Fight Back!

Background Information about the FIGHT BACK tour:

Lynne Stewart, NY court-appointed attorney, defended Omar Abdel Rachman, "The Blind Sheik," against terrorism charges. When he was convicted, Stewart was arrested and convicted of "aiding and abetting terrorism." She is on a fundraising tour to help pay her legal costs. A fundraiser will be held in Fresno. Jeff Mackler will also speak about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Suggested donation is $25, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Mennonite Community Church, 5015 E. Olive (NE corner Olive/Willow). For info: 559-255-9492. Co-sponsored by Fresno Center for Nonviolence, Death Penalty Focus and Peace Fresno.

Lynne Stewart is an attorney renowned for her defense of radical and unpopular defendants. She was targeted by none other than US Attorney General John Ashcroft in early 2002, not long after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. She has been convicted of bogus "terrorist conspiracy" charges, and is appealing her conviction and 28-month prison sentence.

Stewart's two co-defendants, Mohammad Yousry and Ahmed Sattar, both legal workers for Stewart, were similarly convicted on trumped-up charges. Yousry faces a 20-month prison sentence, while Sattar faces 24 years.

Michael Ratner is also a renowned attorney. He is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization that has helped lead the fight against the massive repression unleashed in the wake of 9/11.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has called the government attack on Stewart and her co defendants "a triumph of fear over reason." Mumia, a Black Panther and journalist, has been on death row since 1982, on phony charges of shooting a Philadelphia police officer.

Sometimes, in the crush of our daily political battles, we forget those of us who have found themselves directly in the crosshairs of the imperial might of the empire. In the words of Phil Ochs, there but for fortune go you or I. Stewart has repeatedly described the campaign against her and her co-defendants as an attack, not only on the attorneys who defend unpopular clients, but an attack directly on the people themselves who need defending.

A list of Stewart's clients over the years tells the tale. They have included, among others, members of the Black Panthers, participants in the 1971 Attica prison uprising, and Puerto Rican independence fighters. Her conviction arises from her legal defense of the "blind Shiek" Omar Abdel Rachman, now serving a life sentence for "seditious conspiracy," a prosecution which grew out of investigations of the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Speaking at a previous event on behalf of Stewart, former political prisoner Bato Talamentez described the importance of "people’s lawyers, who step forward to defend us." Talamentez was one of the San Quentin Six, a group of prisoners targeted in the aftermath of the state murder of George Jackson. "While Lynne is considered an 'enemy of the state'... we the people, the real people, disenfranchised prisoners, the destitute and the poor across Amerika, consider Lynne Stewart a people's champion and a hero to the oppressed and underprivileged."