Dustin Lance Black on Harvey Milk Day

Dustin Lance Black is fighting for Harvey Milk—not just by writing the Academy Award-winning screenplay Milk or working toward the creation of a Harvey Milk Day in California, but also by helping Equality California, an organization trying to achieve equality and secure legal protections for LGBT people.

On May 22nd, the first official Harvey Milk Day, Black and other volunteers will be canvassing neighborhoods where residents predominantly voted “Yes” on Proposition 8, letting these people know how their actions negatively impacted other people’s lives.

“You see Harvey doing that in the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk,” Black explains. “In the Bay Area he used to go into neighborhoods that were not favorable to equality, and [in the film] you can watch the faces of the people who are meeting gay and lesbian people for the first time. I think a lot of them were horrified, but it created change. We’re hoping to have that same reaction.”

This story actually began for Black years ago, when he met State Senator Mark Leno who was pressing for a Harvey Milk Day. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed that bill, but after Milk came out and garnered so much positive attention, Leno tried again. “He asked me to talk to everyone, to see what I could do to really press the importance of having a day of recognition like this,” Black says. “To me, it meant that schools in California will be urged to teach who Harvey Milk was and why he was important to Californians in particular. So I did what I could.” From there, Black found himself testifying before the California Senate Education Committee, and then at a particularly important dinner.

“One really amazing night Sean Penn— who is so incredibly passionate about this as well— called me and said, ‘Hey, get your butt up to this restaurant because Arnold Schwarzenegger is here and maybe you can talk to him about why you think [Harvey Milk Day] is important.’” While Black doesn’t know if Schwarzenegger remembers this night or if it impacted the Governor’s decision, Schwarzenegger did change his mind and instead of vetoing the bill, signed it. “It was brave of him. He got a lot of opposition from people urging him to veto this bill. But he didn’t.”

With the first official Harvey Milk Day happening on May 22, EQCA’s Marriage Director Marc Solomon invited Black to do door-to-door canvassing. According to Black, the organization has learned from mistakes made during Prop. 8, and they’re making a more concerted effort to target areas like Fresno, Orange County, and East Los Angeles, where there’s limited lesbian and gay visibility.

“In the evening we’ll celebrate but we have to do the hard work in the morning,” Black says. “It’s what Harvey would have wanted.”

For more information, visit Equality California.

Watch Black’s video about Harvey Milk Day below.