“[Harvey Milk's] real life experience in the Castro District of San Francisco, confirmed the wisdom of Frederick Douglass that “power concedes nothing without a demand."
“So, I say to my friends and colleagues in the civil rights movement, and community and church-based organizations and leaders, that the protection and advancement of our permanent interests requires that we, once and for all, immediately, effective yesterday, cease our direct or indirect participation in or support of a belief system which relegates our LGBT brothers and sisters to less than the total and complete benefits WE enjoy as citizens. These must include, of course, the elemental and fundamental right to marry the one you love, who may be of the same sex; and, remain entitled to all of the rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed by us so-called “straight” people.
“Let me make it plain: the protection and advancement of the permanent interests of both the “straight” and LGBT communities require that we actively seek to build a working coalition to acquire and exercise sufficient political power to mandate what we want; rather than just pleading and petitioning for what we believe to be just. We must take names and 24/7 hold to account those who seek to block or limit the full enjoyment of our divinely given rights. This is the lesson that the history of the struggle to protect and insure the sanctity of human rights and dignity teaches us.
“This is what the legacy of Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr. requires of us.”
— Clarence B Jones, Scholar in Residence, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research and Education Institute at Stanford University,
from his essay In Commemoration of Harvey Milk
“So, I say to my friends and colleagues in the civil rights movement, and community and church-based organizations and leaders, that the protection and advancement of our permanent interests requires that we, once and for all, immediately, effective yesterday, cease our direct or indirect participation in or support of a belief system which relegates our LGBT brothers and sisters to less than the total and complete benefits WE enjoy as citizens. These must include, of course, the elemental and fundamental right to marry the one you love, who may be of the same sex; and, remain entitled to all of the rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed by us so-called “straight” people.
“Let me make it plain: the protection and advancement of the permanent interests of both the “straight” and LGBT communities require that we actively seek to build a working coalition to acquire and exercise sufficient political power to mandate what we want; rather than just pleading and petitioning for what we believe to be just. We must take names and 24/7 hold to account those who seek to block or limit the full enjoyment of our divinely given rights. This is the lesson that the history of the struggle to protect and insure the sanctity of human rights and dignity teaches us.
“This is what the legacy of Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr. requires of us.”
— Clarence B Jones, Scholar in Residence, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Research and Education Institute at Stanford University,
from his essay In Commemoration of Harvey Milk
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