David Walls

David Walls, a dedicated social justice activist and community organizer died at his Sebastopol home on Saturday June 6, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease.  Professor Emeritus of Sociology and retired Dean of Extended Education at Sonoma State University, and an eager mentor to young people, David nevertheless wrote in 2012 “I found my calling in retirement, my true passion, or did I recover my youthful passion: organizing? “ He had time then to participate in organizing the Living Wage Campaign and to bring together the co-founders of the North Bay Organizing Project (NBOP), in which he participated as long as he physically could.  Even in his final weeks, he was working on an article about building an effective united front against what he saw as an emerging fascist movement. 

Unlike many progressive activists, David grew up in a conservative Minnesota household.  His youth was spent hunting, fishing and camping as an avid Boy Scout, and he achieved Eagle Scout status at a young age. He also build an elaborate ham radio system, communicating with people all over the world.

Attracted by California, he studied economics at UC Berkeley, became an active member of SLATE, the campus progressive political party and took part in anti-nuclear weapons activity and the Bay Area civil rights movement, as well as winning a seat in the student government Senate. He also read Michael Harrington’s The Other America, about poverty in America, and Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands, about poverty in Appalachia.  “Slate was known for great parties (the other kind)”  he wrote; at one he encountered Harrington and was moved to join the War on Poverty after graduation.  

He worked first for the Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare in Washington, DC, and then joined the Community Action program in the Office of Economic Opportunity, establishing a Head Start Teacher training program.   He also encountered  people from the Appalachian Volunteers, a VISTA program.  “They urged me when I was tired of being a Washington bureaucrat to come see what it was like to work directly in the field with them.”  

Not long afterwards, when a formal invitation came to join the AV community organizing staff in eastern Kentucky, he jumped at the chance.  He had thought to work in the small city of Prestonburg for a year; instead he stayed until 1970, eventually serving as the Executive Director in the program’s final year:  “Once we started helping small farmers and landowners to oppose strip mining, (we were) hit by a political hailstorm…” David observed.  

His personal life, however, flourished as he met his future wife, Lucia Gattone, a young Chicago woman working as a mental health counselor in the Prestonburg community clinic.  They married at a Thanksgiving Potluck dinner in 1971.  David also entered a graduate program in Sociology at the U. Of Kentucky in Lexington, in an attempt to “find the time and intellectual tools” to understand his experience with the AVs.  He earned Master’s & Ph.d. degrees and then joined the university faculty teaching in the department of Sociology and the College of Social Work, as well as serving as Associate Director of the Appalachian Center, an interdisciplinary research institute.  

Although he maintained a lifelong interest in the people and problems of Appalachia, David, with his wife and young son, returned to California in 1982.  He joined the administration at Sonoma State, eventually serving for sixteen years as Dean of Extended Education (1984-2000) and as a Professor of Sociology (1993-2005), and, since his retirement,  as Professor Emeritus.His focus of research shifted away from Appalachia, about which he had written a number of published research articles and co-edited the anthology,  Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening,  and began to center on the study of social movements.  In 1993, his work The Activist’s Almanac,  based on interviews with over 100 leaders of national advocacy organizations was published.  He also wrote Community Organizing:  Fanning the Flames of Democracy (2014) , for the Social Movements Series. His teaching emphasized multidisciplinary approaches in courses on the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement.   He often incorporated recordings of folk music and protest songs, which he loved,  in his classes. 

Over the years, David watched the unsuccessful efforts to build an organization to empower the poor in Sonoma County but was kept from playing any major role by the demands of  his university work. That changed when he retired in 2005, and, instead of just studying community organizing, he returned to actively doing it.  He became involved with  the Living Wage Campaign and other attempts to improve the lives of Sonoma County workers, and served as a Board member  for the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture & Young Activist Award.  Over the next couple of years, he wrote,  he would “have conversations with Martin Bennet, a professor of American History at Santa Rosa Junior College, about how much we in Sonoma County needed an effective community organization in the (Saul) Alinsky tradition.”  A phone call and visit from an east coast organizer and writer led to a meeting at the Walls’ home, and half of the people in attendance, including David,  became part of the core group that launched the now flourishing North Bay Organizing Project (NBOP).    Although he eventually had to end active participation due to his illness, his commitment to his values and goals remained:  in his last year, he would suggest, chuckling, but only in partial jest, that his gravestone be inscribed:  “Change the world?  I tried.”  It will be.

Survivors include his wife, Lucia Gattone of Sebastopol, his son Jesse Michael Walls and daughter-in-law Norma, of Santa Rosa, and his grandchildren, Alyssa, Jesse David, and Gabriel, and his sister Barbara Walls Hansen of Scottsdale, AZ.  Contributions to the North Bay Organizing Project, the International Committee for Refugees or a social justice organization of your choice are welcome.  

On-line condolences can be sent to PleasantHillsMemorialPark.com, where information about a memorial will be found at a future date when friends can gather together safely.