Karim Lewis, 52, community activist

In 1991, Karim J. Lewis told a Philadelphia Daily News reporter about positive feedback he was hearing from folks turning in guns during an antiviolence campaign.

"These are definitely people who have taken the time to think about it all, and come to a conscious decision to get rid of the guns," he said as spokesman for the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network. "They've had a gun in the house and [were] afraid it would be used wrongly, or they decided they didn't need a gun in the house."

Mr. Lewis, 52, of Overbrook Park, a career community organizer, died of kidney failure Feb. 4 at Pennsylvania Hospital.

On the second day of that 1991 campaign to turn in guns, Mr. Lewis said in the interview, his network received 59 firearms and paid $20 for each.

"We've probably had people all along who wanted to talk about violence," he said, "but didn't have a way."

In the campaign's second week, he told a church service in West Philadelphia, "We know that for this war, we need support from our father upstairs."

Brought up a Methodist, Mr. Lewis was baptized in 1993 into the Resurrection Baptist Church, where he later was a member of the trustee ministry, the scholarship ministry, and the male chorus and where, in 2004, he was ordained a deacon.

The Philadelphia native graduated from Overbrook High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in communications at Shippensburg State College in 1979.

In the 1980s, Mr. Lewis was an organizer with Citizen Action of New York, said his wife, Cynthia.

After he moved to Philadelphia, he worked with the Pennsylvania Public Interest Coalition, which in 1989 became Pennsylvania Citizen Action and where, his wife said, he organized protests against phone-rate increases and utility shut-offs. He also was involved with the Crisis Intervention Network, the Carroll Park Community Council, and Frontiers International, a national self-help organization based in Philadelphia, his wife said.

Besides his wife, Mr. Lewis is survived by a son, Karim Lewis Bullock; a daughter, Kamilia Lewis; three grandchildren; a brother; three sisters; and his son's mother, Ruth Bullock.

A viewing was set at 9 a.m. today at Resurrection Baptist Church, 5401 Lansdowne Ave., where a funeral service will begin at 11. Burial will be in Mount Zion Cemetery, Collingdale.