Harvey Milk Day

May 22nd is Harvey Milk Day in the state of California.

This day to honor and remember the life and legacy of the first openly gay elected official in California was signed into law in 2009, due in large part to the efforts of Equality California. The Palm Springs Field Manager for that group says Milk led the charge towards equality for the LGBT community, and they are still following the road map he set out when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

“The way he worked, and the way he brought groups together and built coalitions. He is famous for that,” said George Zander, Palm Springs Regional Field Manager for Equality California.

“Of course, the significance in the LGBT community right now is that in the last 30 years, that’s what we’ve been doing.”

Milk was assassinated 11 months after he was elected, but his message lives on.

“He told people it was important to come out,” Zander said. “Because we were invisible. He said we are not going to win anything if people don’t know us because that’s where the fear comes from. Once people know us, they’ll get over it.”

Zander says the LGBT community strayed far from Milk’s message in 2008 in politicizing Prop 8 and demanding their rights. They paid a political price, and after re-organizing their efforts towards telling personal stories of who they are, Zander is confident the California Supreme Court will rule in favor of marriage equality in the coming months.

“We didn’t listen to him in 2008,” Zander said. “Then we did. The coalition building and the coming out is what does it. It sounds like a simple message, but it wasn’t for us. I think that whole coming out business that he preached about was the ultimate. That’s when things started to happen.”