Lynne Stewart, the people’s lawyer, dies at 77
Lynne Stewart, the militant lawyer who went up against U.S. state power to defend African, Arab and other oppressed nation activists, died March 7 in New York. Stewart was 77 and is survived by her husband, Ralph Poynter, a member of the Black is Back Coalition. After serving 4 years of a 10-year sentence as a political prisoner, Stewart was released from prison in December 2013 as a result of popular pressure on the government in the face of breast cancer that was terminal. Stewart represented Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman after he was labeled a terrorist by the FBI which claimed Rahman issued “a fatwa that encouraged acts of violence against US civilian targets”, particularly in the New York and New Jersey…