The City Project Team

Tom Hayden, Board Member

Tom has led a long and distinguished career of activism, politics, and writing dedicated to public service, and he remains a leading voice for ending the war in Iraq, erasing sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation.

Tom has taught recently at Pitzer College, Occidental College, and Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

Tom is the author or editor of thirteen books, including most recently: Reunion (1988), reissued as Rebel (2002), one of the New York Times 200 best books of the year; The Lost Gospel of the Earth (1996, reissued 2006); Irish on the Inside (2001); Street Wars (2004); The Port Huron Statement (2005); and Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader (2008).

Tom served in the California legislature from 1982 to 2000, first as an assemblyman and for the last eight years as a senator.

Tom was one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society and author of the Point Huron Statement. He was a Freedom Rider in the Deep South, and was arrested and beaten in Georgia and Mississippi.

Tom was indicted as one of the Chicago Eight after the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and was acquited of all charges after five years of trials, appeals, and retrials.

Tom Hayden and The City Project’s Robert Garcia met in 1976. Tom and Robert wrote an Op/Ed in the Los Angeles Times, Perspective on the Rampart Scandal: This Case Calls for a Truly Outside Inquiry, in 2000 with civil rights attorney Paul Hoffman, which led to the consent decree negotiated by the United States Department of Justice and the City of Los Angeles to reform the pattern and practice of excessive force, false arrests and unreasonable searches and seizures by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Tom was instrumental in the community struggles to create the Los Angeles State Historic Park at the Cornfield, and the Rio de Los Angeles State Park as part of the revitalization of the L.A. River. He drafted the largest state park and environmental restoration bond in the nation’s history as a legislator.