By MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
By the time you hear this, Lynne Stewart, New York’s people’s lawyer, will be home, sleeping in her own bed, in the company of her beloved husband, Ralph Poynter, and their children and grandchildren. It has been a long and tortured hole from judge to judge, from bias to hatred, with no small amount of jealousy, to punish Stewart—not because of her words in the press but because of her advocacy on behalf of the damned, of the oppressed, the targeted, and the powerless.
She was the lawyer you got if you were in trouble, broke, or both—and you would be lucky to get her. She and Ralph toiled for years to make sure people had at least a shot when they entered the icy courtrooms of New York—the anterooms of prisons and perdition.
Lynne is ill, yes, but her spirit is fine. She knows that her family—and the extended family of activists near and far—love her. As she rests and recuperates with her family, we unite to hope that this season is but the first of many, many more to come.
From the Prison Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
© Mumia Abu-Jamal 2014. These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio. Listen: http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/lynne-stewart-free-132 . Photo: Lynne Stewart arrives at La Guardia airport on Jan. 1. Photo by Marty Goodman / Socialist Action.
