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From: wdoherty@mit-athena.ARPA (Will Doherty)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: The Times of Harvey Milk
Message-ID: <13@mit-athena.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 13-Nov-84 10:15:48 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-athe.13
Posted: Tue Nov 13 10:15:48 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Nov-84 00:48:32 EST
Organization: MIT, Project Athena, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 33

"The Times of Harvey Milk" is an excellent film that tells the story of
Harvey Milk, often known as "the Mayor of Castro Street."  The film
details Harvey's rise to office on the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors where he became the first openly gay elected city official
in the country.  The movie continues with his term on the Board and
incidents in his political career.

Even though I had read Randy Shilt's book "The Mayor of Castro Street,"
I was incredibly impressed by the emotional impact of the film.  Words
will not describe (as evidenced by this cliche) how I felt hearing
actual recordings of Harvey's voice and that of his friends and
political associates.  Live footage of the discovery of Dan White's
assassination of San Francisco Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk convey
clearly the horror of the moment, the agony of a calamitous culmination
of oppression by the white heterosexual male (insert laundry list of
other characteristics) power structure.

I felt as if I was there to share the numbed sorrow and pain of the
thousands of mourners who marched candles in hand from the Castro to
City Hall.  I also shared the fiery anger of the people who trashed City
Hall and burned cop cars when our system of "justice" convicted Dan
White on charges of manslaughter, rather than murder, because he had
eaten too many Twinkies before a clearly premeditated murder of the
mayor of a city and of the SF supervisor who provided a flash of
lesbian/gay hope in the darkness of middle-Amerikan
anti-lesbian/gay/laundry-list bigotry.  Would that we all had the power
and the vision of Harvey.

I cried and cried.  Bring someone to hang on to.  I highly recommend
this film.

				Will Doherty