-- Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children
Lynne Stewart is a political prisoner convicted for the 'crime' of issuing a press release (to Reuters news agency). For that 'crime,' the lifelong people's attorney is now in prison. The defender of those whom other attorneys ran from -- out of scorn, disdain, fear or whatever -- was sentenced to approximately two years. Lynne is over 70 and a breast cancer survivor so that was bad enough. When she stated publicly that she could handle the sentence, suddenly the Barack Obama administration wanted her re-sentenced to harsher one. They got what they wanted and Lynne was given ten years (for the 'crime' of stating she could handle the two year sentence).
Why is Barack so vindictive towards Lynne? A psychologist might probe areas such as: Does Lynne, a White woman married to a Black man, remind him of his own mother and dredge Mommy issues he's never dealt with? A Constitutional expert might just see Lynne as a pawn in Barack's continued effort to dismantle the Constitution. The American people should be demanding the release of Lynne.
February 29th, attorney Herald Price Fahringer argued before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that Lynne's sentence was unfairly increased, that she was being punished for exercising her First Amendment rights to free speech and that to allow the re-sentencing to stand would silence other defendants in court proceedings out of fear that they too would be punished for their remarks.
Last week, Ralph Poynter (Lynne's husband) discussed the latest developments with Glen Ford on Black Agenda Radio, which is hosted by Ford and Nellie Bailey and airs each Monday at 4:00 pm EST on the Progressive Radio Network. Excerpt.
Ralph Poynter: Lynne defended young Black and Latino drug dealers with a passion and the left lawyer says, "How can you defend these people who destroy your community?" And Lynne's answer was: "The whole American economic system is a criminal enterprise. And you defend these criminals -- the corporations, and you defend these criminals -- the mafia, you defend these criminals -- the corrupt unions -- all the time. But now it comes to some poor Black kid who can't read, write and count, because he doesn't tow the line of freedom and justice for all and you want to disenfranchise him? And no one has ever gotten a dime for slaving and until they do, it remains the product of a criminal enterprise. So now, early on, she becomes the enemy of the intelligentsia or the left. The blink Sheik [Omar Abdel-Rahman], he was an Islamist, he was a Muslim [. . .]. And, as Lynne says, he has a right to a defense as anyone else. And she said clearly on the witness stand, she said, "I would not change one fundamentalist philosophy for another fundamentalist philosophy." She didn't mince one word. She talked about old men wanting to control the lives of young women. Lynne is in jail and she has offended and will continue to offend the Zionists and those who suck up to corporations. And, as she says, they don't have to talk about the rights or the privelages, they already got it. Their job is to defeat law. And when Lynne tries to defeat the law on behalf of her clients -- the poor or people that the government doesn't like -- then she becomes the bad girl.
Glen Ford: What's the next step?
Ralph Poynter: The next step in the legal saga is to pray to Zeus or whatever God that you've got that this is a victory and then it goes back to the judge -- Judge [John G.] Koeltl -- and then to go before Judge Koeltl and then have the argument that he was right in the first place [with sentencing] and we want time served or bail pending appeal as she goes on to the Second Circuit [to appeal her conviction].