Nominee Bio - Hamsa Newmark

More info: A Biographical Narrative | Letters of Support

Hamsa Newmark – Peace Hero 2008
Nominated by Jo Ann Kaminsky

By Stephen Coger

Tell us why you feel this candidate should be acknowledged as an Arkansas Peace & Justice Hero? What specific contributions to peace and social justice stand out in your mind, that exemplify the candidate’s commitment to a more peaceful and just world?

“Teaching others to stand and fight is the only way our struggle survives.” Hamsa Newmark understands this quotation from a song by Sweet Honey in the Rock, and she is responsible for teaching, guiding, and inspiring young people to stand and fight for social justice, recognizing wrong and moving to right it.

As founder of the University of Arkansas chapter of the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology, I organized historic, award-winning events on campus. If it were not for Hamsa, OMNI at the University of Arkansas for Peace, Justice & Ecology would not exist, because she taught me that to have a successful organization takes the active, devoted involvement of more than just myself, more than one person. When I recognized this, I began to pull others into the group, and so it was that OMNI at the University of Arkansas became and remains a thriving registered student organization (RSO). I would say that we are undisputedly the most active student group on campus, and in 2007 we were awarded the Outstanding RSO of the Year Award by the Office of Student Leadership and Involvement. Hamsa Newmark is a teacher, the most important teacher of my life, and if it were not for her, my activism would be less effective and less organized, and OMNI UA would not have survived my graduation.

Hamsa Newmark taught me how to be an effective, long-term-oriented activist. My first-ever peace and social justice event, the 1st Annual Peace on Earth Music Festival, would not have happened without Hamsa. I was in a socially-conscious hip-hop band with her son, Lawrence, when I met her and told her what I had in mind: an on-campus celebration of peace. She said, “Stephen, what you’re talking about is a big deal.” She helped me realize the amount of work that was before me: it seemed daunting.

Fortunately, after visiting with her husband, Moshe Newmark, the two of them invited me to dinner and explained that they would help with the event if I promised to find a group of at least eight young, reliable young people to work with me. And so I found seven, and then Hamsa invited another young person, Jane Keen. Hamsa offered her business as our meeting place, and we immediately began meeting twice weekly.

Hamsa encouraged me to chair the very first meeting and briefly schooled me on how to do so: create a detailed agenda and make copies for the steering committee, include thereon a list of committees needed for the festival’s success, offer up the task of taking minutes and let someone accept it. In addition to her very practical counsel, she also taught me the importance of listening patiently to the various ideas being presented and the responses of the group and then to respectfully and thoughtfully respond myself. She taught me to share tasks with persons best fit for them.

Hamsa’s teaching me the importance of multifaceted pre-publicity and outreach was perhaps the most important logistical lesson I have learned about event preparation. That first year, she and Moshe arranged for two television interviews, a KUAF 91.3—the local NPR affiliate—interview, as well as a press conference that was attended by multiple television stations and both major area newspapers. She and Moshe worked for the mayor to declare the day Peace on Earth Music Festival Day. Hamsa even thought to bring food to the event for the press, artists, and us workers.

Another important lesson that Hamsa teaches to young people is fearlessness. This is not a surprising lesson, since Hamsa is focused on the long-term struggle and has cast her ego aside when it comes to social-justice organizing. Hamsa taught me to be tough, to not be afraid to ask for favors, donations, interviews, or even mayoral proclamations! This lesson resulted in my garnering hundreds of dollars from the likes of the Bank of Fayetteville, Nightbird Books, Jammin’ Java, and others, because Hamsa taught me that it is not rude to ask for people to support peace. They are not supporting me, she would remind me, but something that they believe in, peace, and so I should not be afraid to invite them to be active supporters of peace. I also gained the strength to invite Bob Marley’s former guitar player to play at the festival, which he agreed to do!

Hamsa’s skill as a teacher is evident in the success of OMNI UA’s events that have taken place since she took me under her wing, whether one considers the peace festival or another OMNI UA event as proof. Hamsa took a step back for years two and three of the Peace festival, not participating in the capacity of a steering committee but instead meeting with me privately about once a week in the weeks prior to the festival. She avoided an active role so that we would learn to do things for ourselves, and having learned from the best, we students did great work both years, organizing well-attended lectures, workshops, remembrances, documentary showings, and peace festivals with mayoral proclamations, great artists and lecturers, CAT and television news interviews, and more.

Having taught me alone, though, would not be enough to warrant a nomination for the Peace Heroes Award, but Hamsa has inspired and taught countless young people. She has organized countless events and been involved in local, national, and international politics. I have not learned everything, because Hamsa does not like to brag, but what I have learned of her activism is that it is wide-ranging. Locally, she helped a democrat run against an entrenched Republican for Congress. Nationally, she has organized benefits for Mumia Abu-Jamal. And on the international level, she has organized events for the Pastors for Peace: Caravan to Cuba. My favorite story, though, is of her activism during the Contra War in Nicaragua. A lot of people were dieing and a lot of people were sick because of CIA corruption and involvement in Nicaragua. Hamsa used her experience in health to help the Nicaraguans; even though the U.S. government had an embargo against the country, Hamsa smuggled in supplies and hundreds of dollars to buy supplies for water filtration and irrigation systems. In her shoes she actually hid hundreds of dollars—which she’d raised through local events and grant writing with Moshe—to facilitate the building of these clean water systems in Nicaragua. She and Moshe were the directors of Punta de Paz and through this organization they helped get Nicaraguans water using environmentally friendly methods of providing the water using gravity as well as the local terrain to the utmost of its potential.

Hamsa lives what she teaches, and I think this is why young people are attracted to her; she knows that peace moves from the inside out and she exemplifies it and shares her knowledge freely and accessibly. She has taught me about activism, yoga, and so many other things that I will use to help create a just world where all beings can live to their full potential without the threat or fear of war, and I am forever grateful to Hamsa. Hamsa’s contributions to peace and social justice that stand out in my mind are her years of activism and her entusiasm and skill at the transference of knowledge and passion for peace work. This exemplifies her commitment to a more peaceful and just world.

When I said Hamsa is the most important teacher I have ever had, that includes the world-renowned professors of the UA Honors College and my various other teachers. As Sweet Honey in the Rock sings, and as Hamsa’s life epitomizes: “Teaching others to stand and fight is the only way our struggle survives. We who believe in freedom will not rest.”