolved in the ’60s and ’70s to become a region for the hippie movement and sexual revolution that the time period was known for. Milk moved there with his partner Scott Smith in 1972, as tens of thousands of gays and lesbians were doing the same in that decade.

He started running his own campaigns in 1973, running three times unsuccessfully before his first victory in 1977. When George Moscone was elected mayor in 1975, he appointed Milk for the Board of Permit Appeals, and continued a diverse set of appointments for the rest of his tenure. However, this didn’t stop Milk from running for State Assembly that year. Not only did he risk another failure, which did in fact happen to him in that election, but in early ’76 Moscone removed him from the Board of Permit Appeals, because of his rule not to allow appointees to run for office. Democratic leadership had also already picked a candidate, Art Agnos, to run for Assembly.1

In his successful ’77 campaign for Supervisor, he gained a major advantage when it was decided that voting districts would be established instead of only city-wide races being held. District 5 that he ran for was conveniently the Castro District, where his camera shop was located and had the highest concentration of San Francisco’s gay population. Milk would receive 1,450 more votes than his most popular opponent,2 and in spite of Moscone reportedly supporting another candidate Rick Stokes.3 Milk was willing to work with everyone when he started, including conservative-Democrat Dan White, although his win for Supervisor wasn’t without it’s unique party infighting.

Milk speaking at Union Square rally on the night of Anita Bryant’s victory in Miami. By Jerry Pritikin.

Pin of Diane Feinstein as a Circus Clown. From Personal Collection of Daisy Dale.

Diane Feinstein and him were famously at odds. She was elected Supervisor for District 2 long before her time as a U.S. Senator, and Milk considered her to be “The Wicked Witch of the West” as she proclaimed that landlords would be forced into having their properties turned into S&M clubs by gay tenants, and continued to insist that the gay community was imposing their sexuality onto straight people.4 But in reality, landlords at the time could evict gay people for their sexual preference alone.

While he was at odds with Mayor George Moscone at points before 1978, he became a close ally once elected Supervisor. Moscone was a fervent defender of minority groups, and took major risks with his political capital for the sake of progressive causes. Their work together also constituted challenging real estate developers and bringing together various communal organizations. At the heart of what was being achieved, the successful campaign for Milk was about finding agency in city politics, to fix the problems being overlooked for marginalized groups. In his own words:

“On the local level, you’re finding that the battle against Briggs in this city is putting a lot of gay people into the political process — people who have never been in it before. There will be a carry-over that will affect all political races in The City. Once people become more politicized many of them stay politicized. That means there will be more gay people involved — not only in running for office, but also involved in initiative campaigns, proposition campaigns and working for candidates. I guess the best way of putting it is, you’re going to see the maturing of the gay political consciousness because of the Briggs initiative.”5

His Leverage and the Boycott

Milk and his partner Smith opened their own camera shop in 1973, and it quickly became a political hangout spot and an outlet for the community of Castro Street. Activist and protégé of Harvey, Cleveland Jones, described it as “a sort of drop-in center where Harvey would help you.”6 Even when Milk ran unsuccessfully three times, he effectively gained the status as “Mayor of Castro Street,” and had leverage that was desirable even outside of the gay community. This leverage was discovered with the Coors Beer Boycott of 1977.

In the late ’70s, the Teamsters Union in California was at odds with Coors beer for refusing to sign their proposed union contract, and as a result the Local 366 would start striking the six big beer distributors.7 Needing to extend the boycott to gay bars in the city, Allan Baird, a Teamsters member and director of the boycott, had heard that Milk was the man to meet to reach out to the gay community. Baird explained that part of what Coors had in their contract included required polygraph tests in which employees could be asked about their sexual orientation.8 Milk went to every gay bar in the Castro District, as well as a network for gay bars called the Tavern Guild, and convinced the establishments to quit selling Coors beer. His only request to Baird was to have the Teamsters consider hiring more gay truck drivers.

As a result, five of the six distributors signed the contract, and gay truckers were hired with Falstalf, Lucky Lager, and Budweiser.9 Later on, the local Teamsters endorsed Milk in his 1977 campaign.10 Now after his first successful campaign, Milk would be inaugurated on January 9th, 1978.

Coors Boycott poster and button re-created for the movie Milk.

Board of Supervisor Accomplishments

From San Francisco’s Board of Supervisor minutes. p. 306.

His anti-discrimination ordinance passed on March 20th would particularly change police code to prevent the outstanding arrests targeting homosexuals for years. Diane Feinstein had qualms with the ordinance,11 however she wouldn’t dissent following a two-hour discussion the day it was introduced. Milk’s biographer Randy Shilts also noted that she had regret for her hostility as time went on.12

Dan White moved to have it referred from the Board of Supervisors to their public safety committee, but no one else on the board wished to second him.13 White would be the only dissenting vote out of the eleven members, and during the two-hour discussion referred to his Catholicism as his reason against it.

There was only one significant piece of legislation that Milk was close to joining forces with White on: blocking San Francisco from moving a psychiatric treatment center to White’s district. White worried that “arsonists, rapists, and other criminals” would run around his working-class district, but ultimately Milk voted in favor of moving the building, which was a slim 6 to 5 vote.14 Earlier on, he already gained a reputation of screwing with his colleagues when he voted against instating Diane Feinstein as their president. She won anyhow, but it was a statement he wasn’t afraid to make.

Proposition 13 in California was a statewide cap on property taxes, and when it restrained local revenue public officials started discussing both applying a higher business tax and implementing budget cuts. Before it passed, Mayor Moscone and the chief librarian said they would likely close the library branch in the Castro area should the legislation pass.15 Milk said the budget cuts would be “cutting bone, not fat” in San Francisco’s government,16 and when the legislation passed he worked against the budget cuts. In a vote of 9-2 the public library system would face zero impact by the budget crisis.

He added 50 new stop signs, kept a neighborhood grade school from being shut down, and worked with City Hall employees to prioritize fixing potholes.17 Aware of his significance across the country, he often pulled theatrics even for the most mundane of issues. He did this with the dogshit bill, or “pooper scooper” law, that mandated having residents scoop their pets feces in public areas. The event shockingly drew not only local media attention, but nationwide coverage when he stepped in the gross substance in front of reporters. His biographer wrote the following on the single event of his tenure:

“The media coup of the year and the issue that best symbolized Harvey’s theories on how government should work, centered on the mundane subject of dog feces. Survey after survey showed that sidewalk dog droppings were San Franciscans’ biggest complaint about city life. Milk, therefore, sponsored a bill requiring dog owners to clean up after their pets, waxing philosophically that, ‘It’s symbolic of all the problems of irresponsibility we face in big, depersonalized, alienating urban societies.’ […] ‘Whoever can solve the dogshit problem can be elected mayor of San Francisco, even President of the United States.’ Years later, some would claim Harvey was a socialist or various other sorts of ideologues, but, in reality, Harvey’s political philosophy was never more complicated than the issue of dogshit; government should solve people’s basic problems.”18

Things escalated with Dan White, who would resign from the board and shortly after ask Mayor Moscone to reinstate him to no avail. White was livid when it came to working with Milk, largely to due to his own homophobia. They had few chances to work together, however Milk was cognizant to show that he had the interests of all groups at heart. With the city-wide landlord problem for instance, he didn’t solely fight the discrimination against gays. In one instance, a gay landlord kicked an elderly woman out of her apartment to bring in a title insurance company.19 Milk would allude to this instance for a significant, but unsuccessful, real estate ordinance…

What Could Have Been For Housing

His anti-speculation tax, or “Real Property Tax” ordinance that would have put a higher levy on properties being quickly flipped by real estate moguls, was an unrealized idea. It only applied to homes with three or more units, and over the course of six years would steadily decrease. San Francisco in the late ’70s was having its own surge in housing prices that was nothing unlike the gentrification spoken about in the city today.

Talks started in May of 1978. The cause brought together a long list of groups endorsing the ordinance. The biggest advocate group was the San Francisco Housing Coalition. The San Francisco Examiner reported: “citing more than 70 such examples of fast turnover and hefty profits and some 30 examples of sizable rent increases without corresponding improvements in the properties, the San Francisco Housing Coalition has begun beating the drums for a stern new anti-speculation law.20

Milk went to the Board of Realtors in early April of 1978, and opposition kicked in immediately.21 San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce opposed the ordinance, arguing to City Planning Director Edward Lawson that the results would be the opposite of what’s desired.22 Other than the Chamber, real estate brokers as well as Dianne Feinstein opposed the legislation. Critics joined together to assert that it would worsen the situation, and insisting that there wasn’t a speculation problem to begin with. City Clerk Gilbert Boreman advised having it referred to the Finance Committee, but from then-on the ordinance was considered dead.

"Our Street!"

His assassination would happen not long after the notorious Jonestown Massacre, and at a time of major upheaval in the United States.23 Cult leader Jim Jones had been an ally of Mayor Moscone, and was even appointed to chairman of the Housing Commission in 1976, making the events ever more difficult for San Franciscans to make sense of. Milk had also been cordial with members of the church who offered to help him campaign for Assembly, though privately he called them “weird and dangerous.”24

Members of the Board of Supervisors noticed erratic behavior from Dan White before he killed Moscone and Milk. White had many personal issues with Milk, believing that he was involved in preventing him from being reinstated.25 But the “Twinkie Defense” he used to get a lighter sentence was unjustifiable. Instead of first-degree murder, he would be charged with two counts of manslaughter.26 The verdict of Dan White in May of 1979 continued sending shockwaves to San Francisco’s gay community. White would only be sentenced to five years in prison, putting Milk’s closest friends into distraught. This followed with the White Night Riots on May 21st that year, the biggest protest in LGBTQ history since the Stonewall Riots. It was indicative of upheaval not only in the U.S. but on a global scale. As Aaron Leonard described the various events of the late ’70s in Meltdown Expected:

“While the horror in Jonestown and the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk in San Francisco City Hall may have registered at the time mainly for their shock value, they nonetheless concentrated contradictions that were sharpening as the seventies drew to a close. And they came amid a shifting geopolitical framework–the unprecedented upheaval in Iran, instability in Afghanistan, and tectonic changes in China.”27

Milk saw his assassination coming, even going as far as to record his own political will a year prior, and had a sense he would die young even before his move to San Francisco. Throughout his speeches, hope continued to be a major theme, and he thought often about what he’d leave behind and how he’d be remembered. His recorded message leaves so many of us with goosebumps by his declaration “if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country.”28

Daisy Dale

Notes:

1. Aretha, David. “No Compromise: The Story of Harvey Milk.” Morgan Reynolds Pub. 2010. p. 56.

2. “The Vote for Supervisor.” San Francisco Examiner. November 9th, 1978. p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/image/460869863/.

3. Aretha, p. 66.

4. Shilts, Randy. “The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.” St. Martin’s Press. 1988. p. 198; Roberts, Jerry. “Dianne Feinstein: Never Let Them See You Cry.” HarperCollins Publishers. 1994. p. 153; Roberts, Jerry. “No Matter How Straitlaced She Seemed, Dianne Feinstein ‘Didn’t Care Who You Sleep With.'” Politico.com. September 29th, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/29/dianne-feinstein-legacy-00116902; I’ve used this last article for another article and based on memory there seemed to be some editing done to it over time.

5. Milk, Harvey. “The Harvey Milk Interviews: In His Own Words.” Vince Emery Productions. 2012. pp. 308-309.

6. Black, Dustin. “Milk: A Pictorial History of Harvey Milk.” Newmarket Press. 2009. p. 42.

7. Shilts, p. 83.

8. Blake, Kieran. “‘A Political Fight Over Beer’: The 1977 Coors Beer Boycott, and the Relationship Between Labour–Gay Alliances and LGBT Social Mobility.” Midlands Historical Review, Vol. 4 (2020). https://www.midlandshistoricalreview.com/a-political-fight-over-beer-the-1977-coors-beer-boycott-and-the-relationship-between-labour-gay-alliances-and-lgbt-social-mobility/.

9. Shilts, p. 84.

10. ibid, p. 98.

11. Roberts, p. 153.

12. Shilts, p. 199.

13. “Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco.” Volume 73. 1978. p. 306. https://archive.org/details/journaljanjuneofproceed73sanfrich/page/306/.

14. Roberts, p. 154; Shilts, pp. 197-198.

15. “A Prop. 13 scare at the library.” San Francisco Examiner. May 9th, 1978. p. 6. https://www.newspapers.com/image/460982581/.

16. Shilts, p. 195.

17. ibid, p. 195.

18. ibid, p. 203.

19. ibid, p. 227.

20. “New anti-speculation law sought. War on profit in property sales.” San Francisco Examiner. May 9th, 1978. p. 4. https://sfexaminer.newspapers.com/image/460982437/.

21. Shilts, p. 194.

22. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. “File No. 120-78-1.” Personal Collection. 1978. Received October 24th, 2024. p. 37.

23. Leonard, Aaron. “Meltdown Expected: Crisis, Disorder, and Upheaval at the End of the 1970s.” Rutgers University Press. 2024. pp. 11-12.

24. Aretha, p. 58.

25. Leonard, p.11.

26. ibid, p. 129.

27. ibid, p. 154

28. Of the three tapes that Milk recorded his will on, the third missing one included this quote.

Other Sources:

Dreier, Peter. “Why Is Harvey Milk Still Dangerous, 46 Years After He Was Assassinated?” Jacobin.com. June 11th, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2023/06/harvey-milk-lgbtq-history-temecula-california-school-board-curriculum.

Katzman, Nat. “Moscone: A Legacy of Change.” PBS.org. 2018. https://www.pbs.org/video/moscone-a-legacy-of-change-hlozkc/.