He made gays the city’s power brokers
Frank Robinson (Milk’s speech­writer): Harvey managed to convince all the gays that if they wanted to have political power, they had to vote. When Gay Pride days reached a quarter to a half a million people, even the dumbest politician in town realized he could do nothing that would affect gays detrimentally. And before that, it was totally different. There would be 6,000 or 7,000 votes scattered all over the city, and the gay leaders at the time were too moderate to rock the vote. By 1975, Harvey was pulling down tens of thousands of votes. Moscone, who had squeaked in with 4,400 votes, needed the gays—which is why Harvey had more power than the average supervisor.

He cleaned up the streets
Anne Kronenberg (campaign manager and supervisorial aide): The pooper-scooper law shows why Harvey was brilliant. [The Shilts book talks about how he used to say, “Whoever can solve the dog-shit problem can be elected mayor of San Francisco, even president of the United States.”] He understood how the news media needs a hook to make something interesting, and if he had a press conference at city hall, it would be like, “So what? Ho hum.” But if he had it in a park—he chose Duboce Park—and if he planted dog shit and then stepped in it, it would make the front page. Which it did.

He made it safer to be a gay teacher
Cleve Jones: Harvey thought the Briggs Initiative was the beginning of a witch hunt. It would have removed gay and lesbian teachers and people who advocate on their behalf. It was a slippery slope into McCarthyism. And this law went beyond any of the other homophobic legislation that was coming out in places like Florida, supported by people like Anita Bryant. Defeating it was important for gays everywhere. To do it, Harvey used very nonthreatening language—no leftist buzzwords. It’s a lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.

He created the Castro
Frank Robinson: When Harvey came to town, the Castro was called Eureka Valley, and it was very Irish Catholic. By the time he died, it was practically all gay. To a very great degree, Harvey was the engine that drove that change. Ground zero was his camera shop. It became a major gathering place for the whole community. You didn’t have to buy a beer to drop in, sit on the couch, talk politics. Later on, he used the store as an official voter registration post and met everyone who registered. 

He reached out to lesbians
Sally Gearhart (lesbian activist): The Mayor of Castro Street is a perfect example of the attitude among many gay men back then—it left out any feminist theories or feminist ideals. Harvey Milk was different. He was a good feminist. He always asked the right questions: “What’s this going to do for women? Is this a sexist thing that we’re doing?” He had an understanding of how women were treated politically, and what had to happen in order for them to take their place in society. When it came to fighting the Briggs Initiative, he insisted that we have an equal number of women on that board, and he reached out to me to be his partner in the debates.

He turned the unions into gay allies
Howard Wallace (gay union activist): The Teamsters wanted our support in boycotting Coors, which was nonunion. Gays didn’t like Coors, either, because the company had a lie-detector test for prospective employees and one of the questions was, “Are you a homosexual?” [But the Teamsters weren’t much better, so] before saying yes, Harvey wanted them to hire gay drivers. Because of the gay and lesbian contribution, we got Coors out of over 100 bars. San Francisco was the first place in the country to make the boycott work—to this day, I still don’t know of any bars [in the Castro] that carry Coors. And when Harvey finally won the election, the whole joint council of Teamsters was behind him.

He created San Francisco’s progressive coalition
Cleve Jones: Harvey was always pointing out that your skin color might be different, your religion might be different, your sexual orientation might be different—but we care about the same bread-and-butter issues. The notion of these coalitions is something that people just take for granted today. But this was very new back then, especially the idea of reaching out to racial communities. In each community, he found a handful of people who were willing to invite us into their living rooms and churches to talk. Harvey’s reaching out has had an enormous long-term effect on progressive politics and the gay and lesbian community itself. If you look at the photographs of the early days of the gay marches, it’s almost entirely white, long-haired youth. Today, the diversity is extraordinary to me.

He made city government look more like the city
Tom Ammiano (supervisor): In those days, the elections used to be citywide, which favored the status quo, so the Board of Supervisors was mostly male and white, very conservative, and business-oriented. The solution was district elections, which was an initiative on the 1976 ballot. Harvey played a huge role in getting it passed, and when it won, there was a political earthquake. The following year, it put all these new people on the board, with a lot of different ideas: the first Asian, the first African American woman, the first gay guy. We also got Dan White.

He showed the gay community its financial clout
Tom Ammiano: The merchants in the Castro had a lot of homophobic attitudes, despite the fact that the gay community was giving them all their business. Harvey was very instrumental in changing this. He put up a sign that said, basically, “These merchants are not treating gay people right. You should boycott them.” All of a sudden, those merchants became very loving. Because, you know, it’s all about money.

He showed gays how to be out and proud
Frank Robinson: It was easy to be out in the Castro, because you could live there for days without meeting a straight person. But get them out of that environment, and get them in their hometowns...are they going to be out to their friends and parents? Probably not. Are they going to be out to their employers? Wouldn’t run the risk. But Harvey was out to the entire country—and he was still beloved by the 6 o’clock news.

He took on the police
Tom Ammiano: In those days, the cops were really horrible. They were beating up gay people, raiding the gay bars, harassing people on the sidewalks after the bars closed, shaking them down. Harvey would talk to them. I really admired that. That inspired people. He had that New York élan: “Hey, what’s up? I work over here. My name’s Harvey Milk. Is anyone breaking any law here? Loitering? Yeah, but look....” And of course the crowd would get bigger, and the police would get anxious.

He showed the world these were issues worth dying for
Cleve Jones: Harvey came to believe he would be murdered, and he made a tape-recorded will that named four people he wanted to succeed him. But just because he feared for his life, he didn’t stop working for change. Before Harvey, there were countless martyrs to the gay cause—dead from suicide and murder and drug overdoses and alcohol—the wasted, ruined lives of people who lived in the closet and couldn’t come out. But Harvey was the first publicly identified martyr that all of us could relate to. His death was a very powerful unifying force within the movement.