David B. Finkel, a retired judge, former Santa Monica City Council member, recent trustee of Santa Monica College and perennial activist, has died. He was 83.
Finkel died Saturday at his Santa Monica home of renal failure after a prolonged illness, his daughter Amy Shimshon-Santo said.
A civil liberties lawyer, Finkel was partial to progressive causes for decades. In the 1970s, he successfully fought for reinstatement of a Los Angeles Valley College English teacher who was fired for having her students read a poem that college officials later deemed pornographic.