From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!-Vote Yes on California Prop 34!

Click on the headline to link to the “International Communist League” website.

Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
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Workers Vanguard No. 1009 28 September 2012

Tough on Crime” Anti-Death Penalty Measure

Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!

Vote Yes on California Prop 34!

In a country that leads the world in the number of people behind bars, disproportionately black, the endurance of the death penalty is rooted in the foundation of American capitalism, which was built on the scarred backs of black slaves. Capital punishment is the supreme declaration of state authority and the monopoly of violence in the hands of this country’s racist capitalist rulers. The so-called “Golden State” of California leads the nation in death row inmates, with close to one-quarter of the more than 3,170 men and women condemned to die. Of the 729 death row prisoners, overwhelmingly concentrated at San Quentin, 14 have exhausted all appeals. The only thing standing between them and the death chamber are court-directed negotiations over which combination of deadly chemicals to inject in their veins to avoid the charge of “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Proposition 34 (the SAFE California Act), which is on the ballot in the November elections, calls to repeal the state’s death penalty and replace it with life without parole. As Marxists, we oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to determine who lives and who dies, and welcome any measure against the death penalty or curtailing the reach of the state’s killing machine. While the measure is couched as a means of making the system of capitalist repression more effective and efficient, including by redirecting money to police departments, what is primary for us in calling for a “yes” vote is that the SAFE Act is a referendum on state-sanctioned murder.

The very name ascribed to this ballot initiative by its sponsors, the “Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act,” expresses the cruel calculus of capitalist “justice,” weighing the costs of legal murder against the expense of relegating prisoners to a living death on what class-war political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal so aptly calls “life row.” Arguing that “California’s death penalty is an empty promise,” the act appeals for a more efficient and effective punishment. Whipping up the spectre of depraved criminals on the loose, the SAFE Act declares: “Killers and rapists walk our streets free and threaten our safety, while we spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a select few who are already behind bars forever on death row.... By replacing the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole, we would save the state $1 billion in five years without releasing a single prisoner.” One hundred million dollars of these “savings” is pledged to the cops, courts and prosecutors.

Yet despite all of these sops to the forces of “law and order,” the California District Attorneys Association, the State Sheriffs’ Association and a number of other police agencies are literally screaming murder. Their “Vote No on Prop 34” Web site promotes speeding up the state’s killing machine. It proposes streamlining the appeals process to get rid of “delay tactics” and instituting a one-drug protocol of death, pointing to Ohio, where 14 death row prisoners have been killed by this method since 2009. Declaring that life without parole “will cost taxpayers more in healthcare costs” for aging inmates, these opponents of the SAFE Act argue that savings can be made by no longer housing death row prisoners in single cells. Reveling in barbarism, their “Mend It, Don’t End It” statement concludes with the bloodthirsty complaint that “cop killers, baby killers and serial killers who rightfully received the death penalty do not deserve the benefits they have at San Quentin.”

In our opposition to the death penalty, we are equally committed to the abolition of life without parole, the prisons and all the barbaric institutions of the capitalist state. Our purpose is to arm the working class with the understanding that the cops, courts, prisons and military make up the apparatus for the violent repression of the working class and the oppressed in defense of the power and profits of the capitalist rulers. It will take nothing short of proletarian socialist revolution to sweep this state away.

Voices from Death Row

Some of the condemned men on San Quentin’s death row have also raised their opposition to the SAFE Act. They have spoken out against being entombed for life in prison with their appeals cut off and forced to be unpaid slave laborers as restitution for their alleged crimes. Among these prisoners is Kevin Cooper, a black man framed up for the killing of a white family in 1983. In 2004, only hours before he was to be strapped to the death chamber gurney, Cooper was granted a stay of execution. Despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence and a more than 100-page opinion by Judge William Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal arguing that the “State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,” in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Cooper’s appeal of his sentence.

Cooper argues that the SAFE Act’s repeal of all avenues of appeal for those now sentenced to death is “a step backwards in our ability to challenge our convictions,” condemning them to life behind bars in prisons “worse than death row.” It is a profoundly searing indictment of this country’s judicial system that some prisoners prefer a death sentence on the grounds that this provides some means to prove their innocence and avoids the worse day-to-day violence and torture in the maximum-security prison chambers. The accused and convicted should get the best representation possible and the benefit of all legal redress. Nonetheless, as Cooper’s case itself demonstrates, death penalty appeals provide little more than a facade of “due process.”

In California, the death sentence carries one automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court. According to a 2011 report by senior U.S. Appeals court judge Arthur L. Alarcón and Professor Paula M. Mitchell of the Loyola Law School Los Angeles, the average wait between the original conviction and a decision by the California Supreme Court is ten years, and the death sentence has been upheld in more than 90 percent of the cases. In state habeas petitions, inmates wait eight to ten years simply for appointment of counsel. Since 1978, new evidentiary hearings have been granted in just 31 of the 689 appeals filed. Only after all state appeals have been exhausted can death row prisoners file habeas petitions with the federal courts. Of the 970 people condemned to death in California since 1978, only 54 have obtained new trials from such appeals; 32 other death row prisoners died awaiting a decision.

A major obstacle in this Kafkaesque maze of appeals is finding a lawyer with the qualifications and resources to take on a habeas petition. As San Quentin death row prisoner Darrell Lomax wrote: “There are over 300 people on death row in California who have been here for over 10 years, myself included, who have not yet received appointment of counsel. I have been waiting over 15 years to clear my name” (Socialist Worker, 12 April).

We profoundly sympathize with Cooper and other death house inmates who oppose the SAFE Act. Confined to cages within cages, behind layer after layer of stone walls, iron gates and beset by sadistic screws, the measure appears to deprive them of the sole possibility of relief, no matter how remote, in the racist capitalist courts. They don’t see the possibility of working-class and other social struggle outside the prison walls that might change their fate. And little wonder, as there has been precious little struggle, thanks above all to the endless betrayals by the trade-union misleaders.

But the executed have no appeals. Any fight for their freedom is forever silenced by death. As another prisoner on San Quentin’s death row, Donald Ray Young, wrote: “We said ‘I am Troy Davis.’ Many of us said that we were Stanley Tookie Williams. Cameron Todd Dillingham was another innocent person on death row; the Texas criminal justice system executed him in our name. If we had abolished capital punishment, all three of these men would still be alive, able to prove their innocence to the world. No one enjoys a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP), but it definitely keeps Mumia Abu-Jamal speaking truth to power” (San Francisco Bayview, 5 June).

Does any fighter for Mumia’s freedom think that he would be better off staying on death row because he might have a chance to appeal his frame-up conviction—repeatedly upheld by court after court—before the U.S. Supreme Court? Now off death row, for the first time in more than 30 years, Mumia is able to embrace his wife, family and other visitors, and has access to sunlight and exercise. But we found no “justice” in the Philadelphia D.A.’s decision last December to stop seeking a death sentence. As the Partisan Defense Committee wrote: “While it is welcome that Mumia will no longer be under the threat of state execution, it is an abomination that this innocent man, who has already spent 30 years entombed, is condemned to a living death in prison.... Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia” (see WV No. 993, 6 January).

Our fight for Mumia and to abolish the racist death penalty is rooted in the program of the class struggle, looking to mobilize the social power of the workers both in the U.S. and internationally. This faces many obstacles, not least the pro-capitalist labor bureaucrats who overwhelmingly refuse to call their members into action to defend their economic interests, much less in defense of a black political prisoner.

The Warden, the D.A. and “Law and Order” Liberals

In 1972, the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as a violation of the state’s constitution. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was “wanton” and “freakish,” leading to a moratorium on its application. Those decisions reflected the tumultuous social struggles of the time, from the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s to the mass protests against U.S. imperialism’s dirty war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants. The struggles on the streets and campuses reached into the prisons and even among U.S. troops in Vietnam, intersecting growing discontent in sections of the working class. After these struggles had subsided or were co-opted or smashed, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Today, opposition among sections of the bourgeoisie to the death penalty and prison overcrowding is at bottom driven by considerations of expediency, as seen in arguments that the current system of mass incarceration and death costs too much money and is “broken.” On the other side are those who believe that only the most monstrous measures of repression can keep the working class and oppressed cowed in the face of intensifying exploitation and mounting misery.

The main spokesman for the SAFE Act is Jeanne Woodford, a former San Quentin warden who oversaw four executions and was appointed Director of the Department of Corrections under Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Another prominent supporter is former L.A. County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, a Democrat who was a key actor in the 27-year campaign of frame-up, cover-up and imprisonment of renowned Black Panther Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt). Now, Garcetti ghoulishly complains that California’s death penalty is “totally ineffective” because “most inmates are going to die of natural causes, not executions” (AP, 24 April).

Other endorsers include the two right-wing Republicans, Don Heller and Ron Briggs, who authored the 1978 California proposition called the “Death Penalty Act,” which expanded the categories and circumstances of crimes punishable by death or life without parole. For them, the state’s kill rate hasn’t been high enough. Briggs wrote in a Los Angeles Times (12 February) op-ed piece: “Never did we envision a multibillion-dollar industry that packs murderers onto death row for decades of extremely expensive incarceration. We thought we would empty death row, not triple its population.”

Joining this chorus are the liberal anti-death penalty advocates of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Northern California chapter wrote:

“The facts prove that life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is swift, severe, and certain punishment. The reality is that people sentenced to LWOP have been condemned to die in prison and that’s what happens: They die in prison of natural causes, just like the majority of people sentenced to death. The differences: Sentencing people to death by execution is three times more expensive than sentencing them to die in prison.”

—“The Hidden Death Tax,” www.aclunc.org

Given the notorious overcrowding and denial of medical care that forced California prisons into federal court receivership, death by disease, aging and (not mentioned) suicide would clearly be a “bargain” by the calculus of these law-and-order liberals! Similarly, the “big savings” of $100-plus million a year that might be accrued from overturning the death penalty is a drop in the bucket compared to the $8.9 billion the state government spends to maintain its prison hellholes. But such doesn’t feature in the account books of those promoting life without parole as a thrifty alternative to death.

In its article “A Closer Look at SAFE California” (Socialist Worker, 24 May), the International Socialist Organization (ISO) points to the case of Stanley Tookie Williams, who was legally lynched at San Quentin in 2005 with the executioners digging into his arms for 20 minutes to inject their cocktail of death. Accepting the sick bourgeois lie that the prisons are meant for “rehabilitation,” the ISO points to Williams’ work behind bars for gang prevention as having “illustrated how people can change, undermining the claim that the death penalty is reserved for those beyond redemption”! They continue by complaining that “SAFE Act proponents unfortunately have chosen a strategy that negates this potential, instead highlighting life without the possibility of parole.” To promote the notion of “redemption” in prison is to buy into the entire notion of crime and punishment, a barbaric relic of ancient religious codes asserting that one can be “saved” through repentance.

An article titled “Sophie’s Choice 2012: Death Penalty vs. LWOP” by Chris Kinder, a leading spokesman for the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal (LACMAJ), laments: “There’s nothing in the initiative about racism in the system, or why black death-row convicts outnumber whites way out of proportion to population.... Nor does it address why cops routinely get away with murdering people of color in this [sic] streets, or why cops and courts systematically frame up who they want to get without regard to the truth.” While Kinder ends by declaring that “the system itself needs to be overturned,” only someone with an abiding belief in the inherent justice of this system would expect that the cabal of former jailers and prosecutors who authored the SAFE Act would ever address the racial and class bias that is at the core of capitalist justice in this country.

For years, such touching faith in the capitalist state led the reformist left to demand a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal from the very courts that framed him up and sentenced him to death for his outspoken defiance of their racist injustice system. The reformists’ purpose was to “broaden the movement” by appealing to law-and-order liberals like the ACLU and others who promote “life” in prison without the possibility of parole.

As revolutionary Marxists, we do not seek to advise the bourgeoisie on the more “humane” or “just” administration of its increasingly decrepit and depraved rule. Whether it is the death penalty, life in prison without parole or imprisonment in general, we oppose the entire machinery of violence that is the capitalist state.

We will vote for Proposition 34. But we understand that ending the death penalty would not fundamentally change the violently racist and oppressive nature of capitalist class rule. It would not free the innocent, like Mumia, languishing in America’s dungeons or spare the victims of racist police executions on the streets. Nor would it alter the slower death of the growing ranks of the poor, jobless and homeless, or the agony of the sick who lack medical care. Our purpose is the fight to forge the nucleus of the revolutionary workers party that will lead the proletariat in overthrowing this system through socialist revolution. When those who labor rule, the death penalty will be abolished for good and the capitalists’ prisons smashed as initial steps in the emancipation of all the exploited and oppressed. 

 

On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Troy Davis-From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-"Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder"-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Workers Vanguard No. 987
30 September 2011

Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder

Troy Davis is dead. At 11:08 p.m. on September 21, Davis, a 42-year-old black man, was murdered by the legal guardians of the capitalist ruling class. For 22 years, Davis fought to prove his innocence of the 1989 killing of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia, only to spend the last moments of his life strapped to an execution gurney. For its part, the U.S. Supreme Court went through the charade of reviewing his petition for a last-minute stay of execution. As protests took place around the world, hundreds of Davis’s supporters rallied outside the Jackson, Georgia, prison—officially known as the Diagnostic and Classification Prison—while millions followed the story on TVs, radios and cell phones, hoping for a semblance of justice for this black man caught in the American “justice” system.

The killing of Troy Davis was racist legal lynching! In place of hooded KKK nightriders were pin-striped prosecutors and black-robed judges, along with the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which turned down Davis’s bid for clemency the day before the execution. In place of the lynch rope were needles dispensing the life-ending chemical cocktail. The substantial evidence of Davis’s innocence meant nothing. A white uniformed enforcer of capitalist law and order had been killed, and this black life had to be taken in return. Here is a stark demonstration of the workings of the capitalist state—an instrument of organized violence to protect the class rule and profits of the tiny handful of capitalists against the workers and the oppressed. The death penalty is the ultimate sanction of a “justice” system that is not only stacked against workers and the poor but also, in this society founded on slavery and maintained on a bedrock of black oppression, racist to its core.

The story of Troy Davis’s frame-up is a familiar one for black people in this country. In 1991, he was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable “eyewitness” identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops. Not a shred of physical evidence linked him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution’s nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts were a man who may be the actual killer and another who first denied being able to identify the shooter, only to finger Davis at trial two years later.

What sets Davis’s case apart were the worldwide calls to stop his execution, ultimately including even former FBI director William Sessions and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr—both staunch proponents of capital punishment—as well as the Pope and ex-president Jimmy Carter. Protests were held in cities internationally following the signing of his death warrant on September 6. In the last days of his life over 600,000 people signed petitions on Davis’s behalf. Just as a federal court judge last year dismissed evidence of Davis’s innocence as “smoke and mirrors,” the state authorities answered these calls for mercy with contempt.

Almost a century ago, Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs powerfully condemned the barbarism of the death penalty, writing in a May 1913 letter: “The taking of human life through criminal impulse or in an hour of passion by an individual is not to be compared to the immeasurably greater crime committed by the State when it deliberately puts to death the individual charged with such crime. Society may not consistently condemn murder as long as it is itself red-handed with that crime.”

As Marxists, we oppose the death penalty on principle and everywhere—from the capitalist U.S., Japan, Iran and Russia to the Chinese deformed workers state. This principle applies for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Abolish the racist death penalty!

Legacy of Slavery

Other than the U.S. and Japan, every advanced capitalist country has eliminated capital punishment as part of its criminal code. The European bourgeoisies are brutally repressive. But the continued use of the death penalty in the U.S. speaks to the particular depravity of this country’s capitalist rulers. More fundamentally, capital punishment in the U.S. is rooted in the origins of its capitalist system, which was built on the backs of black slaves. Under the Slave Codes, blacks were killed with impunity for “crimes” ranging from insolence toward whites to rebellion against the slave masters.

This legacy can be seen today in the dungeons of death row. Of the more than 3,200 men and women there, over 40 percent are black, and another 12 percent are Latino. Among the 36 states that maintain the death penalty, California has the largest death row population. But capital punishment remains a largely Southern institution. Over 70 percent of executions since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 have taken place in the states of the former Confederacy—and more than half of those in Texas and Virginia. In Davis’s Georgia, black males make up 15 percent of the population but constitute nearly half of those on death row.

Among those speaking out against the racist death penalty is the family of James Anderson, a black auto worker who was brutally murdered by white-supremacists in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 26 (see “Lynch Mob Murder of Black Worker,” WV No. 985, 2 September). In a letter to the Hinds County district attorney, Anderson’s sister Barbara Anderson Young asked that he “not seek the death penalty for anyone involved in James’ murder,” noting the family’s religious opposition to capital punishment. She added, “We also oppose the death penalty because it historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.”

The cheapness of black life to the American ruling class is evident not just in who is sent to death row, but also in whose loss of life constitutes a capital offense. Although blacks and whites are murder victims in roughly the same numbers, 80 percent of those executed have been convicted of killing a white person. Just hours before Troy Davis was put to death, the state of Texas executed Lawrence Brewer, one of three racist thugs convicted for the gruesome 1998 killing of James Byrd, a black man who was decapitated as he was dragged to death from the back of a pickup truck. While Texas has carried out over 470 executions since 1976, Brewer became only the second white person ever executed in the state for the murder of a black person.

The discriminatory application of the death penalty was sanctified by the U.S. Supreme Court 24 years ago in the case of Warren McCleskey, a black prisoner who was executed in Georgia in 1991. McCleskey’s attorneys presented the Court with an authoritative study detailing that black people in Georgia convicted of killing whites were sentenced to death 22 times more frequently than those convicted of killing blacks. In rejecting McCleskey’s appeal, the Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged that to accept this premise would throw “into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system.” In its callous pronouncement, the court expressed a basic truth. McCleskey was a victim of the racism that pervades the criminal justice system—who the cops stop on the street, who the prosecutors choose to indict, what charges and sentences are sought, who sits on juries, who gets paroled and who gets executed.

The buildup to Troy Davis’s execution sparked something of a public discussion on capital punishment in the bourgeois press, especially as it intersected the ascendance of Texas governor Rick Perry as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Earlier this month, Texas authorities had planned to execute four prisoners in the space of a week. Among those was Duane Buck, whose September 15 execution was stayed by the Supreme Court at the last minute. Convicted of killing his former girlfriend and a friend of hers in 1995, Buck was one of seven black men sentenced to death based on the “expert” testimony of a Texas prison psychologist that because they were black they should be expected to engage in violent behavior in the future!

Death Penalty: Bipartisan Policy

At the September 7 Republican candidates’ debate, Perry received a wild ovation for having overseen 234 executions. He further burnished his credentials by assuring moderator Brian Williams that this body count never cost him a wink of sleep. In an editorial titled “Cheering on the Death Machine,” the New York Times (11 September) declared that Perry’s “attitude about death may make sense in the hard-edged Republican primaries, but other voters should have serious doubts about a man who seems to have none.”

There is no question that the sinister Christian fundamentalist Perry is an outright reactionary, one of several in the Republican contest. But the Democrats—the other party of racist capitalist rule—are themselves no slouches in administering the rulers’ assembly line of death. Barack Obama, a supporter of the death penalty, refused to intervene as time ran out for Davis, with press secretary Jay Carney declaring: “It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”

Obama was not so shy about “weighing in” on the case of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther spokesman and a MOVE supporter who was framed up and sentenced to death on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. State and federal courts have repeatedly refused to hear the massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including another man’s confession to the killing. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Michael Smerconish, a right-wing Philadelphia journalist leading the calls for Mumia’s head, asked Obama about Mumia’s case. According to Smerconish, Obama replied by denying knowing much about the case while assuring him nevertheless that anyone convicted of killing a cop should be executed or imprisoned for life.

What to expect of the Democrats can be seen in the case of Shaka Sankofa, who was executed in June 2000 at the height of the presidential campaign in the face of international opposition similar to that which sought to stop Davis’s execution. As then-governor of Texas George W. Bush and his advisers weighed the political risks of stopping the execution—or not—his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, not only reaffirmed his commitment to the death penalty but gave the go-ahead to execute a likely innocent man, declaring that “mistakes are inevitable.” Eight years earlier, Bill Clinton interrupted his first presidential campaign by flying back to Arkansas, where he was governor, to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black man.

The liberals at the New York Times may be appalled that Rick Perry and the Republican right openly revel in state murder and indifference to the likelihood of killing innocent people. But Perry & Co. are only giving voice to what has been ruling-class policy—implemented by Democrats and Republicans alike—to massively bolster the repressive forces of the capitalist state. It was Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that cut off the possibilities of presenting new evidence of innocence by eviscerating the right of federal habeas corpus to overturn state death sentences. By 2010, the prison population had reached 2.3 million people, over half of whom were black and Latino, the majority convicted on nonviolent drug charges. In the calculations of the American bourgeoisie, the urban ghettos, which used to provide a reservoir of unskilled labor for the auto plants and steel mills, are simply written off as an expendable population, revealing the racist rulers’ impulse to genocide.

While a widely cited poll shows that nearly two-thirds of the population continues to support the death penalty, there has been a drop in public support over the past several years. The fact that more than 130 people on death row have been proven innocent since 1973, including through DNA testing in recent years, has given sections of the ruling class some pause in the accelerated rush to execution, and juries have become a little more reluctant to issue death sentences. On March 9, Illinois became the fifth state since 2004 to eliminate the death penalty.

In their attempts to fine-tune the system of capitalist repression, liberals often promote the living death of “life without parole” as an alternative to state execution. A New York Times (12 September) editorial upholds life without parole as “a sound option” in capital cases even though it complains that this sentence is otherwise often misused. The Times pointed out that blacks make up 56.4 percent of those serving life without parole in the U.S. but only 37.5 percent of the country’s prison population. This statistic further underscores that there can be no fair or “humane” system of “justice” for minorities or for the working class as a whole in a society based on the exploitation of labor and maintained through the special oppression of black people.

While the face of death row is now primarily black and Latino, fighters for labor’s cause have also been targeted for death by the capitalist state: the Haymarket anarchists, labor organizers who fought for the eight-hour day and were put to death in 1877; IWW organizer Joe Hill, executed in 1915; anarchist workers Sacco and Vanzetti, who died in the electric chair in 1927. This ruling-class venom toward those perceived as challenging their oppressive rule is seen today in the death sentence hanging over the head of Mumia, a prize-winning journalist renowned as a powerful voice for the oppressed.

Following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, James P. Cannon, founder and secretary of the International Labor Defense, wrote: “It is the vengeful, cruel and murderous class which the workers must fight and conquer before the regime of imprisonment, torture and murder can be ended. This is the message from the chair of death. This is the lesson of the Sacco-Vanzetti case” (“A Living Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti,” Labor Defender, October 1927). This too must be the lesson of the case of Troy Davis, whose murder at the hands of the state will be avenged when a workers party leads all the exploited and oppressed in a socialist revolution that sweeps away the entire barbaric apparatus of capitalist repression.

On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Troy Anthony Davis- Never Forget- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Troy Anthony Davis and information on his case.

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963

Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:

No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty-The Film "Incendiary"-The Texas Willingham Case- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Special Screening:

A feature film about the Willingham case www.incediarywovie.com
Coming soon!

Please e-mail us if you would like
to be notified of the schedule or
follow MCAPP on Facebook

Dear Friends:

2011 has been another good year for Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty. It is 64 years and counting since Massachusetts had its last execution. That has not slowed down those favoring the death penalty from seeking to restore it - Rep. Bradley Jones, the House minority leader, and Rep. James Micelli each filed bills that parallel the effort by former-Governor Romney to create a "perfect" death penalty. The Joint Committee on the^Jndiciary held hearings on them in October. You can read MCADP's testimony in opposition to the bills on our website, www. mcadp.org. We hope to report to you soon that the bills have been rejected.

But events from around the country have reminded us of the many reasons to oppose capital punishment. Despite protests by you, our members, and many thousands in this state and around the country, Georgia put to death Troy Davis on September 21, 2011 for the shooting death of police officer Mark MacPhail. Even though most of the witnesses who identified Davis as the shooter had recanted their testimony, Davis was never given an opportunity for a re-trial.

Texas Governor Rick Perry's entrance into the presidential race has brought a renewed focus on one of the particular outrages of Texas's capital punishment system - the execution of Todd Willingham for his supposed murder-by-arson of his three young daughters, despite overwhelming evidence that came out after the trial that the fire was not arson.

MCADP will be co-sponsoring a special showing of the feature film about the Willingham case, Incendiary, directed by Steve Mims of the University of Texas at Austin film department and William Bailey, Jr., a Texas lawyer and filmmaker. You can see the trailer for the film at: www.incendiarymovie.com.

We hope to schedule the screening in December or January at the Boston Common or Harvard Square movie theaters. This showing of Incendiary, which is not scheduled for general release, was made possible by MCADP teaming up with a consortium of independent film producers who have reached agreement with major movie theaters for specially arranged showings of independent films.

And please let MCADP know your email address or join our Facebook page to receive notices about this film showing, including the date, time and place and how to buy advance tickets.

If you have not already done so, please renew your membership for 2012 in MCADP now. Your generous support, through renewal and contributions, is essential to MCADP's mission.

Many thanks,

David M. Ehrmann, Chairman

From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Workers Vanguard No. 987
30 September 2011

Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder

Troy Davis is dead. At 11:08 p.m. on September 21, Davis, a 42-year-old black man, was murdered by the legal guardians of the capitalist ruling class. For 22 years, Davis fought to prove his innocence of the 1989 killing of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia, only to spend the last moments of his life strapped to an execution gurney. For its part, the U.S. Supreme Court went through the charade of reviewing his petition for a last-minute stay of execution. As protests took place around the world, hundreds of Davis’s supporters rallied outside the Jackson, Georgia, prison—officially known as the Diagnostic and Classification Prison—while millions followed the story on TVs, radios and cell phones, hoping for a semblance of justice for this black man caught in the American “justice” system.

The killing of Troy Davis was racist legal lynching! In place of hooded KKK nightriders were pin-striped prosecutors and black-robed judges, along with the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which turned down Davis’s bid for clemency the day before the execution. In place of the lynch rope were needles dispensing the life-ending chemical cocktail. The substantial evidence of Davis’s innocence meant nothing. A white uniformed enforcer of capitalist law and order had been killed, and this black life had to be taken in return. Here is a stark demonstration of the workings of the capitalist state—an instrument of organized violence to protect the class rule and profits of the tiny handful of capitalists against the workers and the oppressed. The death penalty is the ultimate sanction of a “justice” system that is not only stacked against workers and the poor but also, in this society founded on slavery and maintained on a bedrock of black oppression, racist to its core.

The story of Troy Davis’s frame-up is a familiar one for black people in this country. In 1991, he was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable “eyewitness” identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops. Not a shred of physical evidence linked him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution’s nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts were a man who may be the actual killer and another who first denied being able to identify the shooter, only to finger Davis at trial two years later.

What sets Davis’s case apart were the worldwide calls to stop his execution, ultimately including even former FBI director William Sessions and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr—both staunch proponents of capital punishment—as well as the Pope and ex-president Jimmy Carter. Protests were held in cities internationally following the signing of his death warrant on September 6. In the last days of his life over 600,000 people signed petitions on Davis’s behalf. Just as a federal court judge last year dismissed evidence of Davis’s innocence as “smoke and mirrors,” the state authorities answered these calls for mercy with contempt.

Almost a century ago, Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs powerfully condemned the barbarism of the death penalty, writing in a May 1913 letter: “The taking of human life through criminal impulse or in an hour of passion by an individual is not to be compared to the immeasurably greater crime committed by the State when it deliberately puts to death the individual charged with such crime. Society may not consistently condemn murder as long as it is itself red-handed with that crime.”

As Marxists, we oppose the death penalty on principle and everywhere—from the capitalist U.S., Japan, Iran and Russia to the Chinese deformed workers state. This principle applies for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Abolish the racist death penalty!

Legacy of Slavery

Other than the U.S. and Japan, every advanced capitalist country has eliminated capital punishment as part of its criminal code. The European bourgeoisies are brutally repressive. But the continued use of the death penalty in the U.S. speaks to the particular depravity of this country’s capitalist rulers. More fundamentally, capital punishment in the U.S. is rooted in the origins of its capitalist system, which was built on the backs of black slaves. Under the Slave Codes, blacks were killed with impunity for “crimes” ranging from insolence toward whites to rebellion against the slave masters.

This legacy can be seen today in the dungeons of death row. Of the more than 3,200 men and women there, over 40 percent are black, and another 12 percent are Latino. Among the 36 states that maintain the death penalty, California has the largest death row population. But capital punishment remains a largely Southern institution. Over 70 percent of executions since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 have taken place in the states of the former Confederacy—and more than half of those in Texas and Virginia. In Davis’s Georgia, black males make up 15 percent of the population but constitute nearly half of those on death row.

Among those speaking out against the racist death penalty is the family of James Anderson, a black auto worker who was brutally murdered by white-supremacists in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 26 (see “Lynch Mob Murder of Black Worker,” WV No. 985, 2 September). In a letter to the Hinds County district attorney, Anderson’s sister Barbara Anderson Young asked that he “not seek the death penalty for anyone involved in James’ murder,” noting the family’s religious opposition to capital punishment. She added, “We also oppose the death penalty because it historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.”

The cheapness of black life to the American ruling class is evident not just in who is sent to death row, but also in whose loss of life constitutes a capital offense. Although blacks and whites are murder victims in roughly the same numbers, 80 percent of those executed have been convicted of killing a white person. Just hours before Troy Davis was put to death, the state of Texas executed Lawrence Brewer, one of three racist thugs convicted for the gruesome 1998 killing of James Byrd, a black man who was decapitated as he was dragged to death from the back of a pickup truck. While Texas has carried out over 470 executions since 1976, Brewer became only the second white person ever executed in the state for the murder of a black person.

The discriminatory application of the death penalty was sanctified by the U.S. Supreme Court 24 years ago in the case of Warren McCleskey, a black prisoner who was executed in Georgia in 1991. McCleskey’s attorneys presented the Court with an authoritative study detailing that black people in Georgia convicted of killing whites were sentenced to death 22 times more frequently than those convicted of killing blacks. In rejecting McCleskey’s appeal, the Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged that to accept this premise would throw “into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system.” In its callous pronouncement, the court expressed a basic truth. McCleskey was a victim of the racism that pervades the criminal justice system—who the cops stop on the street, who the prosecutors choose to indict, what charges and sentences are sought, who sits on juries, who gets paroled and who gets executed.

The buildup to Troy Davis’s execution sparked something of a public discussion on capital punishment in the bourgeois press, especially as it intersected the ascendance of Texas governor Rick Perry as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Earlier this month, Texas authorities had planned to execute four prisoners in the space of a week. Among those was Duane Buck, whose September 15 execution was stayed by the Supreme Court at the last minute. Convicted of killing his former girlfriend and a friend of hers in 1995, Buck was one of seven black men sentenced to death based on the “expert” testimony of a Texas prison psychologist that because they were black they should be expected to engage in violent behavior in the future!

Death Penalty: Bipartisan Policy

At the September 7 Republican candidates’ debate, Perry received a wild ovation for having overseen 234 executions. He further burnished his credentials by assuring moderator Brian Williams that this body count never cost him a wink of sleep. In an editorial titled “Cheering on the Death Machine,” the New York Times (11 September) declared that Perry’s “attitude about death may make sense in the hard-edged Republican primaries, but other voters should have serious doubts about a man who seems to have none.”

There is no question that the sinister Christian fundamentalist Perry is an outright reactionary, one of several in the Republican contest. But the Democrats—the other party of racist capitalist rule—are themselves no slouches in administering the rulers’ assembly line of death. Barack Obama, a supporter of the death penalty, refused to intervene as time ran out for Davis, with press secretary Jay Carney declaring: “It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”

Obama was not so shy about “weighing in” on the case of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther spokesman and a MOVE supporter who was framed up and sentenced to death on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. State and federal courts have repeatedly refused to hear the massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including another man’s confession to the killing. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Michael Smerconish, a right-wing Philadelphia journalist leading the calls for Mumia’s head, asked Obama about Mumia’s case. According to Smerconish, Obama replied by denying knowing much about the case while assuring him nevertheless that anyone convicted of killing a cop should be executed or imprisoned for life.

What to expect of the Democrats can be seen in the case of Shaka Sankofa, who was executed in June 2000 at the height of the presidential campaign in the face of international opposition similar to that which sought to stop Davis’s execution. As then-governor of Texas George W. Bush and his advisers weighed the political risks of stopping the execution—or not—his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, not only reaffirmed his commitment to the death penalty but gave the go-ahead to execute a likely innocent man, declaring that “mistakes are inevitable.” Eight years earlier, Bill Clinton interrupted his first presidential campaign by flying back to Arkansas, where he was governor, to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black man.

The liberals at the New York Times may be appalled that Rick Perry and the Republican right openly revel in state murder and indifference to the likelihood of killing innocent people. But Perry & Co. are only giving voice to what has been ruling-class policy—implemented by Democrats and Republicans alike—to massively bolster the repressive forces of the capitalist state. It was Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that cut off the possibilities of presenting new evidence of innocence by eviscerating the right of federal habeas corpus to overturn state death sentences. By 2010, the prison population had reached 2.3 million people, over half of whom were black and Latino, the majority convicted on nonviolent drug charges. In the calculations of the American bourgeoisie, the urban ghettos, which used to provide a reservoir of unskilled labor for the auto plants and steel mills, are simply written off as an expendable population, revealing the racist rulers’ impulse to genocide.

While a widely cited poll shows that nearly two-thirds of the population continues to support the death penalty, there has been a drop in public support over the past several years. The fact that more than 130 people on death row have been proven innocent since 1973, including through DNA testing in recent years, has given sections of the ruling class some pause in the accelerated rush to execution, and juries have become a little more reluctant to issue death sentences. On March 9, Illinois became the fifth state since 2004 to eliminate the death penalty.

In their attempts to fine-tune the system of capitalist repression, liberals often promote the living death of “life without parole” as an alternative to state execution. A New York Times (12 September) editorial upholds life without parole as “a sound option” in capital cases even though it complains that this sentence is otherwise often misused. The Times pointed out that blacks make up 56.4 percent of those serving life without parole in the U.S. but only 37.5 percent of the country’s prison population. This statistic further underscores that there can be no fair or “humane” system of “justice” for minorities or for the working class as a whole in a society based on the exploitation of labor and maintained through the special oppression of black people.

While the face of death row is now primarily black and Latino, fighters for labor’s cause have also been targeted for death by the capitalist state: the Haymarket anarchists, labor organizers who fought for the eight-hour day and were put to death in 1877; IWW organizer Joe Hill, executed in 1915; anarchist workers Sacco and Vanzetti, who died in the electric chair in 1927. This ruling-class venom toward those perceived as challenging their oppressive rule is seen today in the death sentence hanging over the head of Mumia, a prize-winning journalist renowned as a powerful voice for the oppressed.

Following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, James P. Cannon, founder and secretary of the International Labor Defense, wrote: “It is the vengeful, cruel and murderous class which the workers must fight and conquer before the regime of imprisonment, torture and murder can be ended. This is the message from the chair of death. This is the lesson of the Sacco-Vanzetti case” (“A Living Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti,” Labor Defender, October 1927). This too must be the lesson of the case of Troy Davis, whose murder at the hands of the state will be avenged when a workers party leads all the exploited and oppressed in a socialist revolution that sweeps away the entire barbaric apparatus of capitalist repression.

Via Boston IndyMedia-Troy Davis' final letter to his supporters-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty- Never Forget The Execution Of Troy Davis

Click on headline to link, via Boston IndyMedia, to Troy Davis' final letter to his supporters.

Markin comment:

Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty- Never Forget The Execution Of Troy Davis

State-Sponsored Murder: Official US Policy - by Stephen Lendman-On The Execution Of Troy Anthony Davis

State-Sponsored Murder: Official US Policy
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 23 Sep 2011
police state
State-Sponsored Murder: Official US Policy - by Stephen Lendman

Georgia's September 21 cold-blooded murder of Troy Anthony Davis symbolizes what's wrong with America.

Notably, the system at all levels is hopelessly corrupted and broken. The only option is tearing it down and starting over.

Doing it Venezuela's way under Chavez works. Both nations are constitutional worlds apart.

In his September 17 article titled, "Chavez versus Obama: Facing Presidential Elections in 2012," James Petras said:

"Chavez following his democratic socialist program pursues policies promoting large scale long-term public investment and spending directed at employment, social welfare and economic growth."

In contrast, Obama, like his predecessors, is "guided by his ideological commitment to corporate financial capitalism."

As a result, he "pours billions into bailing out Wall Street speculators, focuses on reducing the public deficit and slashes taxes and offers government subsidies" at the expense of social needs gone begging.

He also wages war on humanity, is head of state at a time America's prison population is by far the world's largest, persecutes Muslims and Latinos for political advantage, and supports America's state-sponsored murder policy on death row or by bombs, missiles and shells.

Contrary to popular myth, checks and balances never constrained America's three branches.

From inception to now, sitting governments acted with or without popular approval - within and outside the law.

America's system is autonomous and detached in a realm of its own. It favors privileged elements over others in society.

Constraining barriers don't exist, so sitting governments operate as they wish. As a result, they're consistently unresponsive to rule of law standards or popular interests with rare short-lived exceptions.

Doing the right thing was never America's long suit. In contrast, Chavez transformed Venezuela from a corporatist swamp to a socially responsible state.

After taking office in February 1999, he held a national referendum to let Venezuelans decide whether to convene a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution that embodied visionary social change.

It passed overwhelmingly followed three months later by elections to the National Assembly to which members of Chavez's then MVR party and those allied with it won 95% of the seats.

They, in turn, drafted the revolutionary Constitucion de la Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela. In December 1999, a second referendum overwhelmingly approved it, changing everything responsibly from then to now.

It established a humanistic participatory social democracy, unimaginable in America. It provided real (not imagined) checks and balances in the nation's five branches of government. They include the executive, legislative, and judicial, as well as an independent national electoral council and public power branch, giving Venezuelans a say in their own government.

This branch includes the attorney general, the defender of the people, and the comptroller general. The principle of participatory democracy was established.

Discrimination was banned. Free expression as well as fair and open elections are promoted. So are gender equity and indigenous peoples' rights. Essential social benefits were mandated, including quality free education to the highest levels, healthcare and more.

Venezuela uses its resources responsibly. It also:

• respects rule of law principles;

• human and civil rights;

• promotes global solidarity, equality and social justice;

• opposes imperial wars;

• doesn't invade its neighbors or practice torture;

• rejects exploiting people for profit; and

• in 1863, was the first country to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.


In contrast, violence and killing define America. It's the only Western country still enforcing capital punishment.

It's disproportionately used against racially disadvantaged minorities, mainly Blacks with about 12% of the population but over 40% of death row prisoners.

One among others stood out for having captured world attention for months - Troy Anthony Davis, an innocent man condemned to death. On September 21, Georgia scheduled his state-sponsored murder at about 7:00PM. A last minute rejected Supreme Court appeal delayed it until 10:53PM.

A lethal injection then rendered him unconscious. A second one paralyzed his muscles, suffocating him. A third induced a massive heart attack, murdering him. At 11:08PM, he was pronounced dead, a testimony to America's moral depravity.

Throughout his ordeal, Obama stayed silent. A simple presidential act could have saved him even though only courts have judicial authority. Nonetheless, his bully pulpit power would have made the difference if used with enough presidential authority. He didn't act. He stood aside and let Troy die, victimized by a nation uncaring about its least advantaged.

A final evening vigil failed. A one line Supreme Court denial without comment ended his last hope. Thousands protested in vain outside Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison surrounded by hundreds of police.

On September 10, a message from Troy thanked his hundreds of thousands of global supporters, saying:

"I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication the Human Rights and Human Kindness. In the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith."

"As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand."

"I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing joy....(T)his is not a case about the death penalty. This is not a case about Troy Davis. This is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail."

"We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country."

"I can't wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form. I will one day be announcing,"

"I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!"

"Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!"

He said so many others are like him. Around 2.4 million languish in America's homeland gulag. Countless others fill its overseas prison hellholes, enduring torture and other crimes against humanity.

Davis was one of America's 3,251 death row inmates, its 34th 2011 state-sponsored murder victim. Others like him were executed for crimes they didn't commit. It happens with too frequent regularity. It amounts to 15th century summary judgment Inquisition barbarity. It flouts due process, judicial fairness and humanity, violating equal constitutional protection.

It disproportionately affects people of color, the poor, and disadvantaged. It legitimizes state-sponsored murder, affecting innocent as well as guilty prisoners. Moreover, it doesn't deter crime, and is unconscionable in civilized societies.

In 2000, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on capital punishment after 13 prisoners were found innocent and released. On January 11, 2003, two days before leaving office, he cleared death row, commuting sentences for 163 men and four women to life imprisonment. He also declared a moratorium on future executions, saying:

"The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about (their innocence), but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die."

Calling Illinois' death penalty "arbitrary, capricious, and therefore immoral," he ended his gubernatorial tenure by pardoning four men and issuing a blanket commutation for all state prisoners on death row, adding:

"The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it - I must act."

In January 2011, both Houses of Illinois' legislature voted to end capital punishment. Gov. Pat Quinn officially abolished it in March, saying it's impossible "to create a perfect, mistake-free death penalty system."

As a result, Illinois joined 15 other states and the District of Columbia (including New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Massachusetts) without capital punishment. It should have been abolished federally long ago, ending a system with no regard for human life, disproportionately affecting society's least advantaged.

A Final Comment

What America practices one-on-one domestically, its permanent war agenda institutionalized globally on a horrific scale.

For centuries, many millions were slaughtered. Native Americans were practically exterminated. Waging war against them never stopped. Today it's about destroying their culture.

They and other mostly people of color or less than white are targeted. Historian Gabriel Kolko calls America's wars "violen(t), racis(t), repressi(ve) at home and abroad (and) cultural(ly) mendaci(ous)."

They're never about liberation or democratic values. They're to colonize, occupy and control wealth and resources. Nonbelligerent countries are destroyed. They become charnel houses. Once whole nations no longer exist.

Their corpses are carved up for profit. Their people are impoverished and exploited. Their environments become dangerously chemically toxic. Death, destruction, displacement, contamination, disease, immiseration, corruption, insecurity, fear, tyranny, and institutionalized terror are called success.

The process repeats globally to suck all worth and life from planet earth until none of either is left. Imperial America declared permanent war on humanity. It's official policy, raging like an out-of-control inferno.

Unless stopped, everything in its path will be consumed, including planet earth as a fit place to live in. America no longer is for anyone except its privileged class, profiting at the expense of all others.

It's the American way. Another one begs to replace it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com


This work is in the public domain

“Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears.”-Troy Davis, R.I.P. - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!-Never Forget- A Short Additional Note

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Troy Anthony Davis and information on his case.

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963

Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:

No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

"Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears"- Photos Of Boston Protest Of The Execution Of Troy Davis By The State Of Georgia -Including His Last Statement To Supporters-Down With The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

Click on the headline to link to a Boston IndyMedia entry for a post-execution protest, on September 22, 2011 at Copley Square in Boston, of the execution of Troy Anthony Davis by the State Of Georgia.

“Yes, Now Is The Time For Your Tears.”-Troy Davis, R.I.P.- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Click on the headline to link to The New York Times online account, dated September 22, 2011, of the execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia, September 21, 2011.

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll- Bob Dylan
, 1963

Markin comment:

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Georgia Board of Pardons Affirms State-Sponsored Murder By Stephen Lendman- Stop The Execution Of Troy Davis! Free Troy Davis!- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Georgia Board of Pardons Affirms State-Sponsored Murder by Stephen Lendman

Georgia Board of Pardons Affirms State-Sponsored Murder - by Stephen Lendman

At issue is saving Troy Anthony Davis. On September 21, he'll die by lethal injection, despite clear evidence he's innocent.

On September 20, Georgia's Board of Pardons denied him clemency.

Because Georgia's governor can't stay executions, Davis lost his last hope, barring an unexpected 11th hour reprieve.

Georgia State University Law Professor Anne Emanuel reviewed his case. She found no justification for capital punishment. At this stage, however, she said:

"I don't see any avenues to the Supreme Court," no matter how grave the injustice.

In fact, there's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against falsely accused victims.

In America, they're mostly poor Blacks or Latinos denied due process and judicial fairness by a corrupted prosecutorial system rigged to convict even known innocent defendants like Troy Anthony Davis.

Author Michelle Alexander calls America's mass incarceration "The New Jim Crow." Murdering innocent Black victims highlights it.

Colorblind America never existed. Certainly not in Georgia, a state once infamous for chain gangs.

The 1932 film, "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," was based on Robert Elliott Burns' autobiography titled, "I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang."

Their brutality helped turn public opinion against a system that included keeping prisoners in rolling cages to hold them close to work sites. Inmates were also flogged on roadsides, bound head to toe in chains.

New prison repression replaced old Georgia practices. State-sponsored murder existed earlier and today, notably against poor Blacks. Innocence is of no consequence. Only guilt by accusation matters.

Davis was wrongfully charged for killing off-duty Savanah, GA policeman Mark MacPhail. Arrested on August 23, 1989, he was indicted in mid-November despite no evidence proving his guilt.

In August 1991, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Subsequent appeals were denied.

On March 17, 2008, Georgia Supreme Court rejected his request for a hearing, voting 4 to 3 against him.

On September 23, 2008, within two hours of his scheduled execution, the US Supreme Court granted him a stay.

On October 14, 2008, the High Court declined to hear his case.

On August 17, 2009, it ordered a federal judge to hear evidence in it.

In August 2010, he rejected clear exculpating evidence.

On January 21, 2011, a US Supreme Court appeal was filed.

On March 28, 2011, the Court, without explanation, denied the appeal. It cleared the way for his execution, despite Justices Breyer and Ginsburg citing "a substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death."

In May, Amnesty International (AI) urged one million "Tweets for Troy," to avert execution "even though the case against him has fallen apart."

From his arrest to this day, no physical evidence linked him to the crime. Moreover, his conviction relied solely on witness testimonies. Most later recanted. Many, in fact, said police pressured them to testify falsely at his trial.

In America, it's common practice to railroad innocent victims, especially Blacks and Latinos. Courts go along with a deeply corrupted system. It wrongfully sentenced Troy Anthony Davis to die.

According to Laura Moye, AI's International USA Death Penalty Abolition Campaign director:

His "case is emblematic of a broken and unjust death penalty system. His story speaks volumes about a criminal justice system that is riddled with bias and error and is fixated on procedure more than....fairness."

"The case against Davis has unraveled, yet he still faces execution." He's up against "a system that would rather hold onto a decision a jury made twenty years ago than admit that some fundamentally wrong things have happened."

Moreover, Davis is Black. Officer McPhail was white and a cop. Georgia's law enforcement establishment wants revenge. As a result, anyone poor and Black or Latino is vulnerable anywhere in America.

It's the cross they bear for their race, ethnicity, and economic status in a nation long known for racism.

It's as virulent now as ever. What clearer proof than Anthony's scheduled state-sponsored murder.

It didn't matter that over one million supporters petitioned for clemency. In mid-September, thousands marched for him in Atlanta.

Moreover, over 300 similar events were held across America as well as global ones in Germany, Hong Kong, Belgium, Nigeria and elsewhere.

In addition, noted figures support Davis, including Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, NAACP president Ben Jealous, Al Sharpton, former FBI Director William Sessions, former congressman and federal prosecutor Bob Barr, and 51 current congressional members.

In 2009, former juror Brenda David told CNN:

"If I knew then what I know now, Troy Davis would not be on death row. The verdict would be 'not guilty.' "

Other former jurors also know he's innocent. So do state prosecutors, judges, Georgia's entire five member Board of Pardons and Paroles, Governor Nathan Deal, and Obama who's been shamelessly silent.

Why not for a man criminally responsible for murdering hundreds of thousands across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere.

Yet he and others in his administration and past ones remain unindicted for crimes of war and against humanity ongoing daily.

It's cruel irony that today Troy Anthony Davis dies.

He and others like him symbolize a corrupt system too broken to fix.

They also highlight the shame of state-sponsored murder, whether on death row or from missiles, bombs, shells, or assassinations.

It's America's favorite pastime, killing for imperial conquest, vengeance, sport, or on death row by administering lethal injections either manually or by pushing buttons.

The result's always the same. People deserving to live, in fact, die.

State-sponsored murder never achieves justice.

It's always cruel and barbaric punishment.

AI calls it "the ultimate denial of human rights....in the name of justice" always denied.

Doing so mocks the notion of innocent unless proved guilty "beyond all reasonable doubt."

In America, poor people of color like Davis are denied it disgracefully.

Never forgive! Never forget! Never accept less than what's right!

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
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From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21(Today)-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution! - Free Troy Davis! - Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evidence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!

The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.

At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)

The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.

We oppose the death penalty on principle—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!

Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.

From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution!- Free Troy Davis!- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

From The Partisan Defense Committee-Execution Set For September 21-Stop The Legal Lynching Of Troy Davis-Stop The Execution!- Free Troy Davis!- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Time is running out for Troy Davis, a 41-year-old black man facing execution despite substantial evidence of his innocence. On September 6, a Georgia Superior Court judge signed an execution warrant, and a date has been set for September 21. Davis, who faced three prior death warrants, has now exhausted all his appeals. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to even consider the evi¬dence exonerating Davis of the 1989 killing of a white off-duty police officer. Davis has a hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole two days before the scheduled execution. Davis's supporters have called for a global day of solidarity on September 16, including a march in Atlanta. What's needed is a mass outpouring of protest. Opponents of the racist death penalty, defenders of civil liberties, trade-union militants and fighters for black rights must demand: Stop the execution! Free Troy Davis!

The impending execution is nothing short of a racist legal lynching. In 1991, Davis was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable "eyewitness" identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops, without a shred of physical evidence linking him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution's nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter, only to pin the killing on Davis at trial two years later.

At a federal court hearing last year, some of the witnesses were finally able to tell how they were forced by the cops to falsely implicate Davis. But in upholding the conviction and death sentence, the judge sneered that this testimony was "smoke and mirrors" and declared the accounts of police/prosecution coercion —a regular feature of the capitalist justice system—were not credible.. .because the cops said it didn't happen that way! (See "Troy Davis Appeal Turned Down," WV No. 965, 24 September 2010.)

The impending legal lynching of Troy Davis exemplifies that for America's capitalist rulers the life of a black man on the bottom is worth nothing. In this decaying profit system, which was founded on black chattel slavery, the bourgeois rulers' impulse to genocide is seen in the death penalty, mass black incarceration, the elimination of welfare and rampant cop terror in the ghettos. Troy Davis is a victim of a bourgeois "justice" system premised on protecting capitalist rule and profits through organized terror against the working class, the black masses and other minorities.

We oppose the death penalty on princple—for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Capital punishment is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture, a system of legal murder that reinforces the brutalization of society in all respects. And in racist America, black people are overwhelmingly the victims of state terror, whether this system is administered by the Republican or Democratic parties of capital. Davis was tried in a courtroom flying the Georgia state flag, which at the time included the battle flag of the slaveholding Confederacy. The lynching of black men—by racist mobs and by the august courts—is deeply embedded in this country's history, particularly but by no means exclusively in Southern states like Troy Davis's Georgia. Over 40 percent of those on death row in this country are black. Abolish the racist death penalty!

Through petitions and public statements, hundreds of thousands have opposed Davis's execution, including former president Jimmy Carter, former FBI director William Sessions, South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Pope. While this may have given Georgia's rulers some pause, it was only so they could gather additional judicial sanction to kill Davis. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the U.S. rulers' machinery of death requires sweeping away the racist capitalist system through proletarian revolution.

Georgia Pardons Board Rejects Clemency For Troy Davis- Stop The Execution-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Death Penalty!

Click on the headline to link to a AP news report, dated September 20, 2011 detailing the decision of the Georgia State Pardons Board to grant clemency in the case of Troy Davis.

Markin comment:

My headline today says all that needs to be said at this last minute in the Troy Davis case. Call, write, petition, vigil, read about- anything that you can do to publicize this case of severe injustice. Stop The Execution!-Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts! -From The "Liberation News Service" Via "Boston IndyMedia"- Stop The Execution! Free Troy Davis!-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Free Troy Davis! There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!
by Steven Argue

(No verified email address) 19 Sep 2011

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.

Parole Board Delays Decision on Legal Lynching Set for Weds Sept. 21st

Free Troy Davis! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!

There’s No Justice in the Capitalist Courts!

By Steven Argue

During slavery a slave named Dred Scott was taken by his master to what is now Minnesota and Illinois. Slavery was illegal in those territories so Dred Scott took his master to court to sue for his freedom. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott saying that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect”.

Since that time the Civil War has abolished chattel slavery and the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation movements have abolished the most blatant forms of Jim Crow segregation. Yet, the death penalty, a hold-over of the class terror of slavery, continues. Likewise, racist injustice is alive and well in the American judicial system.

“Innocence is no Bar to Upholding a Jury Conviction”

In the tradition of Dred Scott, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1993 case of Herrara v Collins that the execution of an innocent man did not violate the Constitution. Judge Scalia stated of the case that "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction". As a result, strong new evidence that Leonel Herara was innocent was never allowed to be heard in a court of law. Instead, Leonel Herara was executed in 1993 in the state of Texas with his last words being, "I am innocent, innocent, innocent. I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight."

So a standard has been set where those who have been appointed to the highest court in the land don’t think that the execution of an innocent person is a violation of their constitutional rights. It is on this standard that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Troy Davis on March 28, 2011, denying his appeal without comment.

Troy Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of an off-duty Savannah policeman. Davis was found “guilty” based on dubious accounts that he confessed to the killing and questionable “eyewitness” identifications that included false eyewitness testimony coerced by the cops. Seven of the prosecution’s nine “eyewitnesses” have since recanted. The only holdouts are one man who may be the actual killer and another who initially denied being able to identify the shooter only to pin it on Davis two years later. Three of the eyewitnesses say their testimony was coerced by the police. New eyewitnesses have come forth identifying another suspect.

Amnesty International said of his case, "Troy Davis was convicted of murder in 1991. Nearly two decades later, Davis remains on death row — even though the case against him has fallen apart."

Now Troy Davis may be executed on Wednesday, September 21st of this week. On September 6th a Chatham County, Georgia Judge issued a death warrant for Troy Davis. The so-called “Department of Corrections” then set the date for the execution. This Monday, September 19th the Georgia parole board heard arguments for and against execution. That five person panel is given the power to issue a ruling on whether Troy Davis lives or is legally lynched. They pronounced no decision Monday and gave no indication on when they will.

How Bill Clinton Prevented the Evidence from Being Heard

For over a decade, state and federal courts refused to hear evidence that Troy Davis is innocent. This included a federal court ruling against Troy Davis on April 16, 2009. A dissenting federal judge said the execution of Davis “in the face of a significant amount of the proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence” was “unconscionable.” Yet the majority decision cited Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, an act which virtually eliminates the right of federal habeas corpus (i.e. federal review of state legal cases).

The right to federal habeas corpus was a gain of the Civil War passed in the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The act gave the federal government authority to intervene in cases of racial injustice. This included federal habeas corpus giving the federal courts authority to review state legal decisions. Federal habeas corpus was further expanded during the Civil Rights and Black Liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.

Bill Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, on the other hand, virtually eliminated the right to federal habeas corpus. The act bars federal reconsideration of most factual and legal findings of the state courts. It also puts a six month statute of limitations on new evidence in death penalty cases (one year for other cases).

The same 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that has been used against Troy Davis was also cited as cause against federal review of evidence of the innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is political activist, award winning journalist, and political prisoner on death row in the United States. Mumia was framed by the Philadelphia police and DA's Office. To convict Mumia they produced a crudely falsified “confession” which didn’t surface until two months after the killing; tampered with ballistics “evidence”; and produced “eyewitness” accounts that were secured through police manipulation, coercion, and blatant terror. During the trial the Philadelphia DA’s Office knowingly used perjured testimony and hid essential evidence to procure a conviction. That frame-up case was then presented in a court presided over by Judge Sabo who was heard by a court stenographer during the time of the trial saying, "Ill help you fry the nigger".

After investigation, Amnesty International stated of the trial, “Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in 1982 after a trial that failed to meet international standards." Yet, like in the racist frame-up case of Troy Davis, the federal courts have cited the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act as pretext not to hear evidence of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s innocence.

As the historian Howard Zinn stated of Mumia Abu-Jamal in April 2009:

“To me, the Mumia Abu-Jamal case is another instance in the history of American injustice. Our judicial system is stacked against people of color, radicals, and people who are not wealthy, and Mumia fits all three categories.

“It is shameful that he has been in prison, and on death row, for such a large part of his life. He has shown immense courage in refusing to be beaten down by this cruel system.

“I hope that justice will be done in his case, but that will only happen if large numbers of Americans speak out loudly on his behalf, and on behalf of the principle — so much ignored — of equal justice before the law.”

A Continuing Pattern of Racist Injustice

Blacks have long faced political repression in the United States. For many decades the KKK, Democratic Party, and local police ruled over half of the country as a semi-fascist state where Blacks were denied the right to vote and murdered for speaking their minds. With victories won against that system the FBI orchestrated a reign of terror against the most radical Blacks who stood up against racism, class inequalities, and imperialism.

In the 1960’s and 70’s the U.S. government liquidated the Black Panther Party through the murders of 39 members, including the FBI organized police shooting of Fred Hampton in his sleep, and through political frame-ups such as that of Geronimo (Ji. Jaga) Pratt who was finally exonerated (i.e. found innocent) after 30 years in prison. Other framed Black Panthers still sit in prison and Black Panther Assata Shakur lives in exile, granted political asylum by Cuba, but with a one million dollar bounty put on her head by the New Jersey government. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a target of FBI surveillance from the time of his youth in the Black Panther Party, survived the FBI’s physical liquidation of his party, only to be framed-up in the 1980’s after exposing violent police repression against Black radicals in an organization called Move.

Similarly, the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who supported the culturally and politically nationalist American Indian Movement faced brutal counter-insurgency tactics complete with FBI-armed and -trained death squads that murdered 61 political activists and their children on the reservation between 1973 and 1976. As part of that terror war against America’s first nations, American Indian Movement member Leonard Peltier was framed by the FBI and remains in prison to this day. Many of Leonard Peltier’s supporters had hoped that Bill Clinton would pardon Leonard Peltier as he left office, but Clinton refused to do so.

Today, a world movement hopes that Troy Davis is not executed. In the last few days over 300 protests have been held for Troy Davis in cities around the world. Nearly a million petitions have been signed demanding Troy Davis not be executed. He is supported by many important organizations including the NAACP, Amnesty International, and the International Longshore Workers Union

Troy Davis has sat in prison for 20 years in a case that not only shows cause for reasonable doubt, the legal definition of innocence, but also shows the classic symptoms of a racist police frame-up including police coercion of witnesses. Whatever happens in the next couple days, justice in this case will not mean just stopping his execution, it will also mean freeing Troy Davis. Yet, we should be clear, the U.S. government is capable of the worst, it is capable of the murder of innocents, and it is even capable of producing legal arguments like "Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction” to justify state sanctioned murder.

From Dred Scott to Troy Davis

In his May 1857 “Speech on the Dred Scott Decision” Frederick Douglass, a former slave and activist for the abolition of slavery, denounced the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that a Black man “has no legal rights that any white man was bound to respect” by saying,

“If it were at all likely that the people of these free States would tamely submit to this demoniacal judgment, I might feel gloomy and sad over it, and possibly it might be necessary for my people to look for a home in some other country. But as the case stands, we have nothing to fear.

“In one point of view, we, the abolitionists and colored people, should meet this decision, unlooked for and monstrous as it appears, in a cheerful spirit. This very attempt to blot out forever the hopes of an enslaved people may be one necessary link in the chain of events preparatory to the downfall and complete overthrow of the whole slave system.”

The unpopular Dred Scott decision is widely seen as playing a role in bringing on the Civil War. It was the Civil War that completed the abolition of slavery, a task that had begun in the north with the American Revolution. With U.S. courts now openly ruling that it’s OK to murder innocent people, it is now time to prepare for a second American Revolution. It is with such radical conclusions we should confront government atrocities like what is being done to Troy Davis. In doing so, we make the government pay for its crimes.

By revolution I don’t mean blow things up or any other form of individual terrorism. A revolution is a change in who rules society. Presently the wealthy capitalists rule America through their ownership of the economy; through their political parties, the Democrats and Republicans; and through the repressive actions of their cops, courts, prisons, and military. That entire system must be swept away in a mass proletarian revolution.

Liberation News is dedicated to building a socialist party that has goals like eliminating the dictatorial control of our society by the wealthy, bringing about true workers democracy, ending imperialist wars, and bringing Black liberation through socialist revolution. While capitalism is leading us into an oblivion of economic decay, austerity, unemployment, ever more wars, and environmental catastrophe, a socialist economy can be geared for full employment, free health care, free education, housing for all, and better environmental protection because it will not be run for capitalist profit. A party that fights for such a socialist future also exposes and fights for immediate demands like freeing Troy Davis and abolishing the racist death penalty. In building such a movement that helps people draw the deeper radical conclusions of the injustices perpetrated by this system and the fight that is needed for liberation, we make the capitalist system pay for its crimes.


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