I Yell Because I Care

Profane, irascible, and beloved, California political icon John Burton has stood for nearly 60 years as the state Democratic Party's beating heart and one of its leading voices for social justice.
As an assemblyman, congressman, state senator, party chairman and street-fighting activist from San Francisco, Burton as a blue-collar liberal has been at the forefront of the mainstream Democratic movement in its battles on behalf of the poor, against a disastrous foreign war, and in favor of the environment and working people from even before he ran and won his first elected office in 1964.

In this book, Burton shows how he fought and won on behalf of working people, the environment, people of color, the peace movement, and most of all, for the poor and underprivileged. Hard-nosed and acerbic, Burton still shared a common humanity with his political adversaries, most notably Ronald Reagan. Despite his battles with conservatives, he occasionally earned their votes to pass his own bills that created the first special education program for autistic children in California and reformed the state's confiscatory police asset-seizure practices. His life's record provides a template to bridge the polarization of the current political era that his torn the country apart.

John Burton has been a leading liberal force in government and politics for sixty-seven years. In 1956, he volunteered on his brother, Phillip's, successful campaign for the California Assembly, and he has been active in politics ever since. Mr. Burton won an Assembly seat in 1964, and he held assorted elected offices for thirty-six of the next forty years. He twice served as chairman of the California Democratic Party. In 2004, he founded John Burton Advocates for Youth, a policy and research organization focused on the betterment of young adults who "age out" of the foster care system. As a lawmaker, he authorized the first bill that entitled autistic children access to special education programs in California. He played important roles in promoting early political careers of former U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Ms. Pelosi has described Mr. Burton as "the chief architect of the Democrats' dominance in California." Mr. Burton lives in San Francisco.

Andy Furillo covered crime and punishment and also sports, politics and other beats during his 44-year newspaper career in California for the Sacramento Bee, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and other papers. He won several awards, including the Heywood Broun Award in 2002 for his investigation into a Sacramento neighborhood's deterioration into poverty and crime. Furillo, a native of Downey, CA, is the author of The Steamer: Bud Furillo and the Golden Age of LA Sports. He is an alumnus of Cerritos College and a political science graduate of UC Santa Barbara.