“Milk” is the story of Harvey Milk, the openly gay man who ran for and won a position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The movie details his campaigns and career as a politician, delves into his personal life and relationships and shows his assassination by fellow city official Dan White.
The movie is all about Harvey Milk exercising his right to free speech and his faith in his ability to change the world. There are a few testimonies in this movie of people whose abilities to become leaders and voice their opinions and have hope that their situations can and will change were influenced in the positive by Harvey Milk. His advocacy for the rights of all people, especially people under the LGBT umbrella helped shape the period of gay protests that sprung around the country during the time of his political career.
A huge threat to human rights comes to the people in this film in the form of proposition 6: a bill that will make it legal for teachers to get fired from their jobs just because they are gay. Harvey uses his influence and his rights of speech and his belief in his abilities to lead and make change to stop this bill from becoming law, demonstrating the value of full, participatory democracy.
Harvey has to fight for his privileges in the film. He has to persuade and keep persuading everyone that it’s not dangerous to have a gay man in political office and he suffers for it, receiving death threats, and putting him in enormous pressure which puts strains on his relationships with the people he is close to. His right to have sense of safety is compromised at every turn and eventually it costs him his life.
If I was in this situation, I can only hope that my voice would prove as powerful as Harvey’s. I would try to do exactly what he did, though I’m not sure if I could be quite so accepting of the strong possibility of my own death.
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