Taylor, Barbara: Moscone and culturally diverse communities

Barbara Taylor

Abstract

Barbara Taylor: And when you think of George Moscone, George Moscone was a liberal Democrat. He was also an Italian and the city had a very, very large Italian-American community that was politically very powerful. In fact, I would say, that the two most powerful communities where the Irish and the Italians. You know, now a lot of people might say it's the gay community and it's the Asian-American community, the Pacific Rim community, but that is so different than it was when George Moscone was mayor. And so the interesting thing is that he was an Italian-American, and a very proud one, and he was very involved in his community. And what a lot of people might not know is that most of the Italian-Americans were Republicans, and that it stood out, the fact that he was a Democrat. Most of his relatives were Republicans, but he was that, you know, the Democrat Moscone in the Moscone family in San Francisco. So, you know, he had those Italian ties and he had a lot of that support, but at the same time he was very interested in diversity in integrating the police department, integrating the fire department, and bringing other groups you know culturally and ethnically into these different aspects of city government where they had very little representation.

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Type

Interview

Date Original

2011-02-16

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Information

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