Today marks the 30th anniversary of Harvey Milk’s assassination. To honor Milk’s life, thirty or so of us including Mark Solomon, Chris Mason, Don Gorton and Ryan MacNeely held a candle light vigil before going to the movie‘s premier last night. Sean Penn is incredible in this role, it is as if he channelled Milk’s soul while portraying him, and he will undoubtedly win the Oscar for his role. It is a must see, not only for the gay community but for those who have any compassion or hope in their hearts that tomorrow will be better than yesterday and today. I strongly encourage everyone to see this movie with friends and to talk about what lessons we have learned, and the similarities we see in equality’s opponents today. Let’s make this movie the blockbuster hit it deserves to be and destroy the closet doors some would have us live our entire lives in.
We must all reach within ourselves and find the rowdy citizen within that made Milk great, doing so in a way that shows both resolve for our own needs while being sympathetic to how misinformed the majority is.
In a time when we are defeated by proposition 8 let us remember that Harvey Milk lost his first three tries at winning an election. We need to come together and be a united front against discrimination of all forms, so that our communities will be safer and our lives will be happier. I hope all of you see the importance of this opportunity to stand behind a common cause and rally your friends to it.
This is not about the GLBT community, this is about hope. Hope that one day we will see for ourselves the vision leaders like Harvey Milk had for us. Our greatness as a nation relies not on conformity, but rather on individuality. We are not great in spite of our differences, we are great because of it.
John H-G you know as well as I do that one of the people holding that candlelight vigil, Marc Solomon, has no intention of encouraging or accepting “rowdy citizens” fighting for LGBT rights unless they can write a check to MassEquality or goose step to the controlled message.
the younger voices of MEQ will step up and bring the unity to our community Mark has sadly forsaken. My heart is open, but my experience tells me to expect something more in line with your frustrations Tom.
That is exactly my point. We are hoping, or at least some, are hoping for “younger voices” to rise up and do the in your face activism that we saw with the National arm of Join The Impact. But those voices need to be free and quite frankly not be involved especially with MassEquality whose tactics are much in line with the HRC than the average equality group.
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p>You know, Massachusetts really did lead this country regarding Marriage Equality. First, we led in having a Constitution which was challenged and was found to protect ALL of its citizens thanks to GLAD and Freedom to Marry. We successfully had the defeat of a legislative challenge and a ballot challenge thanks to MassEquality Coalition in part due to alot fo work by alot of people, LGBT and allies working for a common goal. This included calculated steps by the tri-umvirate (Patrick, DiMasi and Murray) and let’s not forget the “take no prisoners” tactics to keep the pot (or the grassroots support) stirring of KnowThyNeighbor. All codified and supported by the groundwork for over a decade by Arline Isaacson and The Caucus.
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p>To glamourize or self-agrandize one group, does such a HUGE dis-service to the LGBT community and our civil rights movement. MEQ “closes the doors” to individuals like KnowThyNeighbor, like QueerToday who were there on the front lines and behind the scenes, doing so much of the work that “the leadership” didn’t have the balls to do. It is a real shame and extremely reckless and self-servicing and damaging to the movement to try to control the equality message.