This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: George Moscone
In the half century since Dan White’s murderous actions, a lot has changed in San Francisco. George Moscone’s progressive vision for the city has faded as tech money has made a powerful mark there. However, the scars of that day have never fully healed and were reopened when the Pelosi’s home was attacked.
The vision that Moscone and Milk shared, and that was groundbreaking at the time, of a city whose government was as diverse as its people, where discrimination for any reason-including sexual orientation-was outlawed, where neighborhoods have a bigger say in what happens in the city and, yes, where police power is reined in, ultimately became the ideas that formed the core of progressive urban governance everywhere in the US.
San Francisco was a different town thirty years ago. It still had not become the city that Harvey Milk helped build, but never saw. San Francisco in 1978 was a city in transition; and Dan White, the man who had assassinated the Mayor and Harvey Milk was fighting against that transition and that progress. Dan White represented the reactionary and hateful elements that feared Harvey Milk who, in turn, feared nobody. Thirty years later, it is hard to imagine that San Francisco of the late 1970s was a city that was in some real ways was still divided. While the City Hall demonstrations against Dan White remain important images from that period, it is occasionally forgotten that strong reservoirs of support remained in several parts of San Francisco for the policeman turned city supervisor turned cold-blooded killer.