Harvey Milk Quotes

  1. “My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.” Harvey Milk
  2. “I cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they’ll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects … I hope that every professional gay will say ‘enough’, come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.” Harvey Milk, 1978
  3. “I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed with themselves.” Harvey Milk, on a tape he made to be played in the event of his assassination
  4. “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Harvey Milk
  5. “The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion..” Harvey Milk
  6. “I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you… And you… And you… Gotta give em hope.” Harvey Milk
  7. “All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words.” Harvey Milk
  8. Harvey Milk & Supporters

  9. “You’re going to meet the most extraordinary men, the sexiest, brightest, funniest men, and you’re going to fall in love with so many of them, and you won’t know until the end of your life who your greatest friends were or your greatest love was.” Harvey Milk
  10. “All over the country, they’re reading about me, and the story doesn’t center on me being gay. It’s just about a gay person who is doing his job.” Harvey Milk
  11. “I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink. For that reason, the political numbers game will be played. I know the rules of their game now and how to play it.” Harvey Milk
  12. “Some people call me the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.” Harvey Milk
  13. “Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.” Harvey Milk
  14. “All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.” Harvey Milk
  15. “It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.” Harvey Milk, in a 1973 speech during his first unsuccessful run for supervisor
  16. “I have tasted freedom. I will not give up that which I have tasted. I have a lot more to drink. For that reason, the political numbers game will be played. I know the rules of their game now and how to play it.” Harvey Milk, in his 1973 concession speech
  17. “You’ve got to promise me one thing. You’ve got to help bring gays into the Teamsters Union. We buy a lot of beer that the union delivers. It’s only fair that we get a share of the jobs.” Harvey Milk to Allan Baird, Teamsters Union representative and director of the Coors Beer boycott in California, who asked Milk to support the strike against six major beer distributors
  18. “Some people call me the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.” Harvey Milk, from his 1973 campaign speech
  19. “It’s not my victory, it’s yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We’ve given them hope.” Harvey Milk, after winning a seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1977
  20. “People thought the pope would run the country. But after six months in office, when Kennedy started to do things, people never questioned him again. If I do a good job, people won’t care if I am green or have three heads.” Harvey Milk, the day after his 1977 election to the Board of Supervisors
  21. “Here’s to homogeneity.” Harvey Milk, toasting with the patrons of the Eureka, one of the last straight bars in the Castro, a few weeks before his death.
  22. “If I turned around every time somebody called me a faggot, I’d be walking backward – and I don’t want to walk backward.” Harvey Milk, quoted in The Chronicle

Also see the Wikiquote Harvey Milk page.

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Like an Elephant in the Forest

Arising ThoughtsWe are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the Ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.

How can a troubled mind understand the way?

Your worst enemy cannot harm you
As much as your own thoughts, unguarded.

But once mastered,
No one can help you as much,
Not even your father or your mother.

How joyful to look upon the awakened
And to keep company with the wise.

Follow then the shining ones,
The wise, the awakened, the loving,
For they know how to work and forbear.

But if you cannot find
Friend or master to go with you,
Travel on alone–
Like a king who has given away his kingdom,
Like an elephant in the forest.

If the traveler can find
A virtuous and wise companion
Let him go with him joyfully
And overcome the dangers of the way.
Follow them
As the moon follows the path of the stars.

~The Dhammapada

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Larry Kramer: We Must Not Accept Crumbs

(Remarks on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of ACT UP given at the NYC Gay Community Center on March 13th, 2007 with Rodger McFarlane, Eric Sawyer, Jim Eigo, Peter Staley, Troy Masters, Mark Harrington, David Webster, Jeremy Waldron, and Hannah Arendt contributing.)

Larry KramerWe Are Not Crumbs;
We Must Not Accept Crumbs

By Larry Kramer

One day AIDS came along. It happened fast. Almost every man I was friendly with died. Eric still talks about his first boyfriend, 180 pounds, 28 years old, former college athlete, who became a 119 pound bag of bones covered in purple splotches in months. Many of us will always have memories like this that we can never escape.

Out of this came ACT UP. We grew to have chapters and affinity groups and spin-offs and affiliations all over the world. Hundreds of men and women once met weekly in New York City alone. Every single treatment against HIV is out there because of activists who forced these drugs out of the system, out of the labs, out of the pharmaceutical companies, out of the government, into the world. It is an achievement unlike any other in the history of the world. All gay men and women must let ourselves feel colossally proud of such an achievement. Hundreds of millions of people will be healthier because of us. Would that they could be grateful to us for saving their lives.

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Posted in Queer Visions | 5 Comments

Compiz Fusion Skydomes 4096×1024

UPDATE: If you use the Avant Window Navigator, I have just posted 9 AWN Themes. Also see 9 GRUB Splash Images here on Queer Visions.

My frequent trips to the Ubuntu forums often bring me in contact with posts about the visual wonder that is the Beryl composite window manager (now known as Compiz Fusion). I decided to take the plunge and see if my experience lived up to all the hype. In short, it has. I now find working with a regular desktop window manager limiting. Though I love the Gnome desktop environment, 3D desktops are so freeing it’s difficult to go back to anything less.

Installing XGL + Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy Eft with an ATI card is relatively easy once you get the fglrx video driver working properly (that can be the tricky part). By the way, I use Trevino’s Beryl SVN repository. However, when I tried to enable the ANIMATED SKYDOME feature in Beryl-Manager under Desktop / Desktop Cube / Skydome, I had trouble. Browsing the Beryl forums led me to the realization that I needed to use a PNG image with a specific resolution ratio. I’m still at a loss as to the specifics beyond that but I have found a formula which works for me on my laptop with a screen resolution of 1280×800. The formula: a PNG image at a resolution of 4096×1024. That’s it.

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