[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 147 (Monday, December 4, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2116-E2117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      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.

                          ____________________