By Brad Friedman on 7/13/2005, 11:37am PT  

As readers know, our friend Andy Stephenson, a founding advisor of ours at VelvetRevolution.us passed away last Thursday night after a short, but heroic fight against pancreatic cancer.

His death came on the day prior to the BRAD BLOGATHON (wherein the readers took the joint over, so we could not post here at all!) and therefore I was unable to follow up with a few items of note. I shall do so now.

Those who knew of Andy's illness, may also have known about the disgraceful ghouls at FreeRepublic and elsewhere who had made a quick industry out of challenging Andy's illness after the Internet community came together to quickly raise $50,000 for Andy's surgery at Johns Hopkins (he had no health insurance after being unemployed in the wake of leaving Black Box Voting where Bev Harris and he parted on very less than good terms).

The loathesome Freepers charged that the fundraising effort was fraud, and succeeded in having his PayPal account frozen until an investigation proved that his needs were legit. That little act of thoughtfulness on the part of the repugnant folks who would unrepentingly do such a thing, helped to delay Andy's surgery for three weeks and added an unconscionable additional burden to his final weeks of life and death struggle.

There is some discussion on that, some words of tribute, and information on a memorial service to be held for Andy at Town Hall in Seattle at 1119 Eighth Ave., on Saturday, July 16, at 2 p.m. in the following items on his passing from over the last few days...

  • Just before he passed, Seattle Weekly outlined Andy's battle against cancer and the despicable folks that challenged the credulity of his illness even while he was under the knife and fighting for his life.

  • Seattle Weekly's article on Andy's passing. Including information about the memorial for Andy

  • Some moving words of tribute to Andy by William Rivers Pitt.

  • Some well placed rage from William Rivers Pitt on the loathesome Freeper ghouls who helped push Andy into his grave

  • Attorney Paul Lehto, who, with Andy, was part of our original "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign team at VelvetRevolution.us, eulogizes and rages as well.
  • The BRAD SHOW tribute to Andy [MP3] from last Saturday night's show. (Last half-hour of the MP3 file)
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