Harvey Milk Day celebrated in Los Angeles with parties, a door-to-door educational campaign and a new play

Harvey Milk’s legacy still inspires more than 30 years after his murder and that was made clear during the first official day in his honor on Saturday.

Harvey Milk Day, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, was used by activists as an opportunity to demonstrate Milk’s brand of activism by targeting districts in Los Angeles County that voted heavily in favor banning same-sex marriage and made personal appeals for legalization.

“We become human when we tell our stories, that is why across the state we’re going out and talking to people who aren’t with us,” Marc Solomon, marriage director of Equality California, the state’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization, told the Los Angeles Times. ” Harvey Milk was an activist, a fighter and believed so strongly in personal stories as a way to make progress happen,” he added. “So it’s very befitting to do that.”

Dustin Lance Black (pictured, left, in a photo by Brian Putnam), had a busy day appearing at several events including a fundraising party at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

Lance, who won an Academy Award last year for his screenplay of the film Milk, was among the dozens of volunteers and advocates who kicked off the day’s events by gathering at the East Los Angeles Service Center (see video at bottom of this post). Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar and state Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) also spoke.

Milk, who would have been 80 on Saturday, was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978. He served for 11 months before he and Mayor George R. Moscone were assassinated at City Hall by former supervisor Dan White.

Journalist Karen Ocamb reports on what sounds like a remarkable event at Fairfax High School. Here is a portion of her coverage as reported at Karen’s LGBT POV site:

Among the plethora of activities marking the first-ever Harvey Milk Day in California was the Harvey Milk Schools Project Concert by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, with the story written by Alastair Gamble with Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (pictured here with “Milk” producer Bruce Cohen and Harvey Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk).

The first part of the GMCLA concert at the Fairfax High School Auditorium in Los Angeles Saturday night featured songs from the chorus’ June 19-20 concert L’Amour: Music from the Movies of Baz Luhrmann at the Avalon Theatre in Hollywood where the stage will be transformed into the Moulin Rouge.

For the premier of the Harvey Milk Schools Project, however, the high school auditorium stage was a set of bleachers for the singers, colorful boxes and most importantly, the audience’s imagination. This is useful since, as GMCLA Executive Director Hywel Sims explained, the GMCLA’s Alive Music Project goes into local high schools as ambassadors of music education (music programs often the first cut in times of economic crisis) while carrying the message of equality and anti-bullying through their performances, story telling and post-concert conversations.

The new Harvey Milk Schools Project is scheduled to go into a magnet school on Thursday, their first performance of the work following Saturday’s premiere.

There is also an account of the evening at Metblogs.

Other high-profile events on Saturday included a celebration at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, a fundraiser at the home of Sharon and Kelly Osbourne.

Black appeared at the party at Tussand’s in Hollywood but not at the Osbourne party which was presented with Equality California. There apparently was some drama connected to Black’s absence with the site Queerty.com reporting that EQCA dis-invited Black from the party because they wanted controversial gay blogger Perez Hilton there instead.

That seems a bit hard to believe but EQCA did release a statement to Towleroad.com attempting to clarify things:  We didn’t disinvite Dustin Lance Black from EQCA’s Harvey Milk Day event held at the home of Sharon and Kelly Osborne. …We did let Black know that Perez Hilton might be attending the event as a guest of the Osbornes out of courtesy, as we know that there is tension between them (of which the Osbornes were not aware). Hilton was also on the media lists for other organizations’ Harvey Milk Day events. We would never disinvite anyone from our events, and our Harvey Milk Day events were open to the press. Hilton did not attend the event. We did let Black know that Hilton wasn’t coming, and he sent me a text saying that he didn’t think he could make it to the event before it ended.

We would never disinvite someone from an event who has done as much for the LGBT community as Black has. We’re incredibly impressed with Black’s advocacy for LGBT rights and hope to continue working with him in the future. He is a great champion for our community.

Anyway, it’s a bit of a PR nightmare for EQCA.

Let’s move away from that silliness and check out the video below of Lance speaking on Saturday morning: