Society for Democratic Initiatives

These are the members of SDI in Sierra Leone, and they are emblamatic of those NGO's scattered around the globe, with many in Afica quietly enriching the lives of those that are marginalized by society here and elsewhere. Pictured are Joanne Cotton, from Belfast, Patrick Ambrose, from Australia, and the third is a young Leonian journalist working with them.

Because of them I was able to hit a home run there. Patrick has prepared a solid brief to be utilized in a new court case we will file in S.L. challenging the criminal libel and sedition statue of 1965 (which is clearly unconstitional when contrasted against the S.L. Constitution). If I can do nothing more than cause the removal of this noxious law, I will have acquitted myself well.

I met with the Minister of Information who is part of the new government. He informed Joanne and me that we should file the suit, and he would follow up with the new President to see if they might void the law and make the suit moot. Kwame' feels as I do that we must file ASAP to take advantage of all this.

At night they took me to dinner at Mamba Point which allowed me to have a steak and meet other NGO's. One such was a fellow named Stephen Rapp, the former U.S. Attorney appointed by Bill Clinton for Iowa. He is the U.N appointee to assust in the prosecution of Charles Taylor, the most despicable and repressive leader of one of the African countries who was involved in the killings of many Leonians during the 10 year war ending in 2001. He ans Saddam make a good pair. But no one is spending one and one-half trillion dollars on the eliminating him.

Anyway, he informed me that he was an early intern for Sen. Birch Bayh, and of course I informed him that I was the youngest delegate to the Democratic state convention that nominated him to run in 1962 against Sen. Homer Capehart. I intend to stay in touch with him re his work. All of this was many moons ago...