Gone too soon

How did the late Peter Camejo become politically active but independent of Democrats and GOPsters? Answers emerge in this posthumous memoir. Roused by a half-century of progressive struggle with people and movements here and abroad, he saw a young man speak publicly in Nicaragua after its revolution. This speaker connected with his audience by using simple words about their past and current lives, an approach Camejo adopted. Thus his memoir’s title, North Star, the same name of the abolitionist paper that Frederick Douglass founded nearly two decades before slavery ended in the United States. Camejo ran for governor in California, for president and vice president of the nation. In his spare time, he launched socially responsible investing. Why such intensity? He opposed all forms of injustice and bloomed with the love and wisdom of his wife, Morella. An appendix on the U.S. two-party system wraps up Camejo’s look back on a life that ended too soon.