On a side street a short jaunt from Piedmont Avenue you climb a flight of stairs to the front door of a tidy frame house. The door is wide open. Inside, seated at a well-organized desk is Larry Tramutola. “Come in. Relax. Have a seat,” he says.
Wearing jeans and a lightweight black sports shirt, and with his silvery head of hair, Tramutola looks like he would not be out of place in a humanities faculty lounge at Berkeley or Stanford. But over several decades in the Bay Area Tramutola has carved himself a niche as a widely recognized and effective player in two rough and unforgiving worlds: community organizing, and political consulting and strategy.
His organizing roots reach back to the 1970’s, where he trained under Fred Ross, and later worked for over a decade with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta as an official at the United Farm Workers union. Since then he’s had a hand in a long list of ballot and election campaign successes, including working as California Field Director for Bill Clinton, as a trainer of organizers for Barack Obama, as a strategist behind the passage of Measure D — the first ever soda tax in the US, as well as defeating the tobacco lobby in Proposition C, which had aimed to overturn anti-vaping laws.
“At core I am an organizer,” Tramutola said, “mostly around political or quasi-political issues.” In 2010 he and his wife Ann launched TOLA (The Organizing and Leadership Academy), a formal training program for young people in organizing and leadership development.
“Larry’s work at TOLA has been guided by his long-held conviction and oft-repeated line: ‘Learning to organize is a lifelong process — and to learn you need to be hands-on in the real world, working on real problems,'” said June Monach, former PUSD trustee who went on to work at TOLA. Monach, now retired, became involved with the organization a decade ago, helping to recruit and coach TOLA fellows, and serving as president for half of that time.
Tramutola is also the author of the 2003 book “Sidewalk Strategies,” a kind of hands-on guide to aspiring organizers that breaks down the strategizing and the work into engaging, bite-sized lessons.
In Piedmont Unified as well as many other school districts, Tramutola is wanted for his expertise in tax election consulting, guiding school districts and municipal and civic entities in organizing the public behind a parcel tax and other key electoral work.
Piedmont City Councilmember Conna McCarthy, who has known Tramutola for more than two decades, describes his work as indispensable. “Larry Tramutola has been a steady and strategic partner helping community leaders advocating for PUSD and the city achieve voter-approved long-term financial support for basic services, as well as voter approval for major civic and school district improvements. Larry is someone who provides the essential support, encouragement, and mentorship that allows Piedmont to succeed.”
Of the current stormy political climate, Tramutola says what’s worrisome is that in his long life, he’s never seen so many things going wrong all at once. But, he adds, “even during the days of the Vietnam war, I’ve never seen more activism now than I’ve seen before. You didn’t see older people out on corners holding street signs. You may have seen college students, but now you see middle school students to the elderly. That’s hopeful. And I hear more people talking about how to make changes. People care about local things. What drives Piedmont are people’s investments in the schools. Financial investment and active investment in terms of time and energy. It’s the best of times and the worst of times.”