this is one hour 15 minutes. >> good evening. thank you for joining us here at the mechanics institute at 57 poe street in san francisco. i am laura shepard, director of events and i'm pleased to welcome you to our program on harvey mills day for the book launch with author lillian who will be in conversation with activists and author cleve jones. we would like to acknowledge our cosponsor for this event, the gl bt historical society and museum, and i would like to welcome gerard here who is the indication stricter who will say a few words about the

historical society. >> thank you so much. the historical society was for founded 33, almost 34 years ago in san francisco. where an archives, a museum, research center, a public history center and were very honored to be one of the places that holds a tremendous collection of material related to harvey's estate and when it was finally settled. a few years ago we received all of the personal belongings that his friends had kept for all those years. if you come to our museum, we have a permanent display on his life and death, perhaps the most profoundly moving object is the suit that he was wearing when he was killed. it makes that act of violence very real. in our archives we have a wide range of other material.

you don't need to be a researcher, just get an appointment and come and sit in our reading room and start looking through the materials. for those of you are here, please consider becoming a member. your support makes our organization survive and grow and thrive and i'm sure the message is the same for the mechanics institute. we are thrilled to be cosponsoring this event and take a look in professors book and you will find a mention of our museum. thank you. >> thank you gerard. and yes, of course for those of you who are new to the mechanics institute, we would like to bite you to come on wednesday at noon for free tour of the library which you are in right now and also see the rest of our beautiful building. also consider becoming a member and attend most of our programs, it's one of the most

literary centers in the bay area with ongoing author events, discussions and a film series on friday night, book clubs, the writers group, chest classes and tournaments and so much more is going on here seven days a week. also, after our program tonight, books by both of our authors will be on sale and signing books for you. we invite you to also join us down at the donna bar for a postevent gathering. the donna bar is on the first floor. harvey is celebrated and commemorated today throughout the country and especially in san francisco as we pay tribute to his work as a community leader and civil servant. we salute his passion for equality, human rights and

social justice. now more than ever we need him to inspire us to make our voices heard, to stand up, to speak truth to power and to make a difference in our democracy. tonight we have two experts who have deep personal ties to harvey and his causes. lily is an internationally known scholar of lgbt history and literature as well as ethnic history and literature. the new york times deemed three of her books notable books of the year including surpassing the love of men, rolls and twilight lovers, and the gay revolution. her work has been translated into numerous languages. among her honors our six

literary awards, to american library association awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship including yale university's james gruner award, the minette award, the publishing triangle award, the literary society trailblazer award and many others. she came to san francisco when he was befriended by gay rights leader. after he cofounded the san francisco foundation. [inaudible] it memorializes 85 million americans who have died from aids. he lives in san francisco and works as a labor activist and is the author of when we rise,

my life in the movement. please welcome lillian peterman and steve jones. >> welcome to san francisco lillian. >> thank you. it's good to see you. as you may be able to tell have a terrible cold but i wanted to be here to see you, especially on harvey's birthday. i posted earlier on social media that the media cause was the single most important thing that ever happened to me in my whole life and it's hardly an overstatement i want to acknowledge the history society, some of its founders were among my dear friends and

also to say that it's very cool to me that his bullhorn is now on display in the smithsonian class at. i have brought it back to be at the smithsonian for three years and then it will be returned to san francisco, hopefully in a new museum. it's an institution that is worthy of your support may think you probably want me too shut up now so we can hear from lillian. >> thank you cleve. >> like any gay californian in the 1970s, of course i had heard of harvey milk. the first time i heard about him was during the anita bryant debacle, it you'll

remember in 1977 she founded save our children and managed to repeal the miami-dade gay rights ordinance, and in big cities all over the country there were protests, it was orange tuesday. in san francisco harvey led the charge with cleve as is very able assistant, and of course i heard about how brilliantly he led the protest, the five-mile march all over san francisco, it also averted riots because as you can imagine the gay community was furious so i first came to admire him in 1977 around orange tuesday of 1977, and then i heard about him when he ran for office as the first out gave man to run

for a significant office. in 1978, the initiative battle was beautifully organized up-and-down the state but harvey was the face of much of it in his debate with sally gearhart was brilliant and memorable and he was the one the media very often came to. i was shocked and saddened, as all of us were, when he was

assassinated and infuriated when dan white got something like seven years and eight months of which he only served about five years because of the twinkie defense. his lawyers argued he wasn't himself and had sugar poisoning because he was so upset about losing his job that he feasted on twinkies and coca-cola, and i knew about the white knight riot that followed and that's about all i knew about him until i started doing research for the gay revolution. i started that about 2010 what i found is someone who is so much more complex and complicated and interesting and i always thought he was

heroic but even more heroic than i know he was, in the course of my research i discovered all that. the book was an 800 page book that come out in 2015 but i covered from 1948 until 2015 and i only spent about a dozen pages on harvey. when yale university press asked if i was interested in writing a biography for the jewish live series, of course i was thrilled and i jumped at it immediately. i was very familiar with randy schiltz wonderful, the mayor, but i already knew from my research for the gay revolution that there were things that i could add that randy was not aware of. there were a number of letters that weren't available to him that had since become

available, for instance, his chief correspondent from 1955 until the early 60s was a young woman by the name of susan davis, a heterosexual young woman, that he wrote dozens and dozens of letters to and really bared his soul, and i was able to see a part of harvey that i don't think randy could see in his wonderful book, his feelings about relationships and about who he was, another thing that wasn't available to harvey was these letters at boston university that a correspondence that harvey had with the director of hair and jesus christ superstar, and he was very important in harvey's

wife, harvey worked for and with him for a number of years and he really brought a whole new aspect of life. i was able to include what i found of the boston university collection in the book and i also interviewed a number of his relatives and extended family and i found out a good deal about his grandfather and his father and mother so there's a lot of material in the book about how harvey's jewish background influenced him and his politics and the person he became and of course randy scholz couldn't know what would happen with harvey in subsequent years. he has been more honored than

any gay person in modern history. i first found out about the time magazine 1999 article of the 100 most important individuals of the 20th century, not 20th century america but everyone, the whole world in the 20th century. harvey was included in the section called heroes and icons together with anne frank, the kennedys and mother theresa. he was the only out gay person to be included in that list of most influential individuals of the 20th century. as you all know there's a wonderful documentary about him that came out in 1984 and of course the 200 2008 film

milk that was very important, and just the honors that he has received have been quite astonishing. he received from president obama the medal of freedom which is the highest honor that an american who is not in the military can get into thousand nine, the governor of california proclaimed an annual harvey milk day, in 2014 the u.s. postal service issued a stamp with his image, in 2016 the secretary of the navy announced a ship was being built that would be named after him, and as you know, i don't know how he would like that, but a terminal, they say that because he was so against airport expansion and a terminal is being named after

him. >> i do think he would appreciate that this ship is an oil or. [laughter] so what i have tried to do in this book is not only present a lot of material that randy didn't present, and i should say his papers are really important and very vital for anyone who does research on harvey. i studied his papers at the san francisco public library and there was a lot of material he didn't include that i did include from his papers so i am very grateful to him. i tried to suggest in the book harvey's complexity. he was a very complicated man. really grew to love him.

he was very admirable, very heroic, but he had a lot of sports will try not to hide all of those words. he had a genuine passion for justice and it was really deep but he also had a genuine passion for the limelight. i talked about that. one story i discovered about hi him, when he was eight or nine years old used to love to go to the woodmere movie theater for monday and saturday afternoon what he loved about the matinee was not the movies. he didn't care about the movies but before the movie started the manager of the theater would have a raffle and the kids who won the raffle got to run up on stage

and bow and mug and hug and harvey loved that. but such a lovable image of him that i come back to several times in the book because i think he genuinely loved the limelight. he loved to be in front of audiences. he fought fervently for all of the oppressed and people who are discriminated against, not just gay people, but senior citizens and workers in racial and ethnic minorities, and yet he could be outrageously insensitive to individuals, and i don't hide that in the book. i think it's just part of his great complexity. he was a very joyous

participant and a wildly sexual gay culture in san francisco and new york and yet he could be so emotionally faithful to his partners, even when it seemed quite hopeless. i'm thinking particularly of poor jack lira, young man harvey lived with for a couple years who committed suicide and harvey's friends told him jack just wasn't salvageable when he would not be a good partner if he became supervisor and was serious about his political career and yet there was no way harvey could give up on him and i think that such an interesting complexity about him. he was a chameleon who could

absolutely change his appearance so incredibly, i'm sure all of you have seen pictures of him when he first ran for office that first run in 1973 with a bushy ponytail and a big mustache and a denim shirt and of course there was no district elections in 1973 they had to run for all of san diego, and he realized that wasn't going to cut it. he got 17000 votes which was a lot but there was no way he was going to win office. he shaved his mustache, he cut his hair, he bought some secondhand suits and ties and he looked very dapper. he was a whole different harvey milk on the surface but inside i think he remain the same. i don't think he ever changed who he was deep inside.

he changed his style easily but he was very steadfast to his principal. in this biography, i really hope to make my readers feel what i came to feel and that is how interesting and complex and lovable he was, warts and all. >> i would like you to speak a little bit about the series this book is part of. i don't ever remember harvey speaking about religion but his jewish identity was very much at his core. when i think about him coming-of-age on the east coast during such a dark time in the tragedies that were unfolding in europe. when i first heard about this project i was very excited

about it. >> the book was published through yale university jewish lives series. harvey, like more than half of the subjects was a secular jew. he was not at all religionist. he had a bar mitzvah and that was kind of the end. he attended passover seder's at walter's house in the very last year of the high holidays that year were in october and he did attend the jewish synagogue that last year and what was in his heart when he attended the synagogue, i don't know. terrible things have happened to him and to all of san francisco and the country that

last year. just a month or two before, his lover jack had committed suicid suicide, harvey was under investigation by the fbi , and investigation that was actually called by the people who were instrumental. i think there are all sorts of trauma that bothered him the last couple months of his life. i don't know if that's what brought him to attend the gay synagogue, but in any case, he was there. i think the reason his jewish background was so important to

him has to do with the time that he grew up. he was born in 1930, he was certainly cognizant of what was going on in europe at that time. on long island, there is absolutely the german-american nazi organization that had huge rallies only a few miles away from where he lived. he was certainly aware of that. he actually talked about the fall of the warsaw ghetto in 1943, his parents were very upset about it, and he said that the adults in his family told him that the jews of the warsaw ghetto fought and fought valiantly even though they knew it was a losing battle because when such evil

the sense on the world, you have to fight. that became an important metaphor for him through many of his speeches. he often mentioned the holocaust and through the holocaust he gave a warning to gay people about how it was important to see early on where our enemies were and to organize and fight back and over and over again in his speeches. that was the metaphor. i think another thing that is important about his judaism was the concept of repair the world. his mother was very influenced by that. his mother died in the early 60s, 1962.

she died of a heart attack when she had a 24-pound turkey two a settlement house so that indigent people could have turkey for thanksgiving. she languished in the hospital for five days and she died november 27th which is the same day harvey died decades later. also from his immigrant grandfather lee loves very much. just be who you are. that influenced him and his grandfather who started out as a peddler, started out in

lithuania as a daring man and couldn't make it, had five kids, came to kansas city to work for a stepbrother and he went to long island, got a peddler's back and was a peddler for a while, did well, opened up dry goods store, did well and then opened up the first department store on long island. he became a philanthropist and i sense that he was very influenced by the idea that you have to help those who aren't as privileged as you and help people fight poverty and deprivation and determination. >> i really loved it.

fortunately there's still quite a few of us around who knew the guy and we've all shared our stories over the decades and i think it's important that people, when i talk to young people i want to welcome those few under 40 who are here tonight. bless your heart. when i talk to younger people, especially young queer kids, he was not a genius, he was not a saint, his life was a mass in a lot of ways and in his life he suffered through many of the challenges and humiliation that most of us have to endure in my lifetime i think that makes the story more powerful. now that he's been portrayed by sean penn there's this tendency, especially in our culture to create these characters, and i find that

even though i feel like i've heard almost every story there was about him, i got almost every page there was things i didn't know about him. the details about his family, it was a joy to read and left me with a much deeper sense of this man who has been so incredibly important in my own life. i am hoping we have questions and comments from the audience. don't be shy. >> i talk about it at length in the book and it was very sad, 330 grove is a wonderful community center and it was going to be demolished to make way for a parking garage and the mayor, who was very

rogaine said he would help it growing get grants we asked paul hartman who is the director to write a proposal, hartman did and he gave it to harvey and harvey thought that the proposal didn't cover things he thought were very necessary to cover. he rewrote the proposal and it received a grant. the committee that gave the grant had some very pro- gay people on it.

they said the committee was stacked and he had promised that we would open a community center to found a site but paul hartman and others got the fbi to investigate whether there was hanky-panky going on about the proposal was george and harvey milk and it became a moot point after both were killed, but that's the sad story did not want to have. >> there was no evidence of hanky-panky though. >> no there was no evidence. >> it was a turf war.

could you talk a little bit more about their friendship? have been known each other for a long time before harvey was elected. >> i think he really admired musk only because he really thought to repeal the sodomy law that was repealed in california in 1975. he knew he was a good friend of the communities. he ran for office several times and 73. when he ran and lost and he knew that he lost he

immediately turned castro tamara into headquarters for my stony for mayor. he did a wonderful job in bringing out the gay vote. he won by over 4000 votes. he had a runoff with a man who is very anti- gay. he won by a little over 4000 votes and there is a big party "after words" and he thanked harvey milk because he really attributed those winning 4000 votes to the gay community.

harvey milk, by then, this was his second unsuccessful run for office but he was becoming more savvy as a politician and he said at one point, i would really like an appointment as a commissioner and he was appointed to the board of appeals and harvey did a fabulous job on the board. he wasn't on it for very long but his third day, a case came to the board of a korean woman who wanted to open a massage parlor and she was denied a license and she appealed that in two men came to talk about why she was denied a license they said they would not give her a license because she couldn't speak english and she can understand the rules and

regulations about massage parlors and harvey said this is ridiculous, i don't want to see you here again unless you have a good complaint and essentially sent them running with their tails between their legs and the woman got her license for the massage parlor so he was wonderful and brave on the board of primitive appeals but he only served for about a month when the assembly district seat in his district opened up and he decided he would run for assembly. he couldn't know about california politics. he couldn't know that george had already promised leo mccarthy that he would endorse art for the assembly seat and when george found out that

harvey was running he told him he can't do that and he did it anyway. he absolutely told the examiner if he runs he will be the shortest commissioner san francisco ever had and i'm not talking about his height. he fired him from the commission and at that point they didn't like each other very much. once harvey became a supervisor he worked very closely with george and it was a very productive relationship. they had had their difficult moments. >> thank you. could you perhaps talk a little bit about harvey's relationship with his father and his brothers and sisters

and how that impacted his life? >> he didn't have sisters, he had one brother, robert. i talk about that pretty extensively in the book. harvey's father was born in lithuania. when his grandfather left he came to america by himself as was often the case, the man of the family got someone to sponsor him, he came alone and he made enough money to bring the rest of his father with him. his father was six months old when they left lithuania. he couldn't bring the family to america until harvey's father was six years old. it took about five and half years before he had enough money to bring them. i think william, bill as he liked to be called at a very

hard time, and we can imagine why very easily. he left the family when bill was six months old and here's this tall american stranger who takes over his mother's love, that in itself was difficult and then another child was born, the six child and he was called babe and he was called babe his whole life but that must have really hurt william, bill, because he was kicked out of that role as babe and then built mother died, harvey's grandmother died and now she married again and that was very difficult for bill. he had a really contentious relationship with his father,

and at the risk of being an amateur psychologist, i think if we have that kind of contentious relationship with the parent, it sometimes carries over into our parenting him and i think it did so bill had a very difficult relationship with harvey. i think there is physical abuse. he didn't have a good relationship with robert, his only brother either. i don't think robert took him very seriously. he was four years older and even when he ran for office, robert admitted that he thought that's harvey being harvey again, but he remembered that image of the eight or 9-year-old kid wanting to run up on stage and bowing and he didn't take him seriously. robert was a sort of conventional guy and harvey

wasn't an harvey never made a lot of money and robert made a decent living in those were roberts values so it was always a contentious relationship with his family. not with his mother or grandmother, but with his father and brother he was very difficult. harvey cut robert specifically out of his will. he has a clause in his will where he specifically says that nothing is to go to robert, not that there was a lot of financial stuff he could pass on, but it was just a hard time they both had together that was reflected. >> did harvey like dan white and was he courteous to him. >> you know, that was a very complicated relationship too. dan white ran telling his

district 16 which was a working class district that when he got into, on to the board of supervisors he would make sure that all of the social deviance and those in san francisco were put in their place. he said he didn't like the way san francisco was going and he meant, particularly i think gay people. he was extremely conservative, san francisco voted almost unanimously against the initiative and almost every precinct initiative went down, except for four precinct and those were all in dan white's district. those were the people dan white was representing and they put him there for a reason. one story i tell that i think

is sad but nevertheless it was the truth and i didn't want to hide the truth, i describe it as act i of the tragedy. there had been a contentious relationship between harvey and them on the board of supervisors, but dan had one issue that really excited him and that one issue was there was a home for wayward girls but by the 1970s girls were not as contrite and so not many were at that home or wayward girls. the nuns who ran the home decided they would sell it to a citigroup that would make a home for troubled youth and

the people in dan's district did not want troubled youth living there. they thought those kids would rape and lewd on the streets and it was like not in my backyard and that became his big issue. what happened in the meantime is that harvey immediately proposed the gay-rights ordinance to the board of supervisors and diane feinstein who is the head of the board said this ordinance has to go to committee. it's going to go, i think it was called police, fire and safety committee and she had put dan white in charge of the committee because dan white had been a fireman and a policeman and of course dan white would not let that bill out of committee. he wouldn't even let the committee discuss it. harvey, by then really knew how to play the game of

politics and he went to dan and he said, if you release that bill from the committee, i will support your opposition to the home for troubled youth. dan white was pretty sure of five votes on the board. there were 11 people and you had to count six and harvey would have been the six the vote and so dan immediately let, gave an incredible speech not at all characteristic of him but he just wanted to get his bill passed, he told the people on the committee that he had served with gay people and black people in vietnam and he knew they could do as good a job as anyone else and it was unfair to discriminate against black people and gay

people in the committee should vote in favor of the bill and get it out of the committee and that's what they did, it went to the board of supervisors, the board of supervisors was going to vote on it, and dan's bill came up and harvey couldn't do it. he just could not do what he promised dan white and so he voted against the opposition to having a home for troubled youth opened up to troubled youth in dan white's district and dan white was furious. he immediately made a motion as soon as harvey's bill came up to send it back to committee and nobody would go along with that notion because it was so obvious what he was doing and so harvey's bill

passed on a first reading 10 - 1, the one vote against it was dan's vote and the second reading it past 10 10 - 1, one vote against it was dan and then it was signed into law by the mayor, but dan never forgave harvey for that. and then as i'm sure you all know he resigned from the board of supervisors in november of 1978 and he had a lot of pressure from his supporters like the board of realtors because he knew people like harvey wanted rent control and san francisco and dan white would argue against rent control, and a few days after the board of supervisors had voted to accept his resignation, a few days after he resigned, he came to george's office to say he had

made a mistake and he wanted his job back and according to testimony he said anyone can make a mistake, let me figure out how to do this. one harvey found out he was going to reinstate dan white he said are you crazy, while the world would you do this, this is a right wing kook and you have an opportunity to put a liberal on the board of supervisors and why are you going against what your constituency would like you to do and he knew that harvey had discouraged him from reinstating him. i think that together with his homophobia, which never really change despite his speech to his committee, i think that made him do what he did. >> dan was a sad case. harvey took to the horse training like a duck to

water. he just knew how it worked and he worked it and i think, actually think he promised him before he got the commission appointment that he would run for office but dan was just always at sea. i do recall times when harvey was gentle with him. >> i think that's a fair use of the word. my take on the guy was that he was probably not that bright, had possibly been traumatized by his experiences, but anything that most of us would think as normal give-and-take, he thought of as moral outrage. i think he just couldn't process it and couldn't think strategically and make it happen and felt mocked and

harvey could be so snide and i think this idea that this gay jewish guy was mocking him was what pushed him over the edge. she sat here and dan white would say such crazy things. they would pass notes back and forth saying can you believe it. he was in way above his head. he was 31 years old, he had no advanced education, he was a fireman and a policeman and he thought he would be a writer and that didn't work out. he was in many ways a lost

soul needed know how to do his homework. i don't think he ever knew what was going on on the board of supervisors and harvey was the opposite. he would do his homework so meticulously and he felt like he wasn't respected. >> harvey used to tell me too wear my tightest possible genes because it drove dan white crazy. [laughter] >> was harvey involved with the production of hair. >> he was a gopher.

the reporter describes harvey at great lengths with long hair and love beads lying on some pillows in the room where he was being interviewed and they said harvey was so high on pot that he didn't really know what was going on. >> which family members were you able to interview. >> i interviewed michael salem who, i found out about michael because i found this wonderful video on youtube and i suggest you all go home and watch it. harvey, at the age of 11, it's

quite incredible. it was a ceremony which is a jewish ceremony. [inaudible] the video, it just shows three minutes of harvey and he standing on car staircase, he's 11 years old and michael was 30 days old, it's a 30 day ceremony of the first born male. he is a second cousin to harvey. michael's mother was harvey's cousin and he turned to harvey for financial advice but they

were very wealthy. and he was a securities analyst, but in any case quite incredible. i'm sure you all know transparent. you remember the beginning of transparent, there's a young man whose kind of opposing, that's exactly what harvey does. he standing on the staircase. the camera is on him very shortly but he's kind of like this. it's incredible. if you get into youtube, i have it in a note, i think harvey milk family movies, you'll see it in my notes in the book if you look at the book, you will find the video. i interviewed michael, i interviewed a man by the name

sam mendola's who was also a second cousin, his mother had been the sister to bill and his mother helen who died just about six months before i started doing the interviews, she was the family historian, but he kept all of these pictures and i have the most incredible picture of the grandfather who, as i told you came to the country with nothing and ended up in this picture, if he had gone back they would've thought this was. [inaudible] i interviewed another, a second cousin by the name of sherry feinberg who didn't

know harvey well but could tell me some interesting things about, she got married just about the time jack killed himself and harvey was invited to the wedding and didn't want to say that harvey is a homosexual in san francisco and his lover just killed himself so all he said was harvey is too busy to calm, he's in politics in california. this was back east. and then i interviewed a woman by the name of leslie bird milk and became something of a historian so they were all very helpful and salmon dallas whose mother was the family historian was able to send me in the direction of the kansas

city census in 1900, i think i found my own the ship's manifest when both they came by himself and the whole family came, but i just got wonderful material from harvey's family. >> when dan white entered city hall with the gun, we know he was going after george. is there any way of knowing if he intended to find harvey or of harvey just turned out to be accidentally in the way. >> he intended it. he loaded his gun and then he put ten more bullets in his pants pocket. he killed ms. kony, the mayor's office is on one side of city hall and there's a

long walk to the other side and they walked rapidly to the other side and harvey was standing outside talking to someone outside an office. dan white said can i see you in my office and incredibly harvey followed him into the office but it was very intentional. he had also intended to kill her and dan white did an interview when he got out of prison in which he said that the lowest snake of the bunch, and she said that if she had arrived at city hall at her usual time, she would be dead but she had breakfast she had

come much later and by then dan white had left city hall after he killed george and harvey. he was very clear he wanted to do that. >> question over here? >> i'm curious, when joe campbell and harvey broke up, campbell ..e they in the factory, it seems like a logic sort of, it does seemed like a logical connection that is in anything that i was able to trace but of course it is logical they were both very cutting-edge with what they did, but i think joe campbell

got involved with warhol before he got involved and i don't think their paths crossed. harvey and joe remain friends and i tell them stories about that. did you find any evidence of harvey's dealings. >> i did, and that was heartbreaking stuff. jim jones, he took every progressive politician in san francisco in and the fact is when he was in san francisco he did some wonderful things. he clothes the naked and fed the poor and he supported gay rights and he was very much in favor of the 1975 marriage that wasn't finally recognized with andrew sullivan and his

partner, he actually got his congregation to campaign, harvey attended the people's temples and i found some letters at the historical society were harvey actually wrote to jim jones about his going to the people's temple. harvey could be very gushy and very romantic in his letters and he said something like i saw today what you wanted me too see and i will be back and it's just as lovely exuding letter about how much he appreciated jim jones and at one point jim jones had taken people to jonestown. : : :

help me please my people are getting social security checks. harvey milk wrote to the post office and said this is unfair. these people have worked all their lives for these checks and i am sure in he was using lines at jim jones sent him. they were learning new agricultural methods that can feed the hungry all over the world and it's a very lovely letter. you didn't really know who and what jim jones really was. i can imagine how traumatized and how awful it must have been for him when those 900 people died and their assistants were killed.

>> i went to the assembly a couple of times. >> with harvey? >> once with harvey and another time possibly with -- and i remember harvey saying be careful. they have the whole church bugged. i think it's important, this is the part of the story that i find probably the most troubling , is that he like every other liberal left politician in the whole city and they think hindsight being 2020 nobody then -- he was a megalomaniac but i don't think anybody could have imagined in their wildest nightmare what would unfold in the jungle there. he also was the head of this incredible army and they had a newspaper that was hand

delivered by volunteers. i think every doorstep in san francisco in every paragraph had a quote from reverend jim jones. reverend jones used to tell me he was probably a distant cousin. i hope not. [laughter] but i think of all the mistakes harvey made that was the most terrible and i think the only way to mitigate or respond to that is to understand the jim thought everyone was taken in by it and no one could possibly imagined that outcome. >> i actually found another letter at the california historical medical society that willie brown had written to the prime minister of gianna saying if he would permit jim jones and his people to settle in gianna he would do wonderful things for

the country. willie brown was taken in as much as harvey and all of these politicians but what jim jones could do was mobilize his congregation to get out the vote. they did that for harvey. they distributed thousands of leaflets for harvey and how could a politician who didn't understand how terrible jim jones was, how could you resist if someone says they are going to produce thousands and thousands of leaflets for you. >> i have a quick question. did harvey have ambitions beyond his work as a supervisor and what do you think was his next step? >> at one point he took his vacation and went to europe and it was always the mayor's custom money to vacation to appoint someone as mayor or acting mayor

said he appointed harvey. harvey just did a fantastic. he went to a ribbon-cutting and he cut the ribbon and he said i'm probably the only mayor in the whole country who will first cut the ribbon and then put in my hair. [laughter] and he loved that experience. at one point he took people on his staff to the castro for lunch and the mayoral limousine. he was interviewed by the san francisco examiner and he said where are you going? he said we are going to the castro on city business. if you give me a minute i will think of what it is. [laughter] he loved playing it up like that. at one point mike wong did a wonderful job and harvey's

campaigns and was his friend and was sometimes a photographer and works closely with harvey and wrote a little memoir, an unpublished memoir about harvey. at one point during the time when harvey with acting mayor he was posing for photographs a mic was there. mike said you better not act like you like them too much people will think you want to be mayor. he really did want to be mayor. earlier he ran against art add art at no saw what a great politician harvey was and at one point when art add gnosis in the assembly he turned to harvey to help him with the assembly build an assembly to push it through. on the promise that he would help him the subsequent wins and

run for mayor perhaps. he was already thinking his next run for supervisor and willie brown said he would be the honorary chair of the committee for the harvey milk for re-election for supervisor. people had real ambitions and i have no doubt they would have been fulfilled. >> i agree. looking back at it, after harvey was killed i looked back and part of that legacy was agnew's attempt to get the nondiscrimination bill every single year. finally got it passed by both houses and the republican governor vetoed it nearly burning down the state building

but i also think he almost certainly could have become mayor and what a difference that might have made to have an openly gay man, that is the part that causes me the most grief when i contemplate what might have been. >> another question here. >> you mentioned a superhero of sorts which is often the way. given you were there in the 70s, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts whether his reputation has evolved or changed. >> i was speaking about interviewing his family members. now we still don't know but his

memory faded very quickly and part of that was the loss of a generation and their stories. the most gay kid on the streets, i loved learning about their experiences, how they survived. most of that was disrupted by the epidemic. harvey's family i remember being -- for 30 years we were doing everything we could to keep him alive, a subway stop named after him, city hall, all of these things and i don't recall any involvement from the family at all and it was becoming painful for me because after i began traveling

constantly, visiting a lot of campuses, colleges and universities as part of hiv prevention, the stories closely connected to harvey because i had the idea of one of the candlelight memorials, i would begin my story by saying how many of you know who harvey milk was and none of the young people raised their hands at all. just one or two professors in the back and his name was just vanishing. it speaks to the power of popular culture. it took an oscar-winning film to bring his name back. i get no pleasure from saying that even though i worked on the film and i am proud of it but it speaks to who we are, our thoughts about history, lack of respect or interest in history but it really took that film to bring his name back. that comes with great peril.

i was talking about rent control. all harvey cared about was the people we now call lb gt q and that is not true. he was the most genuinely empathetic person i ever knew. he could play act, break deals, plan that game. if you were in pain, harvey would look at you and he would be there for you so it is another reason i'm so grateful, i have thought about this man every day of my life since that day and i learned so much more and have greater respect and love for the guy. >> do we have time for more questions? >> time for one more question.

let's take it over here. >> the documentary alluded that harvey and diane feinstein often locked heads and had friction. i was wondering if you could tell me if that is true in your research and if that was true with your experiences. >> i think it is essentially true. harvey was first in san francisco in 1969 and diane feinstein ran for office and won and harvey at that time saw her as a rich lady. she was much more than that, she did some wonderful things. i don't think harvey liked her very much. he thought she was in the hands of real estate developers and she got elected because she had

a rich father and rich husband. i would think they had tension. she just gave a beautiful speech at his memorial about how his homosexuality let him see other people's oppression and identify with that. i think they had a hard time together but you had some insights into that too. >> it is interesting. diane announced her retirement because it was so polarized. another thing that is interesting, you refer to the 6-5 split on the board. we still have this constant

vote in the balance, in a liberal way or left-wing. harvey saw her as a part of the ruling class of the city that continued to the line of succession, we will see what happens next and probably underestimated her at the beginning, something people should never do with diane feinstein. like her or dislike her she is extremely intelligent. look at the extent of her career. they did not like each other but also diane was very proper, and harvey was not. the best was, only harvey would

leave a tape directing a mayor to appoint as his successor in the event of his assassination. i knew the tape existed, you're not important enough to get w somebody most of us rallied around was and cronenberg and how did they delay that for weeks and weeks? everybody getting more anxious. feinstein saying something about a nice young woman and she would show up in a board meeting with leather hair. enough of that.

no leather in the board chambers. >> we have one last quick question, a quick one. we have to wrap up. you want to ask a quick question. >> talk about harvey's military experience. >> he told people he got a dishonorable discharge. a lot of people in the military, harvey was not one of them. but i think he was making a political point that homosexuals were which hunted out of the military in the 1950s but he stretched the point by saying he was too and that is not true. he became a lieutenant and for a while was stationed in san diego 53-55 and had a fine time in san diego.

that wasn't true. >> i want to thank cleve jones and lillian faderman for an amazing evening. [applause] >> please take harvey's compassion, his passion, his savvy and his humor out to the street and into the public arena. thank you for joining us. we will have books for sale and signing and you can come up and meet lillian faderman is cleve jones personally and please come back soon. thank you for the evening. >> tonight on booktv, books

about social media starting at 8:00 eastern with the author of 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. former fox news and cnn anchor greta van susteren talks about her book everything you need to know about social media and former fbi agent clint watts talks about the role of social media in modern warfare in messing with the enemy. booktv in prime time each week on >> call newseum. >> interviews with freedom caucus at 3:20 p.m. discussing her book failure, the federal miseducation of america's children. at 6:30 robert poole with rethinking america's highways, a 21st-century discussion of veteran infrastructure and at 1:00 pm st