When I learned last week from my social media and Internet connections that Gus Newport had died, I thought about a line I’d once heard sung by a gospel choir at St. Paul AME Church.
“After all I’ve seen, I still have joy.”
Gus approached everything in life with enormous enthusiasm, truly with joy: running for office, being in office, policy planning, academic endeavors, networking with the livelier parts of the left, and most of all, encouraging and mentoring his compañeros in the eternal struggle against evil .
On my laptop I have a sticker once handed out by The Nation, offering a quote from the late lamented Molly Ivins:
“We have to have fun while trying to stave off the forces of darkness because we hardly ever win, so it’s the only fun we get to have.”
Well, yes, but Gus was one of the few resolute progressives who did win, at least for a time, who actually won a couple of terms as mayor without sacrificing his principles, and still had fun.
He served seven years in the early 1980s. Many key progressive goals, notably effective rent control, were realized in Berkeley during his time in office. Ever afterwards he followed Berkeley politics with interest, even when he moved Back East for a spell.
While living in the Boston area, he taught at MIT and worked with community organizations. He was especially proud of a method he’d devised for exacting meaningful community benefits from developers who demanded lucrative zoning concessions. He also lectured at Yale, the University of Massachusetts and UC Santa Cruz.
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