 Cieciroka (che-CHOR-ka) grew up in Johnson City upstate New York.In 1957, he attended San Jose State College in California, where he joined the Socialist Party out of opposition to American military intervention in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam.In 1964, he was a volunteer organizer during the Freedom Summer drive to register black voters in Mississippi and served as field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, experiences which shaped his political consciousness.