Migden-Leno Fight Loses Sight of History

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

I returned from the state Democratic Convention today with a number of impressions. One inspiring sight was a new modern graphic showing Democratic icons on the screens of the main hall with sharp facial features shown in linear shadow. Of course, Senators Clinton and Obama were pictured, as were Thomas Jefferson, Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and César Chavez. As a gay man, the one that spoke to me most though was the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk.
 
It’s amazing a city supervisor lives in a pantheon with Jefferson, Johnson, and Kennedy. But, I couldn’t help feeling Harvey wouldn’t have liked what he saw in the Senate District Three fight if he were alive today. "Harvey pushed the system" is how Carole Migden summed him up in Ken Yeager’s Trailblazers, a book portraying lesbian and gay political pioneers, including Migden herself. Milk challenged the electoral establishment to include women, ethnic minorities, and marginalized people like himself.

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