David Fishback's Blog: "We're not stupid."

Saturday, May 9, 2020

"We're not stupid."

Today would have been my mother's 101st birthday. A blunt spoken person, Hilda Fishback would have been horrified that she would be on Earth for that milestone. With incredibly rare exceptions, the human body is not constructed for that sort of longevity.

I am grateful that she passed away before Donald Trump became president. It would have been heartbreaking for her to see all she worked for and hoped for in the world being eroded and possibly destroyed.

Recently, polling in Florida has revealed a massive shift among seniors against the president. They are seeing through the lies.

My mother always saw through the lies. The Florida report reminded me of something reported in the Washington Post in 2006, when my mother was 87 years old. At a campaign forum run by a retirees organization in which perennial conservative gadfly Robin Ficker was making ad hominem attacks on Ike Leggett (who won that election for Montgomery County (MD) County Executive), Hilda Fishback took Ficker on, ending her response with this simple sentence: "We're not stupid." https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092701157_pf.html ("Hard to Charm" item)

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David S. Fishback, a retired attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, is Advocacy Chair for the Metro DC Chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). His involvement in social justice efforts began as a college student in the 1960s, when he ran a tutoring program in Washington, DC. Following a year as a VISTA volunteer at a prison in Memphis, TN, he went to Harvard Law School and worked on Democratic Party reform issues.

After graduation, he joined the Office of General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. In 1983, David went to the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, where he litigated environmental tort matters, most notably the government's successful defense against lawsuits brought by asbestos product and Agent Orange manufacturers, who were seeking to shift their tort liability to the federal taxpayers.

In 1984, David became co-president of the PTA at a magnet integration primary school in Silver Spring, MD, beginning his efforts as an education activist in Montgomery County. He began advocating for LGBTQ youth in 2002 when he was appointed to the County Board of Education's Citizens Advisory Committee on sexuality education issues. During his time as chair of that committee and later through PFLAG, he was integrally involved in the ultimately successful effort to bring intelligent discussion of LGBTQ topics into the secondary school health curriculum and guidance offices.

A past member of the Temple Emanuel of Kensington MD Board of Trustees, David and his wife Bobbi co-founded and co-chaired (from 2002 to 2019) the Temple's Kulanu Committee for LGBTQ outreach. He is also a long-time member of the Temple's Social Action Council. In 2020, David was appointed to the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism.