Bring Leonard Peltier Home

For parts of the last two days, I was able to see first hand and learn about the horrible situation involving Leonard Peltier. He is a Native American who has been in prison for 37 years for supposedly having killed two FBI agents. The prosecuting “team” admitted then and now that there was no real proof that Peltier did the fatal shootings. The horror of the conviction is far greater: Mr.Peltier has been treated horribly and I urge you to read about the situation and case.

Rather than specify about this case, I will tell you I know the pain of being falsely accused. Luckily, it was nowhere close to a legal matter but to know one did not do what others accused/”convicted” one of doing is truly horrible. I truly can not deal with an innocent person being confined and in some cases being executed by the state.

On Friday night there was a concert to help free Leonard Peltier. It was supposed to be a benefit concert but Peltier, mind you in prison and needing any help he could get, declined asking for money and asked only for awareness in his case. In short, because of the devastation of the recent storm, Peltier asked to raise consciousness and not money.

I ask President Barack Obama to grant this man clemency. It need not be, as I said at the next day’s press conference, what it could be. That is the President could evoke President Lincoln, in this year of an extraordinary film about that great man, and look to history. That would be great, meaningful, and perhaps a start to a daring, accomplishment filled, second term for Barack Obama. This should not be, however, likely will be “too much to ask,” with other issues on the President’s “plate.”

Thus simply send Leonard Peltier, a man who is no risk, in poor health, and essential to his people, home. Do this, and somewhere Mr. Lincoln might think that at least some little bit of government goodness did not “perish” in these highly disappointing times.