2000CRE2116B TRIBUTE TO DAVID S. BURGESS
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[Congressional Record: December 4, 2000 (Extensions)]
[Page E2116-E2117]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr04de00-33]
TRIBUTE TO DAVID S. BURGESS
______
HON. GEORGE MILLER
of california
in the house of representatives
Monday, December 4, 2000
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to invite
my colleagues to join me in congratulating David S. Burgess on the
occasion of his being honored this month on National Human Rights Day
by the Benicia Healthy Cities Task Force for his lifetime achievements
of social justice.
David S. Burgess, a resident of the city of Benicia, CA, since
September 1990, has been honored by the publication of his biography,
``Fighting for Social Justice.'' David represents the best of Christian
social activism in our times, having given so much of his time, talent,
and treasure to building a more just and caring society for more than
severn decades.
Dave's commitment to social justice began in his teens and continued
throughout his activist student years at Oberlin College and Union
Theological Seminary in the late 1930's and early 1940's. He and his
bride, Alice, worked side by side with, and ministered to, migrant
workers in southern Florida and New Jersey in the early 1940's,
learning first-hand about life on the edge, life without hope,
antiblack cruelties, and company indifference to workers' basic needs.
Continuing to conduct farm camp church services, Dave became a labor
union representative in the hope of making a practical difference.
Through the next few years he combined his role as a minister and
budding farm labor champion, assigned to locations by his church. He
finished seminary and was organized into what became the United Church
of Christ in 1943, ready to jump in as a full-
[[Page E2117]]
time Christian activist on the union front. Between 1944 and 1947, he
worked with tenant farmers and sharecroppers in New Jersey and Arkansas
to revive hope by strengthening unions that had been bullied into
silence. He learned to work with plantation owners, the victimized
poor, Pentecostal preachers, members of a complacent middle class, and
conservative mainline congregations.
Dave's diplomatic and fund-raising work in Arkansas resulted in his
saving from a second assault 579 workers' homes, which had been built
by the Farm Security Administration in 1940 with the assistance of
Eleanor Roosevelt. His success in saving the Delmo Homes brought
visitors--labor officials, columnists, and church workers--seeking the
secrets of his success.
Dave then accepted a job from the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) as chief organizer for the textile workers' union
in South Carolina. He fought hard, not only against the companies
His acquaintance with Victor Reuther led to Dave accepting the job as
the CIO's labor attache to the American Embassy in India, where from
1955 to 1960 he helped the now combined AFL-CIO as it attempted to
strengthen India's steel unions. Dave became the chief of the India-
Burma division of the United States Agency for International
Development in 1961, where he worked on a recommendation for United
States aid in education, agriculture, public health, and industrial
development that became the foundation for United States foreign aid
policy in Indonesia for the next three decades.
In 1963, Sargent Shriver asked Dave to head up the first Peace Corps
program in Indonesia, a job fraught with challenge as the country was
in political turmoil. He returned to work in the Peace Corps offices in
Washington, DC, where he successfully opened up the Peace Corps to
blue-collar workers with practical and manual skills.
Dave was the area director and deputy regional director of UNICEF in
East Asia from 1966 to 1972, in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong
Kong. His work focused on improving the welfare of poor children,
youth, and mothers, supporting grammar schools, training teachers, and
establishing rural health centers. In his last 2 years in the area,
Dave worked in war-torn, flooded Bangladesh, getting food and medical
supplies to mothers and children.
He ended his UNICEF career as a major spokesman for the organization
in both the United States and Canada, changing its public image from
that of an emergency relief agency to one with the broader mission of
bettering long-term health care and improving the quality of life in
poor countries.
As pastor of two blue-collar churches in Newark, NJ, through the
1980's, Dave returned to his early mission of working for racial
integration and saving low-income housing. As executive director of the
Metropolitan Ecumenical Ministries for 6 years, Dave focused the
group's energy on the problems of racism, poverty, and injustice. His
proudest achievement in Newark was saving the remaining 6,500 units of
public housing after 812 of them had been dynamited by the city, with
plans to raze the rest.
Moving to Benicia, CA, after a heart attack, Dave devoted himself in
the 1990's to establishing low-income housing in his new hometown. He
founded the nonprofit Affordable Housing Affiliation, which has broken
ground for a small cooperative complex that is the first low-income
housing built in Benicia in nearly two decades.
On December 10, 2000, many friends and family members will be joining
Dave as he is honored on National Human Rights Day for his commitment
and dedication to the issues of social justice, poverty,
discrimination, inequality, and the needs of working people. I know
that every Member of this House joins me in thanking Dave for his many
decades of devoted service and the significant contributions that he
has made to this nation and to the City of Benicia.
Dave's life has been a truly remarkable and admirable journey that
will stand as a lesson to present and future generations on the
important difference that one person can make in our society.
____________________