Racism

NAACP President Ben Jealous discusses racism in America, including the Troy Davis case, Trayon Martin, mass prison incarcerations, and voter ID.


 

Capital Punishment

Democracy Now! has this segment remembering Troy Davis, whose widely denounced and unjust execution coincided with the beginning of Occupy Wall Street.  Californians will be voting on whether or not to abolish capital punishment.

 

Bookmark

Occupy Wall Street prepares for demonstrations marking the one year anniversary of the movement, and the right to peaceably assemble.  The following youtube was posted at the Occupy Wall Street website, and includes a few of the more tense stand-offs between demonstrators and police, including police violence, and over the First Amendment.




This blog started a year ago with the release of new Census Bureau information on soaring American poverty, and about one week before the Occupy Movement made its debut in Manhattan.  Little did the diarist know, at that time, we were about be chronicling, for better or worse, a major American uprising.   

Events also coincided with the execution of Troy Davis, another story the blogger happened to be following, and seemingly not "just coincidentally" connected to events unfolding on Wall Street-- with "justice" failing at all levels of the system-- its economic and social savagery revealed in a full panorama -- and public outcry spreading from New York and Georgia, to the midwest, the west coast, and over 1200 cities globally (and still spreading) by early October 2011.

What now?  Some feel that the uprising has been rapidly quashed, others, that it lives, or others, that it has been absorbed into various activist movements ranging from housing to food to student debt to electoral politics to the peace movement.  That, to me, sounding similar to thoughts on where activities during the sixties went.

Myself, I can't wax profound on the subject;  I think Occupy has taught us that we have more power than we think, that we are stronger together than separately, and that we have more common grievances than we are otherwise aware of-- or that the mainstream media would like us to know about, and, that we have so many brilliant people in our ordinary midst, like lights to lead us out of darkness-- we must believe in ourselves and each other.
  
If Occupy Wall Street taught us how quickly things can happen "overnight," how quickly a mass movement can "spread," how many incredible people are "out there" standing up for change and resistance -- can we  not see how quickly things could, indeed, similarly change in terms of ending homelessness, hunger, war, poverty, unemployment, and crippling debt?

As an imagination artist, I believe this is possible.  And I know we have many imagination artists on this tiny, tiny planet spinning in vast spaces of a universe that dwarfs even the great star we call our sun.  With so many of us imagining a better today, can we make it happen?

Like I said, I never started out intending to write a blog about the Occupation.  You can see for yourself that this blog started about one week earlier.  I simply felt a responsibility, when I saw what was happening, and what the mainstream media was doing, to keep chronicling this uprising as it took place, and with respect to the contributions of citizen journalists, alternative media, and those I can only describe as true patriots.   Those who wanted to tell the story, not suppress it and thereby stop change from happening.  Those who were there "on the street."

For the record, I would say that the diary is conscientiously continued through the National Gathering in Philadelphia.  I don't know how long the chronicle will continue from this point onward.  

This entry marks my (more or less) personal statement on the subject of the Occupation and the blog itself.  A one year bookmark, so to speak.  

Power to the People.  Peace.  

Courtesy of Occupy Eugene, Oregon

Photographer:  Brenna

Children Occupy protesters carrying signs reading, 
"Invest In Me" and "People (and Pandas) Before Profits."

steinbeck

 

from film portrayals of lennie small 

in john steinbeck's of mice and men -

adapted for film several times,

also for stage and radio.

pleas for justice fall again upon deaf ears as the state of texas executes a developmentally disabled man named marvin wilson who had an i.q. of 61.

robert mackey with the new york times reports that john steinbeck's family has expressed outrage that a texas judge used of mice and men to support the decision to take marvin wilson's life.  thomas steinbeck, the writer's son, released a statement reading, in part:

On behalf of the family of John Steinbeck, I am deeply troubled by today’s scheduled execution of Marvin Wilson, a Texas man with an I.Q. of 61. Prior to reading about Mr. Wilson’s case, I had no idea that the great state of Texas would use a fictional character that my father created to make a point about human loyalty and dedication, i.e., Lennie Small from “Of Mice and Men,” as a benchmark to identify whether defendants with intellectual disability should live or die.

My father was a highly gifted writer who won the Nobel Prize for his ability to create art about the depth of the human experience and condition. His work was certainly not meant to be scientific, and the character of Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like intellectual disability. I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic. I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck, were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way. And the last thing you ever wanted to do, was to make John Steinbeck angry.

 

mr. mackey continues:

In 1937, the novelist himself told The New York Times that the model for his character, a killer who did not comprehend his own actions, was shown leniency by the American legal system of the time. “Lennie was a real person,” Mr. Steinbeck said. “He’s in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn’t kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn’t stop him until it was too late.”

the following youtube was released by democracy now! the night before mr. marvin was executed, and includes discussion with mr. wilson's attorney, lee korvarsky, and richard dieter, executive director of the death penalty information center, a nonprofit group working to educate the public about capital punishment.

mr. dieter says that texas is disturbingly experimenting with humans in new ways to execute death row prisoners, and that they are purchasing various drugs for execution indirectly from european companies that did not manufacture the drugs for this purpose.  

the european nations - which have outlawed capital punishment - are expressing outrage that these drugs are being used to execute people in the united states.

the texas tribune reports that prior to mr. wilson's execution, and amidst an outcry of objections, 

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, on Monday wrote to Gov. Rick Perry seeking a stay of execution on Wilson's behalf. Human Rights Watch also decried the planned execution.

“Texas is circumventing the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment,” said Antonio Ginatta, U.S. advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

I Am Troy Davis

 

Courtesy of Street Art Londgon

Photographer:  Rikki

"Making the Invisible Troy Davis Visible" -

from an installation piece in support of Amnesty International's

efforts to stop the execution of Troy Davis

California prepares another ballot initiative, this one on the death penalty.  Which of course brings back sorrowful memories of the Troy Davis execution and the Kafkaesque manner in which he proceeded to a state-ordained "destiny" of lethal injection, in spite of all evidence and humanitarian and logic-based pleas to the contrary.  Sanity fell upon deaf ears.

The Monterey Herald reports:

For the third time in 40 years, Californians will vote in November on the death penalty, an institution that has had at least as much impact on the state's politics as on its institutions of crime and punishment. Opponents of capital punishment said Thursday they were submitting 800,000 signatures on petitions for an initiative to close the nation's largest Death Row, which has 725 condemned prisoners. The measure needs 504,760 valid signatures to make the ballot.

"California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole," declared Jeanne Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison. She now heads the anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Focus.

It was an unusually optimistic statement in a state whose residents have consistently supported the death penalty. The most recent Field Poll, in September, showed 68 percent support — although respondents in the same survey, when asked their preferred sentence for murder, backed life without parole over death by 48 to 40 percent.

The last time the issue was on the ballot, Californians voted by a 71 percent majority in 1978 to expand a death penalty law that legislators had passed the year before over Gov. Jerry Brown's veto. When the state Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, voters overrode the decision by a 67.5 percent majority

 The court itself was shaken in 1986 when voters unseated Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues who had regularly voted to overturn death sentences. Since then, the California court has had one of the nation's highest rates of upholding death judgments.

Like health care for all, are Californians ready to choose life?

Courtesy of Feministing

U.S. Demonstrators, "I Am Troy Davis"



Mic Check

Mic Check

First they came for Troy Davis

and I didn't speak up because 

I wasn't Troy Davis,

then they came

for the homeless

I didn't speak up

I wasn't homeless

came for the unemployed

I wasn't unemployed

I kept my mouth shut

came for students 

besieged with debt

no job prospects

I was too smart

too hard-working

to be

one of them

either

shut

doors

to hospitals

I had another

close by

a lovely

insurance policy

threw children

off food programs


jailed mothers




too bad




I watched quietly


as sheriffs


banks


banged


boards

dragged off 

campers

trashing their tents

I never

liked camping

no one was doing 

anything

to my belongings

took people

out of trees

(and cut the trees down) --

but I never 

hung out in trees

never climbed one 

as a kid

and I like

unobstructed

views of landscape

to begin with,

took away

union activists

I didn't speak

I didn't belong 

to a union,

then they came 

for the veterans

and I didn't speak up 

because I had never 

fought in a war .. 

they came for me

too 

eventually ..

I was all 

by myself 

by then

so there was 

no one left

to speak out

for me -

not even a tree

to grace

memory

- o.s.r.

remembering 

Martin Niemöller 

(1892-1984)


and 


Martina Davis-Correia


(1967-2011)

Saturday In Savannah

Courtesy of The Church Lady Blogs
Troy Davis' Funeral - New Life Apostolic Temple

If Troy Davis was laid in his grave today in Savannah Georgia, so too, the death penalty.  In a rousing funeral attended by thousands, punctuated by long and winding lines of attendees, determined chanting demonstrators, and international human rights spokespersons, the movement to change this outdated form of "justice" was appropriately enough born again in the South - where the horrific practice of lynching - seems now revealed to millions of global observers in Mr. Davis' case - as never truly abolished - only transformed into a legally sanctioned and "sanitized" version - with disproportionate numbers of African American men, now faced with overcoming impossible barriers within a deaf judicial system  - and going to their end - to the Kafkaesque extent that, even in a case with enormous factual issues and doubt, a man still unerringly heads on, as surely as a piece of machinery on an assembly line.  No human beings left in the process - whether defendant or decision-makers themselves.  Whatever enormity of facts or plea is placed before the authorities, still, the decision makers feel compelled to continue, unquestioningly.

Franz Kafka in 1906

Hey, didn't I read this guy in high school?

At the funeral, Church Lady described a slide show of Mr. Davis' life and family, and speakers who included Davis’ nephew, Antone’ De’Juan Davis-Correia - who visited Mr. Davis every week in prison - and impressed millions of live stream viewers with his dignity and mature-beyond-years composure during press interviews with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman the grueling night of Mr. Davis' scheduled execution.  Other highlighted speakers at the funeral included N.A.A.C.P. Director Benjamin Jealous, Amnesty International U.S.A. Director Larry Cox, the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Atlanta, a spiritual adviser to Mr. Davis on death row, and civil rights activist, writer, and comedian, Dick Gregory. 

True to form, Mr. Gregory peppered his speech with long appreciated spicy satire and humor - for example, bringing laughter from the audience when he stated that he "stayed in debt" because he "wanted to stay in step - with the rest of America."  Mr. Gregory went on to describe a conversation with bill collectors phoning to tell him they expected payment.  "You can always expect payment," he told them.  "You can expect payment from me every day."  When the collector asked if he was Dick Gregory, he told him that he was Troy Davis.  "He said I'm sorry I made a mistake.  I won't be calling you no more."

Mr. Gregory made a 365 day call for a fast to end Capital Punishment.

"Troy," Benjamin Jealous stated poignantly, "..told us to keep on fighting until his name is finally cleared and Georgia admits what Georgia has done.. Troy's last words were to keep on fighting until the death penalty is abolished and this can never be done to anyone else."

Troy Davis

1968-2011

"You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea."

- Medgar Evers

Memorial

portrait of troy davis, 2011

artist, alex schaefer

courtesy of the grand bastard

Troy Davis' memorial was held in Savannah this evening at New Life Apostolic Temple. 

Jason Ewart, a Washington attorney who spent seven years handling Davis' appeals, fought back tears as he recalled sitting in the second row of witnesses at the execution and watching the life drain from Davis' eyes.

 Ewart recalled many long phone conversations with Davis, never shorter than an hour, in which the men spent twice as much time talking about their families as they did legal strategy. Ewart said his own grandmother had just died, and he pictured her and Davis together at "heaven orientation."

 "She would say, 'Jesus died on the cross not because he was guilty, but because we all were,'" Ewart said.

Media Witness Jon Lewis describes here Mr. Davis' formal last words at an execution community activists have decried as legal lynching or state sanctioned murder.

According to the AP story, many notable civil rights leaders and activists attended.  Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta recalled to the reporters how Emmett Til's mother insisted on an open casket, hoping people could see the injustice of Jim Crow.   In a similar spirit, Troy Davis' family hopes that opening the funeral to supporters, Saturday October 1st, will help people see the injustice of the death penalty.

Courtesy of The Grio

Former President Jimmy Carter, among the many prominent voices calling for clemency, wrote, "If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated. We hope this tragedy will spur us as a nation toward the total rejection of capital punishment."

Poetry

decompositions

back in Denmark

funeral delayed

troy davis’ body

lies

a’molderin’

with the State

across the wide Missouri

“to the saguaro

cactus tree

in the desert"



sung

in absentia

perogatives

seeing is believing 

we shall overcome

- o.s.r.

Back In Denmark

Authorities still haven't released Troy Davis' body to his family, now delaying his funeral. 

Courtesy of Deviant Art

Owl In The Hanging Tree

Artist:  Lauren D'Ambrosia

 

Deaf Ears

If justice is blind, it is also deaf. 

In what John Nichols recalled as retired Justice Steven’s “haunting reminder of once prevalent southern lynchings,” Troy Davis was executed late this evening, dying 11:08 P.M. in Georgia.  Community activists decry his execution as legal murder or lynching by the State.

Courtesy of Feministing
U.S. Demonstrators, "I Am Troy Davis"

The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution moments before Mr. Davis, strapped into a gurney, was to be lethally injected with poisons at 7;  however, it turned out our hopes for a stay had been falsely raised when, not much later, the Court summarily and unanimously turned down the appeal, without explanation. 

Within the next half hour, Troy Davis was killed.

“I am innocent,” Mr. Davis stated simply, shortly before his death.
 

Courtesy of Community Radio For Northern Colorado
International Demonstration For Troy Davis, France

Mr. Davis’ courageous 19 year effort on death row produced 700,000 signatures on petitions to the Georgia prison authorities, worldwide demonstrations, and appeals for clemency from prominent political and community leaders, including a Nobel laureate, a former U.S. President, the Pope, the European Union, 50 members of Congress, former representatives, and a former director of the F.B.I.  No physical evidence connected Mr. Davis to the crime, 7 out of 9 witnesses recanted, alleging police coercion, and one of the two remaining witnesses reportedly boasted of being the actual murderer.  Even jurors came forward to assert that, if they had known differently, they would not have voted for a conviction, and Mr. Davis would be free.

Courtesy of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta

Courtesy of Amnesty International U.S.A.

Yet nine people in Washington on the highest court of American "justice" were so far away from this country and the rest of the world, they couldn't hear a thing. 

Right Versus Just

Back in Denmark, the State continues to insist on "being right," at all costs, rather than being just.  Georgia prison authorities have denied Troy Davis' request to take a lie detector test.  N.A.A.C.P. officials in contact with the Department of Justice hope the federal government will intervene on the basis of civil rights violations and "irregularities in the original investigation and at the trial." 

The New York Times reports:

Edward O. DuBose, president of the Georgia chapter, said the organization had “very reliable information from the board members directly that the board was split 3 to 2 on whether to grant clemency.”

“The fact that that kind of division was in the room is even more of a sign that there is a strong possibility to save Troy’s life,” he said.  

The issues in Mr. Davis' case transcend partisanship and even the death penalty debate.  Many prominent leaders have stepped forward to ask for clemency, including former President Jimmy Carter, 51 members of Congress, former FBI Director William Sessions (under Reagan and Bush Sr.), former Georgia representative and Republican Bob Barr, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Pope, and the European Union. 

Benjamin Jealous, head of the N.A.A.C.P., is asking President Obama for a reprieve;  also, The Innocence Project has asked the Chatham County D.A., Larry Chisholm, to pull the execution because there is no DNA evidence linking Mr. Davis to the crime.  (Mr. Chisholm was not the D.A. at the time the case was decided, and stated that he would not have sought the death penalty.)

Meanwhile, protestors continue to gather in Georgia.

Courtesy of The Grio

Courtesy of The Grio

The Grio reports that demonstrations are spreading worldwide with several planned at U.S. Embassies. 

Mr. Davis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 7:00 P.M. in Georgia this evening.  He has repeatedly maintained his innocence.

Mr. Davis is presently with family members and has refused a last meal.  In a recent conversation with an Amnesty International U.S.A. representative, he stated:  “I will not stop fighting until I’ve taken my last breath.  Georgia is prepared to snuff out the life of an innocent man.”

Something Is Rotten In Denmark

Courtesy of Elfinspell

The Castle of Kronborg, Denmark

"Hamlet's Castle"

Photograph by Horace Marryat

Troy Davis is denied clemency in Georgia and is scheduled to be unjustly executed tommorow by lethal injection.  Witnesses have recanted and alleged in written testimony submitted to a Georgia judge that they were coerced by officials to lie.

Please email on behalf of Troy Davis to the White House, your U.S. Senators, and the Georgia D.A. and Pardons Board through Amnesty International's petition.