Damu Smith 1952-2006: Legendary Peace Activist Dies

[babylonsister]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/1431253

Legendary peace activist Damu Smith died Friday morning in Washington, DC of colon cancer. The founder of Black Voices for Peace and the National Black Environmental Justice Network, he spent years fighting environmental racism, particularly in the South.

He was a key leader in the anti-Apartheid movement and fought police brutality in Washington, DC and around the country. Damu was diagnosed with colon cancer last year while on a peace mission in the Occupied Territories. He then not only fought for his life, but against racial disparities in the health care system. Damu is survived by his daughter Aisha and his legacy lives on in all those who fight for justice.

[American liberal]

1. I am very sad that the passing of activist Damu Smith did not elicit

a single comment on these boards.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, Damu Smith was a great activist. He devoted the majority of his brief life to fighting for peace and justice of oppressed people all over the world. For instnace, he was working to keep North Korea from nuking South Korea back in the early '90s--before it was barely a blip on the radar of politicians.

During Bush Sr.'s war against Saddam Hussein, a tiny little anti-war group I was an organizer for flew Mr. Smith into Chicago to be a keynote speaker at one of our anti-war conferences. I had the rare pleasure to pick up Mr. Smith at the airport and make arrangements for his stay.

He was gracious (didn't complain once that in order to save a few bucks he had to switch planes like 3 times) and kind and one of the most powerful orators I have heard to date (excepting Gore's speech on MLK Day this year).

Mr. Smith has worked tirelessly for peace and justice for more than THIRTY YEARS! If you are not familiar with his work, please click on the link and know more. His life counted for a lot. He was a great man--not a perfect man, but a great one, nonetheless.

For those of us who stand for peace, justice, and democracy, Mr. Smith's death represents a tremendous loss. May God bless Mr. Smith and may more of us strive to be more like him in our daily lives.

With great sorrow,
Phoebe K.,
aka American liberal
Chicago, IL
USA

One edit: Added copy from link, which doesn't seem to be working.


http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/(s)heros.html

Speak Truth to Power – A Tribute to Community Hero Damu Smith
On July 9, 2005 nearly a thousand environmental justice, human rights, and peace activists, artists, and scholars from around the nation assembled in Howard University’s Cramton Auditorium to pay tribute to community hero Damu Smith. The four-hour event was moderated by actor Danny Glover and singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, Leader of African American a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. To view full tribute program agenda click HERE.


Damu Smith’s life is a testimony of consistency and commitment to social justice… Damu was born Leroy Wesley Smith in 1952 in St. Louis, Missouri to Sylvester and Vernice Smith. Together with his three brothers and sister, the family lived in the Carr Square Village housing project until Damu was seventeen. In the book Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor, Smith told author Steve Lerner: "I grew up in a working-class, lower-income family. My father was a fireman and an air pollution inspector and my mother was a licensed practical nurse. So I was born of working-class parents. My mother and father went through a lot of dif-ficulties at times...and sometimes it resulted in us going on welfare... I mention this because much of what I am today has been shaped by the fact that I grew up in not wretchedly poor surroundings, but we struggled. I know what it is to go to school without heat at home and study by candlelight and not have enough money to get adequate clothes... I grew up under food stamps and welfare and government handout cheese and milk and meat and all that... So I have great sensitivity to the plight of poor people."


As a high school student, Smith attended a Jesuit-run, after-school program for "disadvantaged male youth". As part of that program he went on a field trip to Cairo, Illinois to Black Solidarity Day rallies where Damu listened to speeches by Amiri Baraka, Rev. Ralph Abemathy, Julian Bond, Nina Sirmone and Jesse Jackson, and he toured Black neighborhoods where white supremacists had sprayed houses with gunfire. Damu recalls, "Seeing those bullet holes...that changed my life." As a freshman student at St. John's University in Collegeville, Min-nesota, and president of the Organization of Afro-American Students, Smith led a protest and takeover of the school's administrative offices demanding a Black studies program. It was while at St. John's that Smith changed his name to Damu Amiri Imara Smith. In Swahili, Damu means blood. As he has stated, 'The blood that I am willing to shed for the liberation of my people." Amiri means leadership: The leadership I must provide in the service of my people." And Imara means strength: The strength and stamina I have to maintain in the struggle." In 1973, Smith moved to Washington, DC to attend Antioch College's Center for the Study of Basic Human Problems, and to be "close to the action." And as they say, the rest is history.


Extending over more than thirty years, his activism has included vigilance in the fight against apartheid in South Africa as Executive Director of the Washington Office on Africa and co-founder of Artists for a Free South Africa. Damu has worked to expose gun violence, police brutality and government injustice through his work with the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the National Wilmington 10 Defense Committee, and the National Black Independent Political Party. He has worked to effect peace and a freeze on nuclear weapons as Associate Director of the Washington Office of the American Friends Service Committee, and advocated for environmental justice as National Associate Director and national toxics campaigner for Greenpeace USA.


Smith became the first coordinator for environmental justice for the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice, and in that capacity visited forty towns and cities in nine states in 1991 and 1992 experiencing first hand how chemical dumping and other environmentally toxic corporate practices impact the health and lives of poor and African American communities. He also organized Toxic Tours in the South for Greenpeace, taking celebrities such as Alice Walker, Haki Madhubuti and others to an area in Louisiana called "Cancer Alley" because of its toxicity. Damu was instrumental in helping grass roots organizations confront Shell Oil about its dumping practices and to force a PVC plant out of Norco, Louisiana, a campaign that has been dramatized in a Lifetime cable channel movie. In 1999, in a move that changed the face of the environmental movement, Smith coordinated the largest environmental justice conference ever held, the historic National Emergency Gathering of Black Community Advocates for Environmental and Economic Justice. This gathering led to the formation of the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN), the first ever national network of Black environmental justice activists, of which he is currently executive director.


Damu is also the founder of Black Voices for Peace, a group dedicated to mobilizing the Black community in con-cert with people of goodwill of all races and nationalities to protest US military aggression in Iraq and elsewhere around the world, and to lobby for redirecting the billions of dollars the Bush administration is spending on global U.S. military operations and support of the Israeli government's occupation of Palestinian land to funding for universal healthcare and access, for education, jobs, housing, environmental protection, equal justice, reparations and other critical human needs. While participating in a Palm Sunday peace march this year in Palestine, Damu fainted and had a seizure. Tests completed in the Palestine Authority and in US hospitals have confirmed the presence of stage four cancer of the colon, which has spread to his liver. Throughout his life, Damu has been victorious in many, many struggles for human rights and justice. And he will be triumphant in this his latest battle, against cancer. With the love of his twelve year old daugh-ter, Asha, the support of family and friends all over the world and all of you assembled tonight, and faith in God, Damu says he is confident that, "I can overcome this... I am overwhelmed by the love."