Couldn't resist posting this photo of just a few of the hundred or so supporters who packed the courtroom, spilling over into an overflow room yesterday for Albert Woodfox' appellate hearing. The yellow scarves read: "Stop solitary!" because our struggle and our commitment is much larger than the tragedy and travesty of one man's stolen life. It's about all the men and women anywhere in the world held in closed cells for long-term and indeterminate periods. This struggle will go on even after they free Albert Woodfox -- and they will. They freed Robert King. They freed Herman Wallace. And they will free Albert Woodfox.
My favorite moment: when State's Attorney Buddy Caldwell looked back over his shoulder at me for a loooong moment, eyeball to eyeball, as if he recognizes me as the one who keeps writing about him on my blog. I didn't flinch or look away till he did, which means I won. Heh heh heh.
In the courtroom, I sat next to the woman that has been doing a really good job of covering this case for some time for the Times-Picayune. She wrote this about the proceedings yesterday. The Associated Press had this to say.
Sitting around a lunch table at Cafe Reconcile afterward with old guard organizer/activists from Texas, Brooklyn, and Louisiana, we had the joy of comparing notes and realizing that we've all been connected through common comrades for decades, something we were heretofore too busy to discuss. Also at the table was one young woman who just passed the bar exam two months ago and is already neck-deep in the the process of trying to free Kenny "Zulu" Whitmore. What a rush to see the torch being passed without its having to fall to the ground first.
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