Unifier, activist, and champion of the people: Judy Ann Alberti remembered

Judy Ann Alberti (1943-2026) is remembered by her family, friends, and comrades as a grassroots activist always on the go.| People's World composite

BERKELEY—If a homeless person was cold, exhausted, desperate for a place to sleep, he could find it in the modest home of Judy Ann Alberti on Derby Street in Berkeley.

“She brought people into her house who needed a place to live,” said her younger sister, Toni Ellen. “Our father brought people in off the street too. It’s just the way Judy Ann was. She was a lovely person.”

Toni Ellen is deep in mourning for Judy Ann Alberti, her sister, who died recently of cancer. Judy Ann was born in Southern California on Feb. 26, 1943, to Zelda and Anthony Alberti. The family moved to New York City. Judy Ann enrolled at the New York High School for Music & Arts. Her sister, Lydia, followed in her footsteps and enrolled at the same school. Judy Ann hoped to learn to play the piano but was instead assigned the bass fiddle, an awkward instrument to haul back and forth on the subway each school day. She became an elementary school teacher and later a legal secretary.

Toni remembers her sister as a warm, outgoing, generous person, an activist always on the go. “I was much younger, so my older sisters were out of the house when I was growing up,” Toni Ellen said.

Today, she continued, “It is the State of the World! I would go to Judy Ann to try to understand the world. Aren’t we all trying to understand it? But now there is no Judy Ann to turn to.” She remembers Judy Ann discussing the State of the World with her granddaughter Mia. “She said: You always have to have hope. You have to go out and fight. Stand up!”

Judy Ann, she added, was “literally a lifelong member of the Communist Party, forever! The politics. Being there for people. It was the crux of her life.”

Judy Ann, she continued, was a grassroots activist, joining every mobilization for world peace, actions against race and gender oppression, the rights of union members to organize and strike, for socialism.

Her friend and comrade, Bonnie Weiss, remembers Judy Ann as a uniter who played a major role in “unifying and preserving” the Northern District of the Communist Party in the early 1990s. Sharon Rose, another close friend and comrade, cited Judy Ann’s tireless efforts to convince people to join the CPUSA.

Jon, a veteran waterfront worker, then a delegate of the San Francisco Labor Council, seconded this warm praise for Alberti. “Judy Ann played a really important role in preserving the unity of the Party and reestablishing the Party,” Jon said. “We met at her house, in the living room, four of us. We had to compete with her parrot, Carmen.” The parrot, he said, was so talkative that Judy Ann would throw a towel over the bird cage. “The parrot became completely silent,” he said, chuckling at the memory. 

Under Judy Ann’s influence, the four loyalists refused to abandon the CP. “The Berkeley club was named the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Club,” Jon said.

Those favoring the breakaway “spent time, more than a few years, trying to convince us to break away. They lost. We kept the club, and it is still the ‘Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Club.’”

“Alberti understood the centrality of preserving the CPUSA,” Jon added. “Party unity is fundamental, of utmost importance.”

For half a century, an annual cookout in Alberti’s backyard was one of the main fundraising events for the People’s World. “Leftists of all stripes came to that cookout. Three years ago, Rossana Cambron was the featured speaker,” Jon said. Over 50 people jammed into Judy Ann’s backyard for that fundraiser.

“Judy Ann attended club meetings until she was diagnosed with cancer in July. She was in the thick of the drive to turn out the vote to defeat the MAGAs in the November 3 midterm elections. Today, people are talking about the problems of capitalism. Joining in that massive nationwide upsurge against the Trump-MAGA cult is the priority for the Party,” Jon concluded.

She was active with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion Archives (ALBA) that honored Lincoln vet Delmar Berg at the 76th Anniversary celebration of their heroic struggle against Franco Fascism in Spain. Berg was 96 at the time of the 2012 celebration. The People’s World featured a photo of Judy Ann with her arm around the shoulders of Berg at the celebration. 

She won election to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board and served with a slate that advocated for affordable housing. Housing for the homeless and many thousands facing eviction was a high priority for Alberti in the Bay Area, where rents and mortgage rates skyrocketed, with hundreds losing their homes and forced to starve and freeze on the mean streets.

She and Conn “Ringo” Hallinan were married in 1972. She gave birth to Antonio in 1972 and Brian in 1975. She raised her own sons and a stepson. She is survived by her partner, Bobby Hookfin; stepson Sean; sons Antonio, his wife, Tsvetina, and their daughter, Mia, and Brian, his wife, Terry, and their talented son, Vance. They are the descendants of the eminent human rights lawyer, Vincent Hallinan, and Vivian Hallinan.

This reporter can confirm that Judy Ann Alberti was indeed a generous spirit who cared for wayfaring strangers such as me. I was a People’s Weekly World staff reporter in 2003 covering the recall of California Governor Grey Davis. Judy Ann provided a comfortable monk’s cot for me to sleep on in the basement of her small cottage in Berkeley. Together with her union brothers and sisters, Judy Ann was toiling to turn out the votes to stop Arnold Schwarzenegger. But “Conan the Barbarian” won. 

Judy Ann Alberti was undaunted by this setback. She never stopped fighting to make a better world for herself, her family, and community. Socialism!

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CONTRIBUTOR

Tim Wheeler

Tim Wheeler has written over 10,000 news reports, exposés, op-eds, and commentaries in his half-century as a journalist for the Worker, Daily World, and People’s World. Tim also served as editor of the People’s Weekly World newspaper.  His book News for the 99% is a selection of his writings over the last 50 years representing a history of the nation and the world from a working-class point of view. After residing in Baltimore for many years, Tim now lives in Sequim, Wash.