Harvey Milk: The Dirtiness of Machine Politics

Published November 26, 2008 @ 03:09AM PT

Before Harvey Milk won his seat as a San Francisco Supervisor, he ran a race for the California State Assembly, where he went up against the inside baseball candidate Art Agnos. Agnos had been groomed for the seat by city politicians, but Milk felt strongly that people, not politicians, should choose their representatives.

Milk ended up losing the race by just under 3,000 votes, which was pretty remarkable given how outspent he was by Agnos. The campaign against Agnos brought this nugget of wisdom from Milk:

I think representatives should be elected by the people -- not appointed. I think a representative should earn his or her seat. I don't think the seat should be awarded on the basis of service to the machine. Machines operate on oil and grease; they're dirty, dehumanizing, and too often unresponsive to any needs but those of the operator.

I'm not sure what Harvey Milk would say about the situation in Delaware right now...

After Harvey gave this quote, his campaign slogan became "Harvey Milk vs. The Machine." And sure enough, a people-powered politics is what eventually pushed Milk into City Hall.

Share this Post

Add a Comment

For your comment to be published, you will need to confirm your email address after submitting your comment.

If you already have an account, click here to log in.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email:

Create Password:

Comment

Check Spelling

Email me when there are new posts to this thread
Comment Policy

Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.

Author

Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.