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.