Remembering Ralph Poynter
A tribute to the longtime New York City activist and WBAI radio show host who passed away on Christmas.
I first met Ralph Poynter many years ago when his companion attorney Lynne Stewart was picked out and persecuted by George W. Bush’s Attorney General, John Ashcroft, on the BS charge of materially aiding terrorism which amounted to distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client, Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman.
It was the early years of Bush’s “War on Terror” and they wanted to make an example out of her. So they did. They put her away in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas for four years.
Ralph was her greatest defender. He helped to get her out in 2013 on compassionate release after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She lived for several more years before dying of cancer in 2017, likely induced by the stress she was put under.
On Christmas Day, Ralph peacefully passed away. The longtime New York City activist and WBAI radio show host was 89 years old.
Ralph met Lynne when they both worked at P.S.175 in Harlem in the 1960s. He was a teacher. She was a librarian. They were both for Black control of the Black community and its schools. Albert Shanker and his reactionary teachers union opposed that.
Ralph was politically solid. A comrade. A lovely man. He was a fighter. And he was a friend.
I have two memories of Ralph. He had a motorcycle repair shop on 12th Avenue on Manhattan’s West Side. He and Lynne would ride their bike. How glorious it was to feel the wind in your hair.
My wife Debby and young son Eli visited Ralph and Lynn at their place north of the Adirondacks near the Canadian border. How wonderful it was to see Ralph and Eli enjoying each other’s company.
Ralph was politically solid. A comrade. A lovely man. He was a boxer. Muscular. Physically fit beyond his years. He was a fighter. And he was a friend.
Michael Steven Smith co-hosts the nationally broadcast weekly radio show Law and Disorder and is the author of Lawyers For the Left: In the Courts, In the Streets, and On the Air, published by OR Books (2019).