Al Lewis
Originally uploaded by _Faith.
Political career
In 1988, he accepted the Green Party nomination for governor of New York saying, "we don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our kids".Although he lost to incumbent Republican Governor George Pataki, he still managed to collect more than 52,000 votes with his name on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis."
Lewis' first political work was for the Sacco and Vanzetti defence committee. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists, were executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for a double murder and robbery amid doubts about their guilt.
Lewis worked in the 1930s to free the Scottsboro Boys - nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women in another highly publicised case.
All but one were sentenced to death, but eventually they were cleared.
"If anything I consider myself an anarchist," he once said on his weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City.
Read a moving tribute to one of the world's best grandpa's!
