New Orleans        I first met Tony Fazio when he was working with Mike Miller as a community organizer in San Francisco in the early 1970s.  The organization was the All People’s Coalition.  They were concentrating on Visitation Valley and Sunnyvale.  I had tracked them down partially because they had done a series of interesting campaigns that focused on local business and demanding jobs.  They had won some.  It was worth getting a grip on it.  He was a character, which wasn’t unusual for organizers.  He had a side mouth laugh with a distinctive, infectious sound that went with a mischievous wink in his eye.  For my money, you couldn’t meet him and not like him.

I kept in touch with him and vice versa.  When ACORN went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in our first serious expansion from Arkansas, I reached out to him and asked if he was really interested or just talk.  San Francisco was one thing, but South Dakota might be a bridge too far for a kid from Providence, Rhode Island.  He was game and part of the first team with Dewey Armstrong as the first head organizer.  We loaded up the blackboard and some tables in front of the Little Rock office to take up to Sioux Falls.  Tony said he had been trying to lose weight, because he thought to be an ACORN organizer, you had to be rail thin, which was hilarious, but in truth, Ramen and peanut butter were our staples in Sioux Falls, so he might have had a point.

We kept in touch as he migrated back to the Bay Area and dipped his arms deep into politics as the political director for the influential San Francisco Labor Council.  Somehow, he became an expert in direct mail and then an advisor in one campaign after another in the city, state, and eventually elsewhere, including on the national level.

Our paths didn’t exactly often cross, but there were frequent intersections, where we reached out for his advice.  When we ran the living wage campaign in New Orleans and a separate direct expenditure campaign for two city council people that were the key to Mayor Marc Morial’s commitment to give Local 100 an election for city workers, if we had the majority, so we could give him cover on the council.  We threw everything we had into that campaign.  SEIU generously provided the funds for us do mail, flyers, and phone banks, thanks to Kirk Adams, then the chief of staff.  Both candidates won, as well as the local initiative to raise the city’s wage floor.  Beth Bulter, the head organizer of Louisiana ACORN still quotes the advice Tony gave her on the campaign and holds it close to her vest.  My son still wears a Winning Directions polartec from time to time that was part of Tony’s swag.

Reading about Tony, it was good to see how well-regarded he was in what ended up his profession.  He was a past president of the American Association of Political Consultants.  I don’t know about all of that.  I do know that there was never a time when I reached out for Tony to ask for advice or help for ACORN or any of our family of organizations, where he wasn’t right there and generous with his time and anything he could do from letting us come by and print flyers in his office near the airport to helping organize a benefit for ACORN only a couple of years ago.  I had a standing offer to stay at his house with Marie Jobling and the gang.

 

He was a boon companion and a great comrade.  I am one of many who will keep him in mind.  He will be missed.