LEADERS, ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE HARVEY MILK
Street signs across the nation commemorate gay rights activist Harvey Milk — but San Diego had the first.
In 2012, San Diego City Council members voted unanimously to rename a two-block Hillcrest road Harvey Milk Street in honor of the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.
On Sunday, about two dozen people gathered along that road to celebrate Harvey Milk Day, which takes place on May 22, Milk’s birthday.
Several city officials walked along the road, placing red, white and blue wreaths atop four of its street signs. Milk, who was assassinated in 1978 along with then-San Francisco Mayor George Moscone by a political rival, would have been 92 this year. He was 48 years old.
“For us, Harvey Milk is our Cesar Chavez, our Martin Luther King — he is our American hero,” said Nicole Murray Ramirez, a longtime gay rights activist who sits on the city and county human rights commissions.
Ramirez and other city officials, including then-City Councilmember Todd Gloria, worked together to commemorate Milk with the street sign — an action that was meant to show young LGBTQ people that they, too, could be elected to the highest offices.
Gloria, now San Diego’s mayor, echoed those sentiments on Sunday. Gloria is the city’s first openly gay elected mayor.
“There’s a saying that if you haven’t seen it, you can’t be it,” Gloria said. “Because Harvey existed, because the people of San Francisco elected him to the Board of Supervisors, he created an opportunity for all of us to understand we can too serve in elected office.”
Although Milk’s political career took shape in San Francisco, he was stationed in San Diego as a Navy diving instructor in 1954. Milk was issued a less than honorable discharge because he was gay. In 2016, a 747-foot Navy fuel ship was named after Milk. It was christened and launched last year.
Several speakers at Sunday’s event noted that although much progress has been made in securing equal rights for the LGBTQ community, there is still more work to do. Only 21 states and the District of Columbia have laws that protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations. And more than a quarter of the hate crimes that were committed in the city of San Diego in 2021 were motivated by bias against someone’s sexual orientation.
“We know there’s a long way to go, but we must always remember the shoulders we stand on, and one of those is Harvey Milk,” Ramirez said.
The weekend event wasn’t the only acknowledgment of Milk’s contributions made by San Diego leaders. Assemblymember Chris Ward, who is also openly gay, co-authored a state resolution commemorating May 22, 2022, as Harvey Milk Day.
“We share this day with the community, because we are not going to forget from where we came, and that’s going to drive us to be resilient, vigilant, and make sure we’re protecting others’ rights as well as our own,” Ward said.
The resolution was passed on Thursday.