For those of you that have seen Milk or remember the history this Thursday is the 30th Anniversary of the riots that happened with the sentencing of Dan White.
Its being reported widely online that we will find out tomorrow that the Supreme Court will be handing down its Prop 8 decision this Thursday. Crowd control barricades have been placed in the Castro and in San Diego. Its also rumored Equality California has an internal email out that says as much. Hopefully the court does not rule on what is surely to be seen as a shameful vote in the future. If the Court does rule to uphold the vote I fully expect to see a lot of Non-violent Civil Disobedience. Im hoping there will be no violence. I know as a gay California I feel an awakening inside me - Im not sure yet if its extreme anger or great joy - but I can feel it starting to stir.
Here is the begging of a first hand account of the events of that day and the day after (Milks birthday) 30 year ago.
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On May 21, 1979. ex-cop, ex-fireman, ex-supervisor of San Francisco, Dan White was found guilty of manslaughter for the murder of Mayor George Moscone and Gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. White was given a 7-year sentence (in truth, 4 years) for killing two of our leaders. The entire city was in shock. As evening approached, a crowd gathered at Castro and Market. We were angry. We wanted the world to know we were angry. We took over Castro Street and stood around with no idea of what we should do. Eventually the crowd moved into the intersection of Castro and Market. Traffic came to a standstill. There were only a few policemen present and they did nothing more than observe the scene. As time passed, the crowd grew larger, eventually exceeding 1000. TV News trucks arrived. More police arrived. Amid the shouting and whistle blowing, there were shouts from the crowd. "CITY HALL" became the rallying cry.
We began moving down Market toward City Hall, getting louder, growing larger, picking up momentum. The next picture shows the size of the crowd by the time we reached Chruch Street, 3 blocks from Castro.
The crowd had become huge by the time we reached the Civic Center. There was nothing to do, no one addressed the group, no one gave any instructions. But something had to happen. We were much too angry to just end the demonstration. Some people near the entrance began pulling the wrought iron grillwork off the doors and using the pieces to break the glass. Most of us were horrified to see the beautiful building attacked, but some followed by breaking windows in other parts of the building. One person was seen entering through a broken basement window. He started a fire using papers on the desk in the room. City Hall was trashed. Several hundred police in riot gear stood in formation at the corner, watching the activity, but they were not allowed to respond, a wise decision on the part of the administration. For some reason they had parked police cars at the other end of the block. No one really wanted to destroy City Hall. They just wanted to make a statement. However, when the Activists went after the cars, cheers of approval came from the crowd. A dozen police cars were torched. Car horns and sirens from the burning cars added a chaotic note to the smoky night air.
Seemingly appeased, some began heading back to the Castro. Others feared the inevitable retaliation and hurried off into the night. At some point after the crowd thinned, the police were unleashed, and heads began to roll. Battles erupted everywhere and many fought back valiantly. Tree limbs and parking meters and pieces of asphalt were used as weapons. These were not limp-wristed fairies. These were real men fighting for what they believed in. Police suffered nearly as many casualties as the resistance. The people were eventually driven from the Civic Center and the slower ones suffered the wrath of the overzealous officers. They pushed people down to Market Street where many store windows had already been broken by rioting vandals.
More at link:
http://thecastro.net/milk/whitenight.html
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