empowering farmworkers to improve their living and working conditions since 1981

A Tribute to Shelley Davis, Farmworker Lawyer, 1952-2008

Newsletters - Spring 2009 Newsletter

Shelley Davis, Deputy Director of Farmworker Justice, died on December 12, 2008, at the age of 56, after a courageous battle against breast cancer. Shelley was a nationally recognized expert attorney for migrant farmworkers on immigration policy, occupational safety and health and labor rights. As you can read in this newsletter, she also established innovative programs to help community-based organizations reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, prevent pesticide poisoning and facilitate farmworkers' access to health care. Her advocacy and litigation for workers led to the recovery of millions of dollars in lost wages, the deterrence of illegal government policies, and strengthened worker safety protections.

Shelley was known as a vigorous, unrelenting advocate who did not complain about obstacles in her path but found ways to overcome them for the good of the people she served. Working for migrant farmworkers at a small not-for-profit organization, waging long, complex legal battles against the policies and practices of well-funded businesses and powerful government officials is difficult enough. But Shelley faced the additional difficulty of being legally blind, due to a progressive eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa.

Fortunately for our nation's farmworkers, Shelley continued to apply her remarkable intelligence, stamina and creativity to their cause. Her strength throughout her illness was inspiring. Shelley said many times, "It is a privilege to be able to do this work."

Early Years

Shelley graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1973 and the Catholic University Columbus School of Law in 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.

Shelley began representing farmworkers in 1986 at Migrant Legal Action Program in Washington, D.C. I first met Shelley when I joined Farmworker Justice in 1988. She was a major strategist in successful lawsuits for guestworkers against their employers and developed complex litigation on behalf of farmworkers against the U.S. Department of Labor during the 1980's and early 1990's concerning policies under the nation's agricultural guestworker program.

Shelley joined Farmworker Justice in 1992. She then moved to Chicago, where she worked for the Legal Assistance Foundation. When she returned to Washington, D.C. and Farmworker Justice in 1996, she shared with me the responsibility for building the organization. She also led our health promotion and occupational safety work.

Shelley's services were in constant demand from major farmworker organizations, including the United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO. The President of the UFW, Arturo S. Rodriguez, wrote on a memorial website 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."

Awards & Recognition

In 2008, Shelley won a lifetime achievement award, the Dragonfly Award, from Beyond Pesticides, the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, on whose Board of Directors she served. Farmworker Justice won recognition in 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 2006, Shelley received a career achievement award, the Reginald Heber Smith Award, from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association for her effective legal representation of poor people. 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.

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, 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. The Board of Directors and staff will do everything we can to ensure that her vital work continues.

Shelley's 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, her 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.