Your Face is an Advert

I must say that I was a little dissapointed in myself that I had no idea that these events occured

Here is a quick over view for those as un-aware as me, thank you wikipedia and the copy and paste function, or you can just click here and get tons of socialy constructed information:

Milk settled in the Castro District, a neighborhood that was experiencing a mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He opened a camera store and ran for city supervisor in 1973, where he came up against the existing gay political establishment, earning their resentment. He was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous. Equating politics with theater, Milk earned media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the “Mayor of Castro Street”, and also ran for the California State Assembly. He became increasingly popular, taking the role of a leader in the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to have supervisors chosen from neighborhood districts rather than on city-wide ballots.

Harvey Milk served almost eleven months as city supervisor and was responsible for passing a stringent city-wide gay rights ordinance. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned and wanted his job back. Both Milk’s election and the events following his assassination demonstrated the ongoing demographic and political shifts in San Francisco. In the 1960s and 1970s, the largely working-class city had a conservative municipal government and police force, but quickly gained a diverse population, including a gay community well-connected both economically and politically. These developments were supported by a liberal city government but resisted in a number of ways by the police.

Milk has become an icon in the city’s history and a historic figure in the gay rights movement. While established gay political organizers in San Francisco were encouraging gays to work with liberal politicians and to use restraint in reaching their objectives, Milk outspokenly encouraged gays to seize their growing power in the city and to support each other, and his successes gave hope to disenfranchised gays around the country. His legacy, according to Randy Shilts—his most comprehensive biographer—is that he struggled, kept the faith, and showed that it was possible for gay people to win. Writer John Cloud remarked on his influence, “After he defied the governing class of San Francisco in 1977 to become a member of its board of supervisors, many people—straight and gay—had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed.”