SAN DIEGO — Celebrating the life and legacy of the slain San Francisco supervisor, yesterday’s annual Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast was a sold-out affair that also paid homage to two Lifetime Achievement Award honorees, Rev. Troy Perry and Phill Wilson.
One of the event’s co-founders, Nicole Murray Ramirez, gave the opening remarks and outlined a range of issues that he thought – were Harvey Milk alive today – he would still be fighting for; from undocumented children and families to HIV/AIDS, from a woman’s right to control her own body to equal pay, from labor issues to police brutality and abuse of people of color. “I say to you,” Murray Ramirez said, “the GLBT community should never, ever forget that our movement began because of police brutality at the Stonewall Inn.”
In a poignant display of how far the LGBT community has come since Harvey Milk became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the entire United States, Dr. Delores A. Jacobs, chief executive officer of The San Diego LGBT Community Center (another event co-founder), brought to the stage the many LGBT elected and appointed officials and judges from throughout San Diego County, led by California State Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, San Diego County Supervisor Dave Roberts, San Diego City Councilmember Todd Gloria and San Diego Unified Board of Education Trustee Kevin Beiser.
The Center and the Imperial Court de San Diego also presented Nicole Murray Ramirez GLBT Scholarships to Kayla McKinley from Mira Mesa High School and Isaac Gomez from Hi-Tech High, who is now at Stanford University. Aimee Molina-Cuellar from Castle Park High School and Kiernynn Grantham-Crum from West Hills High School were named the winners of the Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast Essay Contest. Grants were also presented from the Imperial Court and The Center to the San Diego Youth Pride Chorus, the North County LGBTQ Resource Center and the Downtown Library GSA.
Councilmember Todd Gloria introduced Wilson, and shared statistics on the state of HIV/AIDS in San Diego and nationally, as well as calling on the collaborative community partnerships to educate medical providers about pre-exposure prophylaxsis (PrEP), which has been shown to significantly decrease the risk of HIV infection. Gloria challenged the crowd to “be the generation” that ends HIV. “Aren’t we worth fighting for?” he implored.
Wilson, the founder, president and chief executive officer of the Black AIDS Institute, has spent three and a half decades in the fight against HIV/AIDS and for LGBT equality.
“Harvey Milk is remembered as a gay leader, but we forget that Harvey was passionate about a whole host of issues,” Wilson said. “He understood the importance of coalition building, not just as a political strategy, but as a way of life and as a matter of policy.
“Harvey understood that justice could not mean ‘just us’ – no matter how you define ‘us.’ We have to decide, are we really a gentle, loving people? This is the moment to decide if we are committed to making it better for everyone, or if we are a selfish, special interest group only interested in getting ours, and hurrying to pull the ladder up behind us,” Wilson said. “This is our moment; this is our time in history. What we do now will determine what this movement really stands for.
“I’m primarily an AIDS activist, and I’m convinced that the epidemic will be over. But a few pills that work for some of us, some of the time, does not a cure make. We need to make sure we stand in the fight until everyone has access to the love and care that they need, and then everyone can live their life without fear of stigma and marginalization because they live with HIV,” Wilson continued. “The day will come when this epidemic is over, and when it does, it’s important for them to know that we were not all cowards. That some of us dared to care in the face of it. That some of us dared to love in spite of it. And some of us dared to fight because of it. Because it is in the caring, and the loving and the fighting that we live forever.”
Speaker Atkins addressed a range of issues, and shared that there will be an Assembly hearing on PrEP, “as part of an effort to end new HIV transmissions in the next 10 years. The Assembly Select Committee on Infectious Diseases in High-Risk, Disadvantaged Communities will meet at the State Office building in San Francisco Friday, June 26. She also acknowledged the painful loss of three San Diego area transgender teens who have committed suicide in the last two months.
“Harvey had bigger dreams, and we are all the better, and the freer, for his dreams,” Atkins said. “Well, most of us are … Far too many people in the United States are still at risk of being fired from their jobs for being gay. Far too many LGBT seniors are being forced back into the closet because of homophobia in elder care. Far too many LGBT youth are homeless or in foster care, having been thrown out of their homes by their families or having to flee unsafe conditions. And far too many transgender people are suffering still from bullying and violence. It’s clear that our work, Harvey’s work, isn’t done. And it can’t be done until everyone in our community is safe, free and equal.”
Rev. Elder Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, knew Harvey Milk, having met him when he was running his Castro camera shop.
“I just wonder sometimes, what would Harvey think about today? We live in historical times and Harvey would have loved it,” Perry said. “Harvey would have said three things. Number one, Harvey would have said, ‘Give ‘em hope.’ I want to tell you what Harvey knew – you can live about 40 days without food, you can live about three days without water, you can live about 15 minutes without air, but you can’t live one second without hope.
“The second thing Harvey would have told us would be, ‘Give ‘em healing.’ The third thing Harvey would have told us, ‘Give ‘em heaven,’” Perry said. “I don’t mean heaven after we die, but some heaven right here, right now. I’ve been arrested for standing in front of the White House, and I’ve been invited into the White House by three American presidents. Those visits were like heaven for me as a gay man. But, America, if you really want to give us heaven … Supreme Court, give us marriage. Congress, pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. States, quit passing laws that claim to protect religious rights when I know all you want to do is discriminate against GLBT people. And last, but not least, help us find a cure for HIV/AIDS. Give us heaven.”
