Social activist for human rights in Central America

Donald White, a former schoolteacher and social activist who helped organize and coordinate dozens of initiatives involving human rights in Central America and antiwar efforts around the world, has died. He was 71.

He died of an apparent heart attack June 19 at his home in Los Angeles, said Blase Bonpane, a longtime friend.

White, who was born in 1937 in Mount Vernon, Wash., studied political science at the University of the Pacific in Tacoma, Wash.

In the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began a 30-year career as a history teacher at Washington Irving Middle School.

White was a charter member of United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing public schoolteachers, and was active in union politics until he retired from teaching in 1997.

A trip to Guatemala with relief workers after a 1976 earthquake led White to an ongoing involvement with Central America.

In the early 1980s, he helped organize a Los Angeles chapter of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, whose goal was to end U.S. involvement in the civil war there. White coordinated rallies, spoke at demonstrations, led teach-ins and lobbied Congress.

White also helped organize protest rallies calling for the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly called the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Ga., a U.S. Army training center for Latin American soldiers. Antiwar activists contend that the school teaches torture tactics.

In Los Angeles, White joined the “sanctuary movement” of the 1980s. Although it was against the law, local churches gave refuge to undocumented immigrants from Central America who fled civil war in their homelands.

“Peace-making in El Salvador was Don’s main work,” said Bonpane, director of the Office of the Americas in Los Angeles, which offers educational programs on American foreign policy.

White was a supporter of public radio and was on the board of KPFK-FM (90.7), the local Pacifica Network station that features news not necessarily emphasized in mainstream media. He served as chairman of the KPFK board in the early 2000s.

“Human rights, peace and justice were so important to Don,” said Maria Amoudian, a KPFK producer and on-air host. “He wanted to find the root cause of violence.”

White never married and had no children, said his brother, Dennis, who survives him.

A memorial service is planned at 6 p.m. Aug. 10 at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

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mary.rourke@latimes.com