Walter A. O'Brien, Jr. (December 19, 1914 – July 3, 1998[1]) was a Progressive Party politician from Boston, Massachusetts, United States in the 1940s and the fourth child of Walter A. O’Brien from Portland and Susan Ann Crosby, both third generation Irish Americans.
Lacking sufficient financial support to pay for radio advertising, O'Brien commissioned campaign songs from local folk artists promoting his themes, recorded them, then played them out of a loudspeaker on a truck driven through town.
", has survived all memory of O'Brien himself, thanks largely to The Kingston Trio, who recorded and released the song (as "M.T.A.")
[3] In 1954, Herbert Philbrick testified before a hearing of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that he knew Walter O'Brien to be a member of the Communist Party and had attended cell meetings with him.
[4] After his political career ended, O'Brien retired to Harpswell in his home state of Maine, where he worked as a librarian and later ran an intermittently open used bookstore.