Need to change Milk event

To the queer communities,

For at least two years in a row, only a few people participated in the
candle-light march marking the assassinations of Supervisor Milk and Mayor Moscone.
And my fellow Olde Tymers complain that some young queers (especially gayboys) don't even know who Harvey Milk was.


The Milk Club, which thinks it owns this event, needs to change it or lose it.
They should (1) make it less partisan, by seeking co-sponsors,
including even non-political groups;
(2) move it to daylight hours on a weekend;
(3) move it nearer to Milk's birthday, further from his death-day;
(4) turn it into an outdoor music and cultural event,
like the People's Park birthday party in Berkeley.

Such an enlarged event would require a coalition of sponsoring nonprofits,
including Pride, the Center, MCC, the Sisters, our queer historical society, Sugar Valley, Folsom Street Events, et alii.

Could such changes create an event with a future, one which persons under forty might attend? An event where all of us might learn a smattering of queer heritage?

The present event, aimed at those who knew Milk during his lifetime,
will continue to shrink as Boomers age. Some day the march may draw just a dozen elders in wheel-chairs -- unless the Milk Club begins to exercise more imagination.


Tortuga Bi Liberty,
of the Tenderloin,
in San Francisco

13 December 2005

.........