Harvey Milk and Cesar Chavez

02.01.13 - 10:44 am | Tim Redmond |

(32)

Ammiano: "It's the same old tired bullshit."

The Chron continues its jihad against Harvey Milk Airport today, arguing that the price tag airport administrators came up with -- $4 million -- makes the plan too expensive. Not that $4 million is a trivial amount of money, but please: Compared to the tax breaks, upzonings, and other giveaways the the city routinely hands over to big corporations, this is birdseed. That's if we can trust the folks at SFO, who are opposed to the name change. And there's no reason all that money has to be spent at once, the first day; change the name, then implement all the signage changes over a couple of years or so. Not really a big deal.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano called this morning to remind us of a similar battle in 1994 over renaming Army Street after Cesar Chavez. The costs were wildly inflated. The Chron kept raising all sorts of problems. "It was like, 'oh we should honor him, but we can't change a name,' Amminano said. "The same tired bullshit we're hearing now."

And the truth is, changing Army Street to Cesar Chavez Street was an appropriate step, no big deal -- and in the end, everyone came around. Ten years from now, they'll feel the same way about Harvey Milk International Airport.

PS: The issue here isn't really renaming the airport against leaving it as SFO. I guarantee if this fails, at some point someone's going to try to name it after Dianne Feinstein or Willie Brown -- and the Chron probably won't have the same issues. If the question is whether to name an airport after Brown (terrible mayor) Feinstein (terrible mayor) or Milk (international civil-rights icon) ... well, that's a no-brainer.

PS2: The B.A.R. came out against the name change in an odd editorial that suggested the battle would be divisive and "turn our friends against us." That, as a sharp letter from Ammiano, Bevan Dufty, Carole Migden, Jose Cisneros, and Anne Kronenberg ponts out, is the same argument that the more conservative elements of the gay community used to try to talk Milk out of running for office.

http://www.ebar.com/openforum/letters/letter.php?sec=letters&id=372

Comments

$4m is less than average SFO

$4m is less than average SFO spent ANNUALLY on publicity ALONE during the years that they were pushing the ill-fated bay fill runways.

Posted by marcos on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:51 am

I love how the progressive

"leadership" comes up with some idea and the monkeys hop to it.

It's so entertaining that the left claims to be so unlike the right in following orders, it's not like Tim is saying "sure whatever name it after Milk," he is ranting about a jihad by the Chronicle. It's not even an important issue, Tim just takes his orders and obeys over a meaningless symbolic issue.

Posted by matlock on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:57 am

Who exactly is giving Tim orders?

Please, name names in your massive conspiracy theory. We're dying to know.

Posted by Greg on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 7:46 pm

The entertainment that

keeps giving.

Posted by matlock on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 12:02 am

4 million is a lot of money for what is effectively an overtly

partisan political gesture. No, no and no.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:10 am

I still call it Army Street, by the way, and so do a lot of

people who live, work or pass thru there.

Political pandering and posturing like this is not worthy.

Posted by anon on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:23 am

It doesn't matter what you call it.

You know where to find easily exploitable day laborers.

Posted by Eddie on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:34 am

Yes the big troll lie that Progressives have situational ethics

is, of course, 180 degrees out of synch with reality.

And naturally the Chron's "ethics" are such that no lie is too big to prevent homage from being paid to San Francisco's -- and the country's -- first outwardly gay politician.

I remember well that the Cesar Chavez name change was claimed -- by the Pete Wilson administration-run Caltrans -- would cost a phenomenal amount to implement; new sign posts were supposedly going to have to be made up to fit all those extra letters.

The righties *lie* at the drop of a hat if such will give their nefarious agenda a bit of cover. The agenda is to kill hope.

Posted by lillipublicans on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:25 am

Orders

I think I made it pretty clear how much I love this idea. Nobody had to order me to do that. You may think I'm nuts and disagree with me, but the truth is, if I'd thought of the idea I would have put it out myself. Campos came up with it first. I'm probably a bigger proponent that even he is. And Matlock, I think you know that symbolism IS important.

Posted by tim on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:25 am

OK, so Tim in the interest of balance, can we name the

new TransBay terminal after Ronald Reagan as a quid pro quo for renaming SFO after Milk?

You want balance, right?

Posted by anon on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 12:54 pm

No - we cannot

You're overly obsessed with Reagan. Foisting his name off onto a train station in the middle of a city which vociferously opposed him, especially considering his total lack of action in the face of the AIDS epidemic which wreaked so much havoc here, would be sadistic. It'd be like Franco sticking statues of himself up all over the Basque country and Catalonia. I'd never support that.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 1:26 pm

Yes but I feel sure that Tim would not want naming to be

done in a biased way, but rather to reflect all shades of the diversity that SF is famous for.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with San Francisco

Other than being the governor of the state of California. He had no personal attachment here, he mocked the city endlessly while president, he ignored the legions of dying gay men with AIDS and he rarely visited. This is a ludicrous argument - if you're pushing someone like me with my political opinions in the direction of renaming the airport after Milk then you're really doing something wrong.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 2:57 pm

But he was a President from California. Even so, if Tim would

like to nominate another SF conservative to name the new TransBay terminal after, that would show his real concern is for balance rather than partisan bias.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 3:16 pm

Reagan

Reagan was a murderer. Harvey Milk was a visionary. There is no "balance" here.

Posted by Greg on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 7:49 pm

Harvey Milk was the supervisor of a small district

who happened to be gay and who was murdered along with the mayor. His deification is, from everything I've ever read about him, something he'd be intensely uncomfortable with. We don't need an airport, battleship, stamp, newly discovered comet, earthquake fault, brand new spider found in the jungles of Borneo or a haircut named after him to "honor" him. We do that through our words and actions everyday. This stupid political stunt is just that - a stunt by a supervisor who doesn't represent his district and who is pimping his memory to position himself for higher office in 2-4 years. Enough.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 9:22 pm

Concern troll

I wouldn't be surprised if everybody knows.

Posted by lillipublicans on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:00 pm

Mole troll

We're onto your act.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:26 pm

You two would make a beautiful couple

Just think, candlelight dinners, quiet walks in the park, passionate conversations at your favorite hangouts, new friends and experiences. It would be a new "life" for the both of you, perhaps for the first time in years. You both would increase your quality of life immensely, and your new distraction would mean you'd both have far less time to post here and thus would raise the level of intelligent dialogue on this website by a hundredfold.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:51 pm

No, I don't think so

Bu thanks for offering.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 7:21 pm

Pathetic Lucretia is talking with herself again.

I can well imagine a man in her life who is this very moment studiously avoiding coming to terms with his failure to take on the great burden which fate has offered and consign himself to heroic action for the sake of all men everywhere.

Posted by lillipublicans on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 8:00 pm

"Imaginary" and "man" must factor into your own life

quite often - beginning with the fact that you imagine you're a man - however what your Disqus photo really resembles is an uglier version of a 1970s gender-indeterminate Mendocino lesbian with a bent for cast off costume remnants from a high school production "Madame Butterfly."

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 8:09 pm

You've repeated this how many times now?

You've been called out a number of times for your obsessive, self-absorbed posts. Perhaps if you're treating your friends as imbeciles just as you treat the readers here, that's part of the reason you have so much free time to post your incessent, repetitive, pointless rants.

Repeating yourself with the same comments is like shouting. Once you start shouting your message is lost and all that's heard is white noise. Granted, there's a lot of white noise on this website that you may find comforting, which may be why you keep coming back, but why not consider a few month vacation. I suspect you're having a blast posting your banal, tasteless thoughts here hour after hour, but being a bully isn't all that cool. A time-out might help. It's unfortunate your parent's DNA was an incompatible match and their parenting skills so inept - you have my apologies - but being a bully isn't cool, even for the socially inept.

Harvey Milk would be a great name for the local airport since LGBT acceptance and rights have exploded across the globe partly because of his bravery. San Francisco was at the forefront of that movement, and recognizing a hero like Milk on the airport tower would be a nice message to send to the rest of the world so they too learn about the role he played securing rights and respect for tens of millions of people, and billions in the future. And it's a much better name rememberance than the other likely candidates, such as Willie Corruption Brown or Diane Imperialist Feinstein.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 10:44 pm

You sound pretty angry

What's that all about?

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 8:14 pm

I agree with your post and also wanted to remark on the troll's

original comment something which I'd forgotten previously: Harvey Milk represented a relatively "small" district in geographical terms only because the population density there is higher.

The obvious implication of the troll's comment is that she feels that the democratic represention of those with lower wealth should be deprecated. Simply vile.

Posted by lillipublicans on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 8:34 pm

Pretty much true

I would be for naming a Navy ship after Milk, for other not so symbolic reasons.

The purpose of Campos is to gain higher office. Thats about it. The purpose of Tim is to be the editor of Pravda and declare the genius of the progressive leadership.

Posted by matlock on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 12:09 am

The "war on Christmas"

conceptual framework has a lot of yes men as well, a lot of them wish they had dreamed it up first too, wishing they had dreamed it up doesn't mean that they do not endorse it robot like.

Symbolism is unimportant, no one flies into National and wants to become a republican because of Reagan. I don't know if you leave the safe confines of SF, but if you fly into the airport named after Bush I doubt that you have an urge to invade Iraq?

You attribute your symbolism as important to the world while you are of course too clever to fall for right wing symbolism. The purpose of progressive legislation around guns (prop M) that are found to be unconstitutional is symbolism, while the right does same around abortion. The non crazy just laugh at you, or are frustrated with your waste of our tax dollars.

Posted by matlock on Feb. 02, 2013 @ 12:01 am

Where's the 6th vote to put the Milk Airport on the Ballot?

If that 6th final supervisor hasn't come forward by now, I doubt he or she ever will. And articles like this one probably won't entice them to do so either.

From what I sense, a lot of people simply do not want to name the airport after anyone. And using language like "jihad" isn't going to bring them around to the idea.

I sincerely hope that this Milk Airport idea doesn't turn into a progressive litmus test anymore than it already has been. (The last thing progressives need right now is a fresh, new litmus test.) Let's not sacrifice the legacy of Harvey Milk at the altar of idolatry.

Posted by City Hall & Oats on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 4:04 pm

Agreed, and Milk is too polarizing and partisan character to

name the airport after. There is quite simply no reason to re-name the airport even if it didn't cost 4 million.

Posted by Guest on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 4:29 pm

Re-Naming SFO.

First of all, I am disappointed that Harvey Milk's nephew and elected gay politicians in both San Diego and San Francisco keep coming up with the need naming different things like a battleship,a stamp and now an airport after Harvey Milk.I would think there are some more important business to consider . A State Holiday honoring Harvey is in place, as well as in the neighborhood where Harvey was known as the "Mayor of Castro Street" has honored Harvey's name with a school,library and plaza. If there was going to be a name change at SFO, it should be after a local hero like Mayor George Moscone, who was a lifelong resident and graduated from Lowell High School. He was elected into the California Assembly from his district. He championed many changes there including Human Rights. He was elected as Mayor in 1975, and changed the city from a conservative to liberal World Class city. His first appointment was to Harvey Milk, to the S.F. Board of Permits, becoming the first openly gay person on any of the city's boards. Moscone was also well known for speaking at various gay venues and showing up at gay sporting and entertainment events and helped in gay fund raisers. Sadly,too many people within the GLBT Community seem to forget that Moscone was also assassinated on 11/27/1978. I believe that Moscone would of gone on after being Mayor to either a U.S. Senator or California's Governor. There for, if SFO should have a name change... I believe that Mayor George R. Moscone should be considered before anyone else based on his service to the City of San Francisco

Posted by GuestJerry Pritikin on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 7:09 pm

But Moscone wasn't gay.

Good points about Moscone's contributions. But we're dealing with Progressives here. They base their decisions on things like an individual's sexual preference or ethnicity; not on their accomplishments.

Posted by Troll on Feb. 01, 2013 @ 11:36 pm

What about the Moscone Milk

What about the Moscone Milk San Francisco International Airport?

Posted by Garrett on Feb. 05, 2013 @ 12:42 pm