On Saturday, June 17, Eugene “Gus” Newport passed away at the age of eighty-eight. Newport, a socialist, served as the mayor of Berkeley for seven years, from 1979 to 1986. While his name is lesser known today outside the Bay Area, Newport’s mayoralty epitomized a national movement among local elected officials to institutionalize the Third World solidarity politics of the 1960s at the level of city government.

During Newport’s seven-year stint as mayor, Berkeley supported and aided left-wing revolutionaries from Southern Africa to Central America and the Caribbean. The support came not just from campus classrooms and left-wing bookshops, but directly from the mayor’s office. Newport’s attempts to give Berkeley its own foreign policy would inspire other local elected officials, including Burlington’s socialist mayor Bernie Sanders. Two-time presidential candidate Jesse Jackson affectionately referred to Newport as “the mayor of the world.”

Once elected, Newport, who had been the candidate of the city’s left-progressive political coalition Berkeley Citizens Action, opened the doors of city hall to a network of global revolutionaries and their local supporters. Soon after his election, Newport became the cochair of the US Peace Council — the US affiliate of the Soviet-aligned international peace organization the World Peace Council. Inspired by the example of other black internationalists like Paul Robeson, Newport, through the World Peace Council, advocated for a permanent détente between the United States and the Soviet Union and connected with revolutionary leaders around the globe.