In response to Grassroots Equality Network’s last-minute call for activists across the state to host candlelight vigils in memory of Harvey Milk on his birthday, San Diego Equality Campaign’s Public Relations-Media Chair Ben Cartwright hosted a vigil for the late civil rights leader in front of “Equality Wall,” a memorial fence in Hillcrest, last Friday evening.

“We are here today to honor Harvey Milk. He would have been 79 years old today. Milk was a visionary, legendary leader of our community, even before the movie Milk came out. I have always seen him as an inspiration. Harvey fought the hard fight, a fight harder than today’s activists could ever imagine. Certainly, we still have a lot of work to do, but Harvey and his generation of activists really paved the way for us,” Cartwright said in front of a group of 15, beside the memorial fence outside Rich’s nightclub.

After his introduction, Cartwright, who had had less than 24 hours notice to organize the event, opened the forum for attendees to share their thoughts about Milk.

“I met Harvey Milk once in 1976. [During that time] we thought it was impossible if we would ever win an election over discrimination protection for queer people and today we’re worried about whether we’re going to win the right to marry. And it may not seem like it, but that is an incredible degree of progress. We’ve got a long way to come, but we’ve come a long way,” said Zenger’s newsmagazine editor Mark Conlan, noting how the film Milk had made him consider the progress of the GLBT civil rights movement since the ’70s.

Although Milk died before Cartwright was born, Cartwright said he’d had his own “personal Harvey Milk,” a late San Diego State University student named Jim Neill.

“He [Jim] was about 39 years old [when I met him] and was still in college and struggled through his life. He told me about Harvey when I first started San Diego State University. He actually held the [gay] student union there from 1975 to 1979, when the administration said you could not have a group with the word, ‘gay’ in it. But that’s my personal Harvey Milk. He [Jim] brought me to become the activist I am today,” Cartwright said.

Cartwright and several attendees passed out white candles and lit them one by one. Cartwright then asked the group to take a moment of silence.

Afterward, San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality representative Wendy Sue Biegeleisen led a chant with gatherers.

“What do we want? Equal rights! When do we want it? Now!” shouted Biegeleisen and attendees, who then stood together in front of the memorial fence for a group photo. Building Bridges for Pride member Dan Horan and several others created the fence last March.

“We envisioned the wall after the Nov. 15 rally Downtown. And we put it together at the end of March on a weekend. It used to be an old fence and we tore it down and built a new one, and then we posted the banner on it,” Horan said.

The fence holds a banner with the following quote by Martin Luther King Jr.:

“When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom.”

King made the statement in 1968 (the banner erroneously cites 1958) in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia to legalize inter-racial marriage.

“It applies about as perfectly as anything that we could possibly say about this battle,” Horan said.

Horan said he had envisioned the memorial fence to be a public space where people could hang wedding pictures, poetry and flowers, but it has largely stayed empty.

“I wish it would have taken off more than it has,” Horan said.

“I’m hoping, that after the Day of Decision demonstration, people will be moved to put things up on it,” he said.