 Russo (right) rides with
Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris (center).
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John
Russo wrote in his elementary school yearbook
that he wanted to become a politician. His
classmates in Brooklyn called him
"chief." Decades later, Russo became
the youngest city council member in multiracial
Oakland, which he calls the "Brooklyn of the
West Coast." The
39-year-old Russo grew up in a small
neighborhood, where most of the neighbors were
from Mola di Bari, a small town in Italy. In the
poor but strongly-bonded neighborhood, Russo
says, he developed a strong work ethic and
learned the importance of education and community
cooperation.
"We were required to watch
prime-time news every single day," Russo
says. He and his siblings, Anna and Alfonso, had
to come home by 6 p.m. and were not allowed to go
out at night. They spent their nights reading
books or playing the trumpet.
Although the younger Russo
helped his father write letters on behalf of his
Italian neighbors who had trouble with English,
he says he was rebellious and wanted to do things
differently from his father, Nicola. His father
disliked Richard Nixon. So the nine-year-old
Russo became a conservative Republican.
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