Shirley Novak By Lanny Smith |
| “I've seen what it's like to live in a world of Community with a capital 'C'. The people I've met know what is important in life, they know that people are more important than property.” |
"Who is this woman who enjoys such respect and affection from the Estancia community?" I wondered, as I began to search the usual group rooming houses in San Salvador for Syracusan boarders. Doña Everilda had spoken of her, as had Leoncio, Ramiro and Abraham. Finally, I found them, celebrating late into the evening of their last night in El Salvador after ten days of visiting five hamlets of Estancia. They were at a place called "El Izote," named for the stubborn white Salvadoran flower that many find delicious fried with eggs, and which is a symbol of the Salvadoran struggle-cut this tree down, it grows back even more beautiful. A brief explanation of my mandate at the door facilitated a group welcome, followed by discussion. That night began my admiration for Shirley, now going on nine years.
"When I first noticed injustice, major injustice, in the world I was a little less than 8 years old," recalls Shirley Fischer Novak. She was reared in upstate New York near the Niagara River. "Hooker Chemical and other companies would dump into the river, causing massive fish kills." Her father, a conservationist and environmentalist, would report these fish kills routinely and collect water samples for the New York State Conservation Department, serving as a volunteer. Shirley remembers the Department's water-sample analysis truck parked for one or two days outside her door on multiple occasions. Such work usually resulted in a $1,000 fine for the company involved, a symbolic but economic slap on the company's wrist. "I also remember my parents taking care of baby raccoons whose mothers had been hit by cars. And, my father had a good friend who worked with the Niagara Falls City Mission, which served the homeless. After we moved to Wilson, in the countryside, I remember bringing quart jars of preserved vegetables and bushels of fruits to the Mission."
Shirley describes growing up as a "dutiful daughter" to her mother. She was the middle child of three girls. Shirley's father died when she was 11. She recalls sitting with her mother at the kitchen table trying to decide what bills to pay. She was the only daughter who drove the family tractor, whether mowing or plowing their long entrance road free of snow. Of course, she drove that tractor long before she learned to drive a car. Both her parents had voted conservatively, her father all his life and her mother until Vietnam. Her mother was always proud that she didn't vote for Reagan the second time around, saying her eyes "were opened."
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| Shirley Novak and students in the new kinder in Caserío Colón, La Estancia, during her annual visit to El Salvador, February 2001. |
Shirley was afflicted early with illness-rheumatic fever. She was kept in bed from ages four to six, and ever after was constantly told, however ineffectually, not to participate in any strenuous activities. She had daily penicillin pills until the age of 21, at which point she sought and found a doctor willing to help her terminate that regimen.
Raised in a Methodist Church in a small, conservative, rural community, Shirley sang in her high school choir and attended youth group activities. When she left home to go to college, she joined thousands of other students in questioning the beliefs she had inherited from her parents. She began attending religious services of different denominations with friends and on her own.
Shirley was in college during the Vietnam war. At Buffalo State she majored in Home Economics. She didn't go to protests, was not involved in anything political. What she did was start an after-school tutoring program for 5th and 6th graders with an African American church in the heart of Buffalo.
Well into this period of searching, she started dating a Jewish student, Larry Novak. "When we began attending synagogue at my suggestion, a comfort level was gradually reached that seemed to satisfy my religious questioning," she explains. After making the difficult decision to convert, she attended religious classes and counseling with a rabbi for nearly two years, and officially converted in 1970. She married Larry that same year, just two weeks before he started medical school in Albany.
There she began teaching inner-city kids in 6th through 9th grades, and it was tough. Most were emotionally disturbed and came from very dysfunctional families. They tried everything to make her work hell. For six months she went home and cried daily. And suddenly, somehow, she loved her job and figured out how to work with the kids. This experience led her to attend the College of St. Rose for a Masters in Special Education/ Mental Retardation.
When they moved to Baltimore for Larry's Residency in Family Medicine, she worked for one year in a "nice suburban school," and hated it. Compared to her prior job, there was no challenge. So, when she became a mother to her daughter Jennifer (now a social worker in New York City), it was not that hard to decide to stay home to raise her. They moved to Syracuse, NY in 1977 and, shortly afterward, Hannah was born (recently working with Human Rights Watch, now in a public policy program at Johns Hopkins).
Shirley returned to teaching when her children were in upper elementary school. Twelve years ago Shirley was offered part-time work at a Spanish-language pre-school, MANOS. Her special education training qualified her for her second current part-time job with the County Health Department, teaching educationally challenged pre-schoolers and their parents.
When thinking back on her life, Shirley divides it into pre-Sanctuary (the Home Economics major) and post-Sanctuary (the radicalized Social Justice defender). After she encountered the Sanctuary Movement in 1984, her eyes were opened. "As we in the US began to take clues from the Salvadorans, listening to their stories, getting informed about their reality, learning about the connections between our military and their sufferings, we moved beyond hospitality to resistance," remembers Shirley. "The more I learned about US involvement, the more I tried to change that policy. Our government was paying about $1.5 million a day to support this civil war," she explains. "In the mid-80s the US Government tried to stop the Sanctuary Movement and began to arrest Sanctuary workers and refugees. However, this had the opposite effect than intended. People felt they were doing the right thing, the human thing, and more and more communities declared themselves places of Public Sanctuary." Someone from Shirley's synagogue told her of a Salvadoran living in Sanctuary in Rochester. He was invited to speak in Syracuse and Shirley was moved by his story. "That was it," said Shirley, "I never turned back."
In 1986 she and others in Syracuse decided to invite a family into Sanctuary within their community. This became a major part of her life and that of her entire family. At this point Shirley had not yet started working outside her home, so she was asked to attend to logistical matters, such as driving the family to their doctors' appointments and registering the children in school. Roberto and Gloria, the chosen couple, had three children just a little younger than Shirley's. For one and a half years the family was in Syracuse. "Their kids and ours spent lots of time together," said Shirley, "and this had a huge impact on my own children."
Then, suddenly, they left. Based on many test cases, the family was highly unlikely to get legal status in the US. With the Sanctuary group, they decided it would be best to go to Canada. At that point the borders were relatively open. On Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend Shirley and the family drove to a religious community in Maine and crossed the border with its assistance.
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| Shirley Novak and Barbara DeFrancqueville raising money for the kinders in El Salvador by selling matatas (string bags hand made from natural fiber of the maguey plant) at a Latino Festival. |
This experience made Shirley want to visit El Salvador, but the circumstances were never right. Finally, after the Peace Accords of January 16, 1992, Gloria was temporarily working with the Ecclesiastical Base Communities in El Salvador. She returned to Canada with several fundraising requests. At first the idea was just to send a donation from Syracuse in response. Then Shirley and Ann Tiffany (DGH Advisory Council member) decided to deliver the money themselves. Shirley spent many hours working on the proposal for the journey. Her daughter, Hannah, became involved as she watched her mother write the funding proposals and invitations so Shirley decided to invite her. Two weeks of reflection later, Hannah accepted. So, with Roberto as guide-returning to his country after 13 years in exile-the local Sanctuary group came full circle as the Syracuse-Estancia Sister Community made its first Salvadoran journey in February 1993.
In 1994, Shirley made two trips, the second as an election observer (with DGH AC member John Paar). And she has returned each year with two trips in 2002; a total of 12 trips to date. Each time she has grown closer to the community of Estancia. On the Sister Community trips, the group would get to know the daily reality of Estancia, but also seek to know more about El Salvador. For instance, in 1995 they went to El Mozote a second time with Rufina (the only survivor of the massacre). They also went to Segundo Montes, the National Cathedral in San Salvador, the Museum of the Revolution in Perquin, and the Central American University (where the six Jesuit Priests, their housekeeper and her 14 year old daughter were killed on November 16, 1989).
On a typical visit, the Syracuse delegation spends time sharing with each of the five communities in Estancia. They learn of any changes since their prior visit, including new additions (a school, clinic, kinder). Shirley was even able to teach songs in the kinders. But most of all, she has made true friends. During the 1996 visit to El Salvador, Shirley learned by telephone that her mother had died. Her Salvadoran friends offered solace and accompaniment in her grief.
Jose Franco, a Salvadoran who has worked with MDM (Physicians of the World-France) since 1981, and who had to inform Shirley of her mother's death, says of her: "She is a person who is committed to those living in the poorest communities of the Department of Morazán. The problems of the Third World have converted her into someone with an incredible social sensibility, engaging her to seek opportunities of greater justice for people everywhere."
Shirley credits much of her motivation toward Sanctuary and the Sister Community to her Jewish faith. She makes the connection with the Sanctuary movement and those who rescued Jewish people during the Holocaust. She counts attending The Gathering (of Jewish children hidden during the Holocaust) on July 9, 1991 as a major influence on her own perspective. In the alternative Passover Seder that Larry and Shirley lead every year for family and friends, as they discuss the past slavery of Jews in Egypt, they bring awareness to the slavery that still exists around the world in the form of oppression and political injustice.
"I met Shirley nearly ten years ago," Irma Cruz writes from Morazán. "She is someone working for a better life for all, especially for those who need it the most. In this struggle she involves her friends, her family and all the persons or institutions that she can possibly unite."
A DGH Founding Member, Shirley has contributed profoundly to the growth of the organization, currently serving as its Second Vice-President and Advocacy Counsel. She made the connections leading to DGH 's participation as a founding group of the Mexico Solidarity Network, and has provided leadership in DGH's participation in the movement to close the US Army's School of the Americas (the school's name has been changed to protect the guilty, but "School of Assassins" describes its function well). In 2001, Shirley and her husband Larry volunteered over a six month period with DGH partners in Uganda, Chiapas and, of course, El Salvador.
"Why do you do what you do?" I asked Shirley one day. "Because I can't do otherwise," she replied without pause. "Once I began to learn the reality and understand the full extent of injustices, I could not walk away. My life has become so rich, with such a variety of experiences and people. I have learned so much from the people of El Salvador. I have lived a life of privilege in the US, by the color of my skin, the places I have lived, my education, and it is in some way at the expense of people who haven't had privilege. I can't ignore that. When I think of how many people live in the US not knowing their neighbors either across the street or housed above them, I see how we live in an isolated world. But, I've seen what it's like to live in a world of Community with a capital 'C'. The people I've met know what is important in life, they know that people are more important than property. When speaking at schools, I am sharing a message that we in the US have lost along the way: Leave the world a better place than it was when you came. Realize that the connections and the people are the most important."
By Joy Mockbee
In the early 1980's refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras started finding their way to the United States as they fled the US-funded wars in Central America. They came across the border with scars from torture, many having had their families murdered, often fleeing death threats. Rather than being welcomed as refugees, they were treated as criminals by the US government, arrested and detained, or worse, deported back to their home countries where they would almost certainly face further torture or death.
For everyday US citizens who learned about the refugees a moral question arose-do we support people fleeing for their lives or do we submit to US policy? A small group of clergy and other people of faith answered this question with a public announcement that they were going to follow their consciences. They banded together to form a modern-day underground railroad offering public sanctuary. The movement grew, eventually becoming the largest civil disobedience movement in the US since the Vietnam war.
Sanctuary workers helped refugees cross the border safely, gave them shelter, and invited refugees to live in their homes and places of worship. They helped them to move on to safer cities, learn English and find jobs. Their lives were changed as they came to know the refugees and learned from them the terrible atrocities that had taken place, as well as the resilience of those fleeing them. Sanctuary workers saw the connection between the policies of their own government and the suffering of the refugees they interacted with, and started working to change the US policies.
Taking part in the sanctuary movement was a significant risk. The US government sent informants into sanctuary meetings and into people's homes and places of worship. Several key figures were arrested, tried in federal court and convicted.
Ultimately, the sanctuary movement was about ordinary people choosing between violating an unjust law and helping other human beings in grave need. But the choice between following an unjust law and doing what is right is one we will continue to face.
