Shouts and Whispers

Tom Hayden has never been regarded as a quiet man. So it came as no surprise when he leaned across his outdoor table at a Westside restaurant and shouted “Sheep!” at passing cars.

“Sheep!” he yelled to indicate how blindly the public often follows bad leaders. “Sheep, sheep, sheep!”

The incident encapsulated the whole political career of the aging activist, this People’s Warrior, who has refused to remain silent when making noise was required.

He began shouting against racism as a kid in college and against the war in Vietnam thereafter. He shouted as a leader for radical student organizations and rallied others to shout with him in waves of sound that became a roar.

Hayden was a metaphor for a generation at war with hypocrisy, best characterized by confrontations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and later as one of the shouting, fist-shaking Chicago 7.

As he grew, his methods changed. He began working within the system rather than against it, first as an assemblyman and then as a state senator in California.

But for now, says the man who has spent 17 years fighting the people’s fight in Sacramento, he’s shouted enough.

Tom Hayden, loved by the left and hated by the right, is moving on.

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Two weeks ago, the graying, intense man whose very name once turned John Birchers into frothing maniacs, announced that he was getting out of politics . . . at least for now.

In a statement that bordered on bitterness, Hayden, just turning 60, criticized Gov. Gray Davis, the Democratic Party’s support for the bombing of Serbia and the escalating importance of money in politics.

It seemed like old times.

Here was an icon of the 1960s, the kid who helped end a war and bring down a president, leaping into the face of the establishment once more, risking a career for the sake of conscience.

Disillusioned by Davis generally, Hayden was particularly upset at the governor’s veto of his bills to monitor school dropout rates, create child health standards at toxic school sites and place former gang members on crime prevention committees.

He characterized the vetoes as “coldhearted and even irrational” and later, at a quieter moment, said he had expected “so much more” from his fellow Democrat.

Barred by term limits from seeking reelection to the Senate, Hayden had been considered a shoo-in for a return to the Assembly, in the 42nd District, but bowed out in the face of almost certain victory to wage other battles.

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“It isn’t retirement,” he insisted as we sat together one day last week. “That isn’t an option. I still have 10 or 20 good years left and I’m going to use them.”

He’ll miss organized politics, he said, “because the great thing about being in office is that I felt my voice was amplified. I had a vote.”

Hayden ran for mayor once in Los Angeles and hasn’t ruled out another run for city office. He has left his options open. Whatever he does, he says, “I want to be responsible to the grass roots.”

He talked about the “hocus-pocus politics” of L.A., regretting that “billions are coming into the city, but none is going to the blacks.”

He talked about the racial crisis that still separates us and the need to reestablish a dialogue on race, adding, “Some people who go on about civil rights preside over cities that are still segregated, and getting worse.”

It was at this point that he startled passersby by shouting, “Sheep, sheep!” across Pico Boulevard. Having done so, he settled back and laughed. It felt good to shout.

Age has mellowed the man who once would have taken his anger to the streets rather than to an upscale restaurant. A rebel without a well-defined cause, Hayden still sees himself as the political warrior that characterized his youth. He sees battles on distant fronts.

I hope he never completely stops rattling the cages of both the right and the left. A free society needs the shouters as well as the whisperers, the men and women who aren’t afraid to yell, “Sheep!” in crowded restaurants.

Hayden embodies the ideals of a time when strong voices were raised against war and racial hatred. He has carried the people’s banner for 40 years. Regardless of the path he ultimately chooses, one hopes that he’ll never put the banner down.

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com