Drug Policy Forum of Florida

Drug Policy Forum of Florida | National/International Organizations

Grandma Lee's Journey

Background
  • A Smuggler's Tales From Jails - Written from prison by Gary B. Waid
  • Hang on Gary! We're almost there!
  • Grandma Lee arrives at Starke the vigil begins. 
    • Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 22:55:24 -0400
Sender: owner-dpffl@drugsense.org
Reply-To: jodi james 
Organization: DrugSense  http://www.drugsense.org/

    Our friend, Joe Hart, died early this morning (Saturday August 21, 1999) at the Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida. He lived for fourteen years with AIDS, but died in only seven months from cancer. Joe was a long time, staunch defender of the right to use marijuana in a medical fashion. He was founder and director of the Medical Cannabis Club in Key West and had faced down the law two times to protect his patients.

    I am in a motel in Starke, Florida. The call came early this morning. I was getting ready to hold vigil against the FL State Prisons; the harm of violent prison guards and medical mal-treatment. Joe was excited about this effort. Without Julio Margalli, a public defender who cared, Joe could have spent the last agonizing months in Butler Medical Prison.

    No media showed up at the vigil and many people in this small prison supported community shouted obscenities and made crude gestures. I would have been discouraged except for two things, I met four more families with stories of wrong doings and all day my disappointment was washed away by remembering Joe's words, "Defeat is not an option".

    I was heartbroken that I was not there when Joe took his last labored breath, but then he reminded me that his spirit is with me wherever I go.

    Looking Forward,

    Kay Lee

    More information will be posted as it becomes available

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    This page last updated: Sunday, 22-Aug-1999 16:27:13 PDT