UPDATE:

The new sentencing date for Lynne Stewart is now July 15th at 2:30 p.m.  Please check back as this date could change.

Second Circuit Denies Re-Hearing By the Full Panel (En Banc) on Lynne Stewart’s Sentence

Click here to read the ruling (PDF).

Letter from Lynne Stewart

Dear Sisters and Brothers, Friends and Supporters:

Well the moment we all hoped would never come is upon us. Good bye to a good cup of coffee in the morning, a soft chair, the hugs of grandchildren and the smaller pleasures in life. I must say I am being treated well and that is due to my lawyer team and your overwhelming support.

While I have received “celebrity” treatment here in MCC – high visibility – conditions for the other women are deplorable. Medical care, food, education, recreation are all at minimal levels. If it weren’t for the unqualified bonds of sisterhood and the commissary it would be even more dismal.

My fellow prisoners have supplied me with books and crosswords, a warm (it is cold in here most of the time) sweat shirt and pants, treats from the commissary, and of course, jailhouse humor. Most important many of them know of my work and have a deep reservoir of can I say it? Respect.

I continue to both answer the questions put to me by them, I also can’t resist commenting on the T.V. news or what is happening on the floor – a little LS politics always! (Smile) to open hearts and minds!

Liz Fink, my lawyer leader, believes I will be here at MCC-NY for a while – perhaps a year before being moved to prison. Being is jail is like suddenly inhabiting a parallel universe but at least I have the luxury of time to read! Tomorrow I will get my commissary order which may include an AM/FM Radio and be restored to WBAI and music (classical and jazz).

We are campaigning to get the bladder operation (scheduled before I came in to MCC) to happen here in New York City. Please be alert to the website I case I need some outside support.

I want to say that the show of support outside the Courthouse on Thursday as I was “transported” is so cherished by me. The broad organizational representation was breathtaking and the love and politics expressed (the anger too) will keep me nourished through this.

Organize – Agitate, Agitate, Agitate! And write to me and others locked down by the Evil Empire.

Love Struggle, Lynne Stewart

On Foley Square a songbird sings

by Lillian Pollack

The Square – slabs of concrete
Cobbled streets, medieval arches, forlorn dusty parks
Bleak citadels of justice

In these great halls
knowing righteous laws
fear destroys reason
Harsh sentence are pronounced
Innocent actions become
Punishable crimes

Here a bird sings

Legendary – like the Kuninglin-
Who hid in the plumage of an eagle
And soared above him to heaven.
A wren
Known for strong songs
That floods the skies

This a warm-blooded, two legged,
Feathered vertebrate
Plump – gray, sandy-haired
With a fearless grin
Is shut away
A bird who sings only in daylight
Her notes loud and clear
Round crystal globules of sweet sound
Pour through the black bars
Singing of innocence of wrong-doing
Pure of any intent
Only desire to do good
And kindness

We must hear her
She must not be ignored
Her song of sympathy
for all those oppressed,
misjudged, falsely accused
Wafts through the air
Telling us of the meaning of our existence
Empathy for all that lives
Gentleness…

We must hear her message
Above the crushing litany of law
That stifles her voice

If justice ignores her song
We cannot survive
If we forget humanity
we will not survive
Listen…….

About the Author

Born in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC 1915, Lillian Pollack became a radical at sixteen, raised three kids, earned two graduate degrees at night and taught school for twenty-five years. Still active, she?s now a Raging Granny marching and singing for peace.In The Sweetest Dream a lively, romantic, historical novel, Miriam and Ketzel, two pretty, feisty women, seek love and their own identity. Involved in the Communist Party, supporters of Leon Trotsky, they are unfortunately, unwitting companions of his assassin. The time is the thirties – the Great Depression, the rich flowering of the arts, the sit-down strikes, the Spanish Civil War. Eventually, the women grow to realize, despite disappointing love affairs and disastrous world events, Trotsky’s great message: “Life is beautiful – Live it to the fullest.”