The homeless woman, the teenage street-corner drug dealer, and the anti-war protester lost a friend they never knew last week. Mary Levesque, a civil libertarian and former state representative from Jamestown, died at 49, after a long struggle with cancer.

"For eight years [1989-1996], she stood up and defended the people nobody else in the State House would defend," says Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Because she was so brave to take unpopular stands," adds former state Representative Sandra Barone, "[legislators] had tremendous respect for her."

Among other causes, the liberal Levesque opposed a constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American flag. She was one of eight House members to vote against then-Attorney General Jeff Pine's Craig Price bill. Designed to keep the killer of four institutionalized, the law gives the state extraordinary power to commit someone to a mental institution for their "diagnosis, words or thoughts."

A former public defender and an opponent of longer jail sentences, Levesque won a seat on the House Judiciary Committee in 1991. But two years later, a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans elected John Harwood speaker, and Levesque was demoted to the lowly Labor Committee.

That summer Levesque, her brother, state Representative Chuck Levesque, and other liberals fought a six-day floor battle to amend Governor Bruce Sundlun's budget and reverse huge cuts in welfare programs. During the debate, state Representative Nancy Benoit recalls, Levesque's father lay dying in a Providence hospital. But Levesque stayed on the House floor, telling lawmakers that her father, a former state senator who led the fight for fair housing laws, would want her there. The liberals lost every budget vote, but the fight, they believe, tempered Harwood's conservatism in following years. Levesque also won some key debates.

In a 1996 interview, Levesque explained her dissenter status. "For me, it's so important to do what's right regardless of whether I'm going to be invited to a party the next day. But for so many other people, that's not true." And she added, "The more we don't act like leaders, the more people are resigned and cynical about what their government is doing."

Issue Date: September 28 - October 4, 2001