Centered

Meredith Tanzer is the vice president of Our Center. On May 19, the LGBTQ community center will be hosting an event at McKinley Arts Center, 925 Riverside Drive, in celebration of the life and work of Harvey Milk—the first openly gay elected official in California. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. Learn more here: https://bit.ly/2ImxJD3.

Harvey Milk came out later in life, when he was around 40. And his political career was brief—cut short. Yet his legacy to the LGBTQ community is an important one.

It is so important. I also think what’s important is that he was active in his community before even running for office, and that makes him exceptional and very rare in terms of a politician. … I think that’s why the LGBT community kind of moves toward him, because he was really right in the center in terms of the way that he responded to many social and political issues of the time. And he just wanted his city to be better. And don’t we all want that, you know? Not only our cities, our world—those of us who are active and involved in our communities, we just want to be a stronger America.

Tell me a bit about the event.

So, it’s our fifth year, which is exciting. We want to do something every year to honor him. … It started as a twofold thing. One was as a way to bring people in the community together, to support other community companies and organizations. So there’s a pasta sauce challenge that happens. Anywhere between seven and 10 organizations make a different kind of a pasta sauce, and then the community comes through and votes for their favorite pasta sauce. It gets very competitive. That started out as a need to get people in the community to look around at the other organizations and businesses that support them, and vice versa. Sometimes a business will open in town, and they’re like, “I’m going to operate a gay-friendly business,” and … they just think the LGBT community is just going to show up there, and that’s not accurate. You need to be involved in your community and show that you’re involved. … And if there’s an organization that maybe needs volunteers, or fundraising efforts—we want them to meet our community, because our community is funding a lot of these organizations around town. … And the second part of it was that we wanted to honor people in our community who are doing good things. And what often happens with people who are activists or volunteers—or overly committed superstars, little angels of goodness—those people aren’t always recognized for the amount of hard work they put in. … Sometimes that’s the fuel that keeps someone going, just being recognized.

So this is the MILK Made Awards.

This is the MILK Made Awards. There are five categories. … One is “Leader of tomorrow,” so those are little sweeties under 30. “Political groundbreaker,” and those are people involved in politics on some level, or lobbying on our behalf. A “Trailblazer”—those are people over the age of 50 who have really laid the groundwork for what we’re able to do. A “Community builder,” and that’s anybody in the community, all over. They don’t need to be LGBT. They just need to not be a jerk and be an ally to our community. And then there’s also an “Ally” award. So we have so many great people in our community who don’t identify as LGBT. … They’re just supportive of our community. And that sometimes is just as important to highlight—because you aren’t always in a situation in our community where you can feel comfortable saying you’re an ally. So those people are pretty exceptional because they’re willing to stand up for their gay friends and family anytime.