May 6, 2013

Life & Death Situations
-Amazon News Service

- DIANE FISHER VAZQUES-AMARAL
(1945-2013) passed away March 7 after struggling with cancer. She was a long-time radical Lesbian feminist activist who studied ceramics at Douglass College of Rutgers University, and made a living selling her beautiful pottery. Diane was a member of the Out of Control Lesbian Committee to support women political prisoners, loved and respected by all who knew her. She was 67 and is survived by her lover, Shey Smith, who co-founded their Smith & Fisher Pottery in British Columbia, Canada, where they were respected members of the arts community.

- Political prisoner LYNNE STEWART, a renowned criminal defense lawyer who was appointed by a federal court in 1995 to represent the blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and subsequently targeted by the Bush administration for criminal prosecution on trumped up charges of giving "material aid to a terrorist organization," has been sent to FCI Carswell near Fort Worth where she has been deprived of adequate medical care for breast cancer. The so-called "material aid" consisted of issuing a press release on behalf of her client to a Reuter's correspondent, for which she was given a ten year sentence - an attack upon free speech of every attorney in the United States! Presiding Judge John Koetl declared Stewart "an asset to the nation," yet prison is literally killing her as her breast cancer has metastasized and spread to her lymph nodes, bones, and lungs. Basic human decency demands her immediate compassionate release! PLEASE sign the petition now to save Lynne Stewart. Go to the International Action Center's website at: www.iacenter.org.

- FLOZELLE WOODMORE, a life-long California activist who served two decades of a life sentence, died in February in Los Angeles. After being released in 2007, Flozelle was awarded a Soros Justice Fellowship in 2010 for her work with the Lifers Friends & Family Project. She worked tirelessly to repair the damage to people most harmed by the criminal "justice" system.

SOURCE: Out of Time, Issue 103, April 2013

- Jennifer Gann