INTRODUCTION
Early Life and Name Change
Bill de Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm Jr. on May 8, 1961 in New York City and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shortly after graduating with a bachelor's degree from New York University in 1983, he legally changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm, adding his mother's maiden name to his identity. In 2002 he changed his name for a second time and became Bill de Blasio.
Radical Parents
Historian Ron Radosh describes de Blasio as: (a) "a far left radical whose ancestors are theNew Left and the Communists"; and (b) "a bona fide red diaper baby" who, "like many of his generation ... kept his parents' ... pro-Communist politics not far from his heart." Both of de Blasio’s parents were far leftists—most likely, members of the Communist Party USA or some of its numerous front groups. His mother, Maria de Blasio, worked in the early 1940s at the Office of War Information—a U.S. government agency staffed largely by pro-Soviet leftists who depicted the USSR in a positive light.
SUPPORTER OF COMMUNIST & ANTI-AMERICAN CAUSES IN THE 1980'S
In 1983, while he was still at NYU, Bill de Blasio toured parts of the Communist Soviet Union. This was a period of significant Cold War tension between the United States and the USSR, as the Soviets were attempting to permanently solidify their nuclear superiority over the U.S. Notably, de Blasio at one time served as an organizer with the anti-nuclear, anti-American organization Physicians for Social Responsibility.
De Blasio took his first job in 1984 with the NYC Department of Juvenile Justice. Three years later, having recently earned a master's degree at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, he was hired to work as a political organizer by the Quixote Center (QC), a Maryland-based, Catholic social-justice organization with Marxist leanings.
In 1988 de Blasio, an ardent supporter of Nicaragua's Marxist Sandinista government—which was backed by the Soviet Union, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization—joined a number of his QC colleagues in a ten-day trip to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine to people who had been affected by the...
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