"There was a time when Lawrence was pretty much synonymous with global efforts to “Free Leonard Peltier.”

Peltier is the imprisoned American Indian activist who has garnered worldwide support from the likes of Amnesty International, the Dalai Lama, government figureheads, celebrities and countless others of influence.

Convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI agents in a shootout on a South Dakota Indian reservation, Peltier found support that always seemed to stem as much from acknowledgement of the historical abuses of American Indians as it did from Peltier’s own issues with whether he got a fair trial.

Much of the Free Peltier effort was generated throughout the 1990s from rented office space in Lawrence.

Then Peltier was transferred from the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth to Indiana and later Pennsylvania. The move was precipitated by Leavenworth’s downgrade from a maximum-security to a medium-security prison in 2005. The campaign for Peltier’s release faded.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee never really took off again quite the way it had in Lawrence, according to the man responsible for establishing it in the college town in the first place.

Until now."

Get the Story:
Mary Sanchez: Peltier movement goes beyond one man’s case (The Kansas City Star 2/8)