Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergan.

This day, November 29th, 1978.

Much of San Francisco is in shock.

There have been a few days of riots and violence

in the wake of the assassination of Harvey Milk two days earlier on November 27th.

Milk was a 48-year-old San Francisco supervisor, the city's first acknowledged homosexual official, he was assassinated in the San Francisco City Hall building, shot five times by former city supervisor Dan White.

Also shot and killed that day with San Francisco Mayor George

Moskoni. So here to talk about it with a little bit of a focus on Harvey Milk

and his political work and his legacy and a lot of the other interesting ripple effects from this moment is as always

Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello, Nicky.

Hello, Jody.

So people, I think, know the Harvey Milk story a little bit, the death there was a movie not that many years ago about

Harvey Milk and I he is his legacy is seen as you know one of the most

influential gay rights icons most influential gay rights icons in the 20th century but I was

wondering if we could actually start a little bit with just painting a sketch of him as a

local politician I mean what is your sense of what Harvey Milk was as a San Francisco supervisor?

You know, by the time he runs for office he's a fairly liberal politician.

He is promoting things like expanded child care, free transportation,

low rent housing, civilian review boards, the kinds of things that you would expect

from a Democratic politician in the 1970s and notably

like not a ton that he's saying on the front of gay rights.

...