Harvey Milk Park & Equality Plaza Opening Ceremony Today (May 21); LBREPORT.com Will Webcast Event LIVE (starting at 11 a.m.)
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(May 20, 2013, 7:15 a.m.) -- A previously undistinguished strip of land between the sidewalk and a parking structure filled with gravel and wood chips will be formally opened -- with multiple improvements and iconic amenities -- as Harvey Milk Promenade Park and Equality Plaza at 11:00 a.m. today (May 14).
The plaza includes a concrete replica of the soapbox on which Milk stood to address crowds (below), a 20-foot flagpole to fly the gay pride flag and Equality Plaza, an area dedicated to recognizing local area LGBT leaders and their contributions to Long Beach and the gay civil rights movement. Today's event will include Mayor Bob Foster, Vice Mayor Robert Garcia, various dignitaries and community members, and a representative of the San Francisco-based Harvey Milk Foundation. LBREPORT.com will provide LIVE VIDEO of today's event on our front page -- www.LBREPORT.com -- with on-demand video to follow. The upgraded area simultaneously highlights "Long Beach Recreation," the Roosevelt-era WPA mosaic mural saved from destruction at the former LB Municipal Auditorium, which was relocated alongside the parking structure...and basically left there without attention for the past roughly thirty years. Long Beach's move to name a park for Supervisor Milk is the most recent among a number of public memorials to the assassinated LGBT civil rights icon. In San Francisco, Harvey Milk Plaza honors the civil rights leader in the middle of San Francisco's gay neighborhood where Milk lived -- the Castro. Across the city in Duboce Park is the Harvey Milk Recreational Arts Center. That center houses the Harvey Milk Photo Center (Milk owned a camera store in the Castro neighborhood that elected him). San Francisco is also home to the Harvey Milk Institute, the Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library and the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. In San Diego's Balboa Park, in 1988 on the 10th anniversary of his assassination, the San Diego Harvey Milk Club placed a memorial plaque in a bench next to the park's Zoro Butterfly Garden. New York City has a Harvey Milk High School for LBGT youth. The proposal for a Long Beach park honoring San Francisco Supervisor Milk belongs to then-Councilman Robert Garcia, in whose Council district the area is located. The concept of an area honoring Long Beach area LGBT pioneers was independently proposed by Long Beach Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske after a number of area residents voiced the view that Long Beach's first park named for an openly gay person ought to recognize a Long Beach individual (several suggested LB Poly High graduate, tennis star Billie Jean King). Garcia revised an initially issued release to incorporate the idea of Equality Plaza, which now lists several Long Beach and Signal Hill residents (including some Signal Hill Councilmembers) but to date not Schipske (Long Beach's first openly gay elected official as an LBCC Trustee; Garcia is Long Beach's third gay elected official, following LB Councilman Dan Baker).
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Contact us: mail@LBReport.com