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Home , Fletcher Bowron, Sam Yorty

Volume 5 #52 (Issue 232) Copyright 1968 $5.00 PER YEAR WE 7-1970 The Free Press, Inc. IS HE, OR HAS HE EVER BEEN? YORTY PINKO DEALINGS December 28-January 3, 1969 Harry Bridges, Upton Sinclair and other reds. Sam wrote that it was "...a very wholesome thing to have an official news- paper to present Labor's side of important events." Yorty walked in picket lines to support the worker's strug- gle and he toured the state mak- ing militant speeches at strike rallies. Time after time he re- peated the same demagogic rant against "the princes of plenty and the monarchs of monopoly." I plied for membership in the Party In 1938 Yorty campaigned for while he was courting Dorothy renomination in. the Democratic FRED HOFFMAN Nestor, who later became Doro- Primary. He appeared in the Mayor has recently thy Healey. Party leaders dis- strike picket lines in front of the ventured into the Looney Tune trusted Yorty's "opportunism" HOLLYWOOD CITIZEN-NEWS world of McCarthy type Red- and therefore required him to and spoke at a mass rally with baiting. The mayor' s attack on the undergo a six-month proba- Carey Mcw!lliams and other SDS is the most recent example. tionary period. well known "pinko-liberals". However, when one ventures into Yorty became a leader in the Yorty called the CITIZEN-NEWS the realm of the witch-hunt, there American League Against War strike a struggle "of democracy is always the danger of the tables and Fascism, a Communist-sup- against industrial dictatorship," being turned. Red skeletons, it ported united front group. He was As he campaigned that summer seems, are to be found in the most much in demand at leftist rallies in Los Angeles Sam could see unlikely of closets. and, thanks to abnormally large that he had lost Dorothy. He felt Sam W. Yorty was never- a vocal chords, Sam never, had any put down and left out, but felt "card-carrying member of the trouble being heard even in the better about it when he won re- Communist Party" but he came largest places. The L.A. Times election that November. A few very close and for several years called him "a - violent leftist." weeks afterwards he met Betty he was a well-known Communist Sam Yorty was first elected to Hensel at the Post Office in Palm fellow-traveller. Getting in with the State Assembly in a Springs, the reds was a big step up for grass-roots peoples' doorbell- Then Yorty accused Japanese Sam who was with Technocracy pushing campaign supported by fishermen of being alien espion- before that. He also look part in the Communist Party in 1936. He age agents and announced inten- the End Poverty In California was glad of the support andbare- tions to seek legislation against (EPIC). campaign of Upton Sin- Iy won the election, carried in on "enemy spies" in the next clair. the coattails of Franklin D. sembly. When the 1939 legisla Yorty has been a registered Roosevelt. The romance with tive session began he introduced Democrat since 1934, the year Dorothy seemed to be getting his anti-spy law and married before he met the Communists. nowhere and it was good for Sam Betty Hensel. Everything between In 1935 he started going to Com- to get away to Sacramento. him and Dorothy was finished. munist Party meetings. Young , The new assemblyman loved to When the campaign to recall Sam tried hard to make friends swing, and now there were plenty Mayor Shaw got under way in with Dorothy Nestor, a comely of girls for him to swingwith, al- 1939, Yorty wanted to be the re- young commie with hazel eyes, though, perhaps none of them was form party's candidate in the re- smiling hard at her with his cun- as pretty as Dorothy. Somewhere call election. Reform leaders ning quick grin across the meet- he heard that she was going out preferred and ing of the CPUS& with Don Healey, another Com- Yorty blamed his defeat on the Sam grew quickly as a pro- munist. Sam never completed his Communists. spective Party youth leader, but party application. Focussing on "them" he soon he seemed a little overambitious When the Communist PEO- discovered "disciplined con- to certain Communist leaders. A PLE'S WORLD appeared on Jan- spiratorial activity". Yorty' s ex- former CP spokesman informed uary 1, 1938, there were con- aggerated sense of his own impor- the FREE PRESS that Yorty ap- gratulations from Sam Yorty, tance gave him a paranoid aware- ness which "made it possible for (Continued on Page 21) December 28, 1968 Mayor Yorty's commie past

(Continued from Page 1) His dictatorial demands that his me to understand some past ac- orders be carried out do not make ribly impressed by the youth in tions and I began to put the pieces those orders either right or con- America, black and white. I AM together...I couldpractically sistent with the platform of the PROUD OF THEM BECAUSE dentify the Communists and their Democratic party. Today only a THEY HAVE REAFFIRMED MY cohorts by the change in attitudes, fearless Legislature which re- FAITH IN HUMANITY. I HAVE. The campaign against me was fuses to be browbeaten is pro- COME TO FEEL WHAT MUST virulent and vicious. It was de- tecting California against the es- BE LOVE FOR THE YOUNG signed to destroy me and drive tablishment of a veritable dic- PEOPLE OF AMERICA AND me out of the Democratic Par- tatorship. I won't be driven Out of WANT TO BE PART OF THE ty,• Yorty said. my party by Communists or by a GOOD AND GREATNESS THAT Before Long Yorty began push- leader with a dictator complex." THEY WANT FOR ALL PEO- ing for an investigation , of Com- But run out of the party he was. PLE". munists in the California State Unable to carry his own district I was struck, as if by a bolt of Relief Agency. By the Spring of now that he had lost his Commun- lightning , when I read that. This 1940 Yorty was leading the witch ist support, Yorty decided to go Cleaver who had been painted as a hunt of the 'Little Dies Commit- for broke in 1940. He ran against racist etc. was saying what I had tee". The first one he wanted to SEEN myself. .. get was Don Healey. Truth, as they say, is indi- On Febuary 5, 1940 Yorty got visible. More grist to the elbow Healey in front of his committee. of the American young people. If He asked Healey whether he had they save this country, thehless- ever sought Relief Administra- ings will blow across the entire tion job's for members of his world. group. Healey answered: "You ought to know, Sam, be- cause I saw you at the SRA of- (Continued from Page 9) fice headquarters when you were pop designs and French poetry on the walls. At the wedding of trying to get positions for your another daughter, she and her own workers." husband recited Netry that they 'That is a lie!" Sam shrieked. had written for each other and From there Sam went after for U.S. Senate dispensed with the conventional Communists in the Labor Unions and was badly defeated in the responses. primary. and even Governor Olson, a De- My first tour of mocrat. °I feel the governor is Out of politics and out of a job, was carried out under the escort Yorty still thinks it was the Com- playing a dangerous game in fail- of Dr. Grabbe; so young-hearted ing to rid his administration of mtmists who did it to him. Sam is he that in addition to taking me would make much use of this is- Communists...I cannot support to Fisherman's Wharf and the his policy of inaction. The gover- sue on his return to politics and computer conference, we went to nor is not the Democratic party. still uses it today. The 19 Com- San Francisco's Broadway, munists whom he named last week where I made him laugh by just as being responsible for the Black taking a quick peek at the Bot- Student Union demonstrations had tomless and Topless girls, and among them many of the same then quickly drawing away before people 'exposed" by ,Yorty over the usher could find a table! and over down through the years. With people like that around Some of them are getting a little and about the (I old to be leading student demon- hope they are many) IDEAS can strations, but they will vouch for go to and fro and take shape and Yorty's early pinko dealings. produce a society which can find answers to its problems because its mind is working. Much of the hullabaloo going on about how colleges should be run, who should teach what when, is just the confrontation of working minds with those that are dead, but kept alive with intravenous feeding; of those who would hear Eldridge Cleaver speak against those who would shoot him even when he is naked and his hands are above his head. In his book, SOUL ON ICE, Cleaver writes, "I have been ter-