Shelley Davis (1952-2008)

Written by barb howe Friday, 22 May 2009 14:08

Attention: open in a new window.

Shelley Davis passed away in Washington, D.C., on Friday, December 12, 2008 at age 56 from breast cancer.

Shelley was a nationally recognized expert attorney for migrant farmworkers on immigration policy, occupational safety and health and labor rights.

She also established innovative programs to help community-based organizations reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, prevent pesticide poisoning and facilitate access to health care.
Shelley was well known for helping farmworkers have an effective voice at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Her advocacy and litigation led to strengthened worker safety protections regarding pesticides and field sanitation for farmworkers.

Shelley was a major strategist in complex litigation on behalf of farmworkers, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP in litigation against U.S. Department of Labor during the 1980's and early 1990's concerning policies under the nation's agricultural guestworker program and in successful lawsuits for guestworkers against their employers.

Medical providers at migrant health centers around the country relied on Shelley and her staff for information on recognizing symptoms of pesticide poisoning and on labor and immigration policies affecting their patients.

The 2008 Farm Bill includes a new pesticide safety research program that Shelley designed to study the relationship between pesticide exposure and cancer, with the goal of acquiring the data needed for better policies and health prevention programs for farmworkers. The new Farm Bill program also includes research to develop medical testing for farmworkers exposed to pesticides and new technology for testing pesticide residues in the fields to determine safe re-entry times.

Shelley's services were in constant demand from major farmworker organizations, including the United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (an AFL-CIO member union). The President of the UFW, Arturo S. Rodriguez wrote in a website posting upon learning of Shelley's illness:

"She repeatedly identified ways in which we and other organizations who fight for farmworker rights around the country could get our voices heard, be it by joining conference calls with key agency personal, attending meetings, or even suing the agency and denouncing their failures in the media. She is driven by an intense desire to ensure that the people who harvest the food we eat not be forced to sacrifice their health in the process."
Ms. Davis earlier this year won a lifetime achievement award, the Dragonfly Award, from Beyond Pesticides, the National Coalition Against Misuse of Pesticides; Shelley was a member of the organization's Board of Directors. Two years ago, Shelley won a career achievement award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the Reginald Heber Smith Award, for her effective legal representation of poor people. Farmworker Justice won recognition in November 2008 from Organizacion de Lideres Campesinas de California, a statewide farmworker women's organization, for Shelley's assistance on health promotion projects and women's leadership development in the farmworker community. In 2000, due to Shelley's work, Farmworker Justice won the Business and Labor Award for HIV/AIDS prevention from the Centers Disease Control and Prevention.

Shelley began representing farmworkers in 1986. She joined Farmworker Justice in 1992, then worked for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, and returned to Farmworker Justice in 1996, where she served as Deputy Director until her death.

She was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA (BA 1973 cum laude) and Catholic University, Columbus School of Law, Washington D.C. (JD 1978). Early in her career Shelley, as part of a legal team at the Political Rights Legal Defense Fund in New York, won a landmark lawsuit against the government for illegally spying on the Socialist Workers Party. She also worked, at two different times, at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago representing poor people in disability rights, employment discrimination and other litigation. Due to her extensive volunteer work in the United States to end apartheid in South Africa, she met and received thanks from Nelson Mandela when he visited Washington, D.C. after apartheid ended.

Farmworker Justice Executive Director Bruce Goldstein, said: "I am proud to have been a collaborator and friend of Shelley for the last 20 years and will do everything I can to ensure that her vital work continues. Our organization and the farmworker movement have lost an extraordinarily gifted, committed, and productive advocate, whose major contributions have been felt in the fields and communities where farmworkers work and live, in federal and state courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the halls of Congress, and in the policies of federal and state agencies. Her passing is a tremendous loss that we bear with great sadness."

Shelley was known as a vigorous, unrelenting advocate for migrant and seasonal farmworkers who did not complain about obstacles in her path but found ways to overcome them for the good of the people she served. Shelley said many times, "It is a privilege to be able to do this work." Though not widely known, Shelley's many accomplishments occurred despite a severe visual impairment caused by retinitis pigmentosa.

Her survivors include her husband Thomas Smith (who is Director of Finance and Administration at the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Washington, D.C.) and her son Nicholas Smith, who is a senior in high school, in Silver Spring, Maryland, and brothers Donald and Joel, and her mother Helen, as well as brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and cousins to whom she was close and beloved.

Leave messages for Shelley's family on the Caring Bridge website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/shelleydavis