Remembering liberal icon Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden died yesterday at the age of 76. He’s most remembered for his radical activism for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. The FBI file on Hayden ran 22,000 pages. An FBI memo said, “In view of the fact that Hayden is an effective speaker who appeals to intellectual groups and has also worked with and supported the Negro people in their program in Newark, it is recommended that he be placed on the Rabble Rouser Index.” That was in the 60s and 70s. But in the 80s and 90s, he became part of the political establishment he had spent all those years protesting. He was voted into the California State Assembly in 1982. Ten years later, he moved to the state Senate, where he served until the year 2000.