Nominee Bio - Hamsa Newmark A Biographical Narrative

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson

This is a recurrent theme that has guided Hamsa’s life.

HAMSA KURTH NEWMARK - A Biographical Narrative

Hamsa was born in Brandenburg, Germany 1944, during some of the fiercest allied air attacks of World War II. She, along with her mother, grandmother and siblings, managed to survive having lost her grandfather and her father who never saw her. From the ashes of World War II, she grew up under the totalitarian regime of the East German Communists. It was these early experiences of oppression that would later cause her to leave Germany and Europe on her journey to justice and peace.

Her family was fortunate to leave East Germany (DDR) to join family members in West Germany near Frankfurt, just before the East German government was closing its borders to prevent a mass exodus of its citizens. She continued her teenage years, developing her discipline as an outstanding athlete and gymnast and after high school graduation she spent one year in England to further her studies of the English language.

Upon returning to Germany, Hamsa was accepted to Sprachen Schule Siegerland, a specialized language college with an emphasis on technical, business and literary English. She graduated after four years of study as a technical translator and foreign correspondence. Her focus on technical translation of German-to English-to French as applied to the metals and steel industry landed her a position with a large firm in Düsseldorf, Germany and later with the Vickers Corporation in London, England. After a few years she began to see the diminishing returns of working in the corporate world and the limited contribution she was making to her own peace and happiness and the world. The promise of a brighter future CALLED “THE 60’s” was calling.

In 1968 Hamsa left Europe and arrived in New York, living communally in the Bronx for sometime before traveling to San Francisco and witnessing the many Vietnam War peace marches and protests of the time. It was there that she began her conscious journey of inner peace with her introduction to organic foods, Yoga and meditation. A few years later she moved to Los Angeles to attend the Integral Yoga Institute where she began an intense study of Yoga and meditation under the tutelage of her spiritual teacher, Swami Satchidananda. That is where she me her future husband, Moshe who was involved in the same studies.

Hamsa and Moshe left L.A. for northern California a year later to start a family with the birth of their first son, Ananda and later their second son, Hari. Besides practicing and teaching Yoga over the next six years, Hamsa immersed herself in the study of Macrobiotics with various teachers from Japan. Macrobiotics is a study of order in the universe and way of life based on the tenets of oriental medicine with a focus on food, its preparation, and its ability to create a healthy, balanced body and mind. Hamsa’s natural healing abilities were directly applied to her life; their children were born at home and raised in a natural lifestyle without any medical intervention. She and Moshe were the “family doctors”.

In 1978, Hamsa and her family moved to Boston, Massachusetts to further their study and practice in Macrobiotics under the tutelage of world teacher, Michio Kushi and his wife Aveline . Hamsa was offered a teaching position as a health and diet instructor at the newly opened Kushi Institute. She also directed a “Macrobiotic Study House” that housed 12-14 international students each semester as they attended the Institute. In this micro-community where everyone ate the same balanced meals prepared by Hamsa, she could see the power of conscious cooking and its ability to create peace in the house and the positive contribution it had on the student’s well being. She began to see more clearly the intimate connectedness we all have with each other and what we choose to eat everyday; giving weight to the saying, “you are what you eat.” Living and teaching a conscious and healthy way of life became her passion. In the course of four years, she inspired the lives of hundreds of people who had lived in their house as students.

Along with six other families, the Newmarks moved to Fayetteville in 1982, where Hamsa gave birth to their third son, Lawrence. With Moshe working full time, she worked part time teaching cooking classes, diet and lifestyle while at the same time being home for her young children. But from 1986 on, Hamsa’s life changed dramatically as she was able to expand her understanding and implementation of community involvement, grass roots organizing, and the importance of individual empowerment as a key element in the success of all endeavors.

In that year, “Hands Across America” was born. Hamsa seized the opportunity to become involved in this visionary endeavor for peace. Together with Moshe and others she went about raising money in a short period of time in order to charter school buses and recruit volunteers for travel to Arkadelphia to be part of the “Arkansas Mile”. The “Arkansas Mile” was this states commitment to connect with the rest of the country, a momentous event where literally hundreds of thousands of people held hands from coast to coast, symbolizing our oneness, commonality and potential for a unified change for peace. This was the beginning of Hamsa’s years as an activist for justice and social change that has continued to this day.

Shortly after, she and Moshe met Sue Sargent, the democratic grass roots candidate for U.S. Congress who was running against the entrenched republican, John Paul Hammerschmidt. Within months they became Sue’s campaign managers and with Moshe working full time, Hamsa and Sue crafted a grass roots campaign based on domestic and international justice and equality. Over the next six months the campaign took them to nearly every bean supper in 19 counties of the 3rd district stumping for votes. Hamsa, firmly believed in Sue’s ability, coming from complete political obscurity, to wage a viable campaign against this Goliath of conservatism, John Paul Hammerschmidt. In order to raise campaign funds, she made countless phone calls, licked limitless envelopes, wrote grants, and did whatever she could to help her candidate get her message out. When the election was over, Sue Sargent garnered 22% of the vote, a “victory” for a political unknown, all with only $10,000 to spend on the campaign.

Hamsa was deeply affected by the injustice of the U.S. foreign policy that created the Contra War in Nicaragua and the suffering it caused. She connected with members of Puente de Paz (Bridge of Peace), a committee within Little Rock’s Arkansas Peace Center whose mission was to assist the war-torn poor communities by helping build potable water systems using appropriate technology. These small communities became over populated with war refugees and suffered from contaminated water, high infant mortality and no electricity due to the war. Hamsa completely dedicated herself to this cause and within a year her talents for fund raising and ability to help educate people about this unjust war earned her the position of Executive Director of the organization. Shortly thereafter Puente de Paz moved its headquarters from Little Rock to Fayetteville, operating with a state-wide board of directors. In Nicaragua Puente de Paz (PDP) took on other projects in addition to the construction of potable water systems. After Hamsa’s visit to Nicaragua in 1998, she came back with a commitment to build a much needed school. Within a year of fund raising, grant writing and community involvement, the school was built with the help of a brigade of Americans that Hamsa helped organize. This school also served as a community center and election post. .

After a serious measles outbreak in Nicaragua, Puente de Paz launched an immunization program that traveled on mule-back to outlying villages where there was no access to medical care. In addition to the numerous water projects Puente de Paz was involved in, money was also raised to support a women’s agricultural program so that crops could be grown for families with enough left over to sell at the local market. Another project was established that traveled to small communities to test, decontaminate, and upgrade infected wells. At the same time a rope and chain pump system was developed by PDP that enabled the wells to remain contaminant-free.

Hamsa coordinated all of these projects and activities here in the U.S. where PDP became a national organization with a quarterly newspaper, educational and fund raising tours for the three U.S. field workers in Nicaragua and a network consisting of many hundreds of members and sister organizations. Hamsa understood the importance of intimately involving the NW Arkansas community by way of education as well as fund raising events and giving people and organizations in this area an opportunity to become involved in the process of aiding innocent civilians that suffered this unjust, brutal Contra War. Hamsa helped create a “network of companeros” that consisted of local churches, schools, businesses, and civic organizations. She personally visited countless gatherings to help educate the community with talks and slide shows and with the help of others created benefits, and actions to raise money for PDP projects in Nicaragua.

Hamsa especially enjoyed working with children at St Paul’s Episcopal Church and students at St. Martins, along with children at St. Joseph’s Catholic School who were so responsive to the issues at hand and joyfully participated by offering their piggy bank savings, gathering school supplies along with a complete set of baseball gear that Father Spain transported to one of the villages called Las Lajas. The outpouring of the Fayetteville community was phenomenal and people became empowered to help make positive change without being “political”. Over the course of six years, Hamsa with the help of others was able to raise over $250,000 to support three full time field workers with two trucks and an office in Nicaragua and fund all of the projects. PDP ended in 1992 with all of the projects successfully in the hands of Nicaraguans that helped build them and passing on a complete work manual in Spanish along with water testing equipment.

From 1986 – 1992 some of the other projects that Hamsa became involved in to help raise awareness, educate, directly aid and help implement solutions for were:

Hamsa and Moshe were both very active with NACE, Native Americans for a Clean Environment, in Vian, Oklahoma. They participated in a door to door campaign to collect signatures petitioning the NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop the enrichment of Uranium at the Gore, Oklahoma plant that was polluting native and non-native lands with radioactivity. The enriched uranium was later used in Desert Storm for armor piercing bullets that then contaminated the soldiers. Hamsa and friends sat in on many NRC public comment meetings in extremely hostile environments with “locals” who only saw the enrichment process in terms of “good jobs”. They, together with NACE members, camped out in front of the Gore plant protesting the plants lethal activities.

Organized a benefit for “Big Mountain” to help educate people and raise money for indigenous Navajo that were being forced off their ancestral land by the government so that the land could be mined for uranium. Food supplies were also collected and delivered by Fayetteville’s own Duncan Murphy.

Hosted numerous Pastors’ for Peace Caravans on their way to Mexico, Central America and Cuba and raising thousands of dollars along with medical supplies, computers, bicycles, educational supplies etc.

Both Hamsa and Moshe were on the board of directors for the Arkansas Alliance, created by Bob and Regina Bland, members of the Arkansas Peace Center. The Alliance was a movement that galvanized grass roots support from citizens around the state to try and convince the NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw Arkansas from being the first 4-state low level Nuclear Waste dump. The organization was successful in keeping Arkansas off the list of initial sites for waste burial under this multi-state agreement compact. The slogan of the Arkansas Alliance was “Dump the Compact”.

Raised funds for the “World Runners”, an international effort to bring attention to the environment in peril with regards to native and all peoples organized by Dennis Banks, director of AIM (American Indian Movement) who passed through Fayetteville with his contingent of runners, culminating in Atlanta for the Olympic Games.

Organized, along with others, the Fayetteville response to Operation Desert Storm, the first American “small town” response, one that received international reportage due to a near full-scale riot that could have broken out between pro-war ralleyers and peace demonstrators if it were not for Hamsa’s and Buddhi Kling’s courage. Previous to the march, they gave the demonstrators a crash course in non-violent disobedience and then led the crowd peacefully through a hostile “mob” onward to the Federal Building. (the event was covered by the Associated Press and appeared in major newspapers from Miami, to San Francisco, to Tokyo).

In the early 1990’s Hamsa, with Moshe’s help, turned her attention to local projects, “thinking globally and acting locally”. They became campaign managers for Kyle Russell, the youngest, and many believe most brilliant, alderman that Fayetteville has ever had. Hamsa took many of the skills she honed in the Congressional race with Sue and helped Kyle with creative slogans, signs, bumper stickers, and advertising as well as organizing grass roots support with small, in-house meetings. Regionally, Hamsa became a supporter of Newton County Wildlife Association to help preserve our national forests from logging interests and served on its board of directors.

She also returned to her roots with teaching classes, working one-on-one in private sessions and organizing seminars on diet, health, lifestyle for people who had given up conventional treatment of cancer and who were looking to an alternative healing approach. She brought numerous nationally recognized healers to speak before members of the Fayetteville community. Her fees were always sliding scale so that these classes and events could be afforded by anyone who needed to attend.

In 1998, Hamsa was appointed to Fayetteville’s Juvenile Concerns Committee. She arranged for many speakers and presenters to come before the committee as advocates of youth. She was responsible for introducing the committee and Mayor Hanna to the idea of building a community skate park. She researched and visited cities that had successfully built skate parks in order to “legitimize” the sport of skate boarding; understanding that this filled the void for many youths that were not attracted to organized, adult supervised sports such as baseball, basketball, or soccer. She engaged Fayetteville’s Parks and Recreation Department and after numerous meetings with the director got a financial commitment of $75,000 to build a skate park. Over the course of 2-3 years and many, many meetings with skaters, consultants, architects, moms and dads and city officials, Hamsa, together with a handful of dedicated Fayetteville residents, enabled the project to receive over $450,000 in commitments from State, Local, and Private agencies to support the building of “Grinders”, Fayetteville’s first public skate park completed in 2003.

Since the year 2000, Hamsa has maintained ties with Central America by continuing to host educational forums and benefits for Pastors for Peace Caravans, Women Speak Out from Guatemala (regarding political reform), Plan Pueblo Panama (regarding the cancellation of U.S. involvement in building a super-highway through Mexico, Central, and South America designed to afford easy access to exploit native lands, resources, and labor). In addition, Hamsa became creatively involved with C.A.T. (Community Access Television) by helping produce a wide variety of programs promoting diversity, social justice, cultural music, and political talk shows. In 2008, both Hamsa and Moshe were the recipients of the “Fat CAT Award” for best educational program titled “The Omni Peace Garden Tour”.

Hamsa continues to teach on-going Yoga classes at Natures Water Yoga Studio, offering affordable public and private classes for students of all ages.