Troy Davis Presente!

THEY MURDERED TROY, BUT WE MUST NEVER FORGET HIM!

September 23, 2011

This system executed Troy Davis — no they murdered him.  They delayed his execution a few hours while the Supreme Court considered and rejected a last minute appeal from Troy’s lawyers.  The court issued a one sentence statement explaining why they refused again to reopen his case and look at the mounting evidence of his innocence.  It might as well have said Black people have no rights we are bound to respect! The content of what the system has told us in this case, as they told us in the case of Shaka Sankofa eleven years ago, is that innocence is no bar to execution.

The powers that be say this country is the homeland of freedom.  They tell the world that they are the greatest defenders of human rights.  Then they turn around and railroad Troy Davis to jail on trumped up evidence, refuse to even consider the mounting evidence of his innocence and execute him on the basis of that railroad.

This was a legal lynching, plain and simple.  It didn’t matter to them that there was no physical evidence to tie Troy to the murder of the cop or that 7 of the 9 witnesses against Troy have come forward and said they lied, several of them claiming they were coerced to lie by cops who were dead set on frying some Black man, any Black man, for the killing of one of their own.  No court has even bothered to reopen the case, listen to the witnesses recanting their statements against Troy and consider the police coercion that went into his conviction!  What else can we take from that but that they are telling us—‘We railroaded him, fair and square, and now we’re going to strap him down and fry him.’

What can you say about a system that would do all this—railroad a man to death row, ignore mounting evidence of his innocence and go ahead with his execution in the face of widespread international protest? The truth is that it’s rotten to the core, and needs to be done away with thru revolution.

And this isn’t just about Troy Davis.  During the protest in Harlem the night of Troy’s execution, a number of people who were hearing of Troy’s case for the 1^st time told me, “They do that to Black people all the time.”  Very true.  The legal lynching of Troy Davis concentrates the way this system treats Black people. This system has criminalized our youth, treating them like they’re guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive their encounters with cops to prove their innocence, and if they can avoid being framed up in the system’s kangaroo courts.  Their cops get away with brutalizing and even murdering people all across the country, all the time.  This has been going on for too damn long.  It is intolerable, and it must be stopped!

The future this system has in store for many of our youth comes down to either crime and punishment or joining their military and killing people to keep their global empire in effect.  Again, what can you say about a system like this?

But things don’t have to be like this.  We could end all the horrors this system inflicts on humanity thru revolution, communist revolution.  We could get rid of this rotten system and bring into being a society and a world that serves the interests of the people.  And we in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) are building a movement for revolution to do just that.  Get with this movement, sisters and brothers. Join it to help spread revolution everywhere and to mobilize people to “Fight the Power, and Transform the People, For Revolution.”  There are two important things you need to get involved with as part of doing this.

First, get your hands on BAsics, a new book by Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP.  This book concentrates more than 3 decades of work Avakian has been doing studying the experience of previous revolutionary societies and grappling with everything that stands between humanity and its ultimate emancipation.  With this book, we can introduce people to the leader we have for making revolution and bring to a new generation the new and revitalized understanding of how to make revolution and bring into a being a viable and desirable socialist society that Avakian has developed   If you want to see an end to legal lynchings like we just witnessed in Troy Davis’ case, the way that Black people are beaten down and oppressed and everything else foul this system inflicts on humanity, then you need to get your hands on BAsics.  And you need to help spread the word about BAsics and encourage other people to get a copy of it.  If you don’t know about Avakian, you need to learn about him, and you need to let other people know about him too. You can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics.

And second, Cornel West and I have called for a day of non violent civil disobedience to Stop “Stop & Frisk.” The execution of Troy Davis underscores the need for determined resistance to the way this criminal injustice system mistreats Black people.  We have to unite people from many different backgrounds and of different races and nationalities to stand together and say in a loud powerful voice that we refuse to stand by and let them continue to violate peoples’ rights in the way they’ve been doing. 

To get connected with this important action, go to stopmassexecution.tumblr.com or call (973)756-7666.

Go to www.revcom.us for coverage on the execution of Troy Davis and to get more info on everything I’ve talked about here.

Troy Davis—Presente!  They Murdered Him, but We Must Not Forget Him!

Last night they executed Troy Davis.  They delayed the execution a few hours while the Supreme Court considered and rejected a last minute appeal from Troy’s lawyers.  I don’t know if that court issued any statement explaining why they refused again to reopen his case and look at the mounting evidence of his innocence.  But the content of what the system has told us in this case, as they told us in the case of Shaka Sankofa eleven years ago, is that innocence is no bar to execution.

The powers that be say this country is the homeland of freedom.  They tell the world that they are the greatest defenders of human rights.  Then they turn around and railroad Troy Davis to jail on trumped up evidence, refuse to even consider the mounting evidence of his innocence and execute him on the basis of that railroad.

This was a legal lynching, plain and simple.  It didn’t matter to them that there was no physical evidence to tie Troy to the murder of the cop or that 7 of the 9 witnesses against Troy have come forward and said they lied, several of them claiming they were coerced to lie by cops who were dead set on frying some Black man, any Black man, for the killing of one of their own.  No court has even bothered to reopen the case and look at this evidence!  What else can we take from that but that they are telling us—‘We railroaded him, fair and square, and now we’re going to strap him down and fry him.’

Out in Harlem last night, a number of people who were hearing of Troy’s case for the 1^st time told us, “They do that to Black people all the time.”  Very true. The legal lynching of Troy Davis concentrates the way this system treats Black people.  This system has criminalized our youth, treating them like they’re guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive their encounters with cops to prove their innocence, and if they can avoid being framed up in the system’s kangaroo courts.

The future this system has in store for many of our youth comes down to either crime and punishment or joining their military and killing people to keep their global empire in effect.  What can you say about a system like this, except that it’s no damn good?

But things don’t have to be like this.  We could end all the horrors this system inflicts on humanity thru revolution, communist revolution.  We could get rid of this rotten system and bring into being a society and a world that serves the interests of the people.  And we in the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) are building a movement for revolution to do just that.  Get with this movement, sisters and brothers.

Two important things—BAsics, a book by Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP. This book concentrates more than 3 decades of work Avakian has been doing studying the experience of previous revolutionary societies and grappling with everything that stands between humanity and its ultimate emancipation.  With this book, we can bring the new understanding of how to make revolution and bring into a being a viable and desirable socialist society that Avakian has developed to the new generation   If you don’t know about Avakian, you need to learn about him, and you need to let some other people know about him too.  Get hold of BAsics, and help spread the word about it, because you can’t change the world if you don’t know the BAsics.

And 2, Cornel West and I have called for a day of non violent civil disobedience to Stop “Stop & Frisk.”  The execution of Troy Davis underscores the need for determined RESISTANCE to the way this criminal injustice system mistreats Black people.

Go to www.revcom.us to get more info on both of these.

Denounce the Murder of Troy Davis!

We received the below from the supporters of Revolution Uptown/Harlem.

Denounce the Murder of Troy Davis! 138th and Amsterdam Avenue    noon until 2:00 ---   today Harlem State Building- 125th and Adam Clayton Powell 5:00  --- today Union Square Park     5:00   --- today Hello Folks, Last night this system murdered Troy Anthony Davis. As many thousands of people around the country and the world, including here in Harlem, demanded the execution be stopped, the authorities pressed relentlessly toward Troy's death. A hateful, murderous, yes, fascistic message has just been seen. What is our response? Uptown readers if Revolution newspaper (www.revcom.us) are calling for folks to gather on the corner of 138th and Amsterdam Avenue today from noon until 2pm (and at the Harlem State Building at 5:00) in a powerful denunciation of the execution of Troy Davis and the system that killed him. What happened last night needs to be talked about in every class today, at the bus stop and on the train, at work, and in your circle of friends and family. In a thousand ways, those who are outraged about this legal lynching must spread that outrage, spread the resistance. We need a massive outpourings of resistance! We often look at history and think we would have acted morally, courageously, in the face of slavery, or Jim Crow/KKK terror. This is the New Jim Crow terror- this is a moment that tests our morality and courage. "There is a place where epistemology and morality meet. There is a place where you have to stand and say: It is not acceptable to refuse to look at something—or to refuse to believe something—because it makes you uncomfortable. And: It is not acceptable to believe something just because it makes you feel comfortable."      Bob Avakian  BAsics 5:11 This is such a place. This is such a time!  The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be. from The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have The Whole Damn System Is Guilty! Do the right thing, Will

Troy Davis Must Not Be Executed!

Editor's Note:  Troy Davis was executed tonight at 11:08 PM EST as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a last minute stay of execution.  What kind of system do we live in where a Black man has been framed and executed for a murder he did not commit?      
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SAVE TROY'S LIFE
by Carl Dix

Paris demonstration for Troy Davis (undated).

     As I write this, Troy Davis is hours away from his scheduled execution. His case is a damning exposure of how the criminal “injustice” system in the US is rotten to the core. Troy Davis was railroaded to prison 20 years ago on charges of murdering a cop in Savannah, Georgia. There was no physical evidence connecting Troy to the cop who was killed, and 7 or the 9 witnesses who placed him at the scene of the killing have since recanted their statements. Several of them have said that they were coerced into fingering Troy as the killer by cops who didn’t care that their statements were untrue. And one of the witnesses who maintains that Troy killed the cop has told acquaintances that he was the one who really killed the cop!
     It is an extreme travesty that Troy has been on death row for 20 years in this case and that he has gotten to the brink of being executed several times. And it will be an outrageous crime if this system goes ahead with his execution.
     What the system is saying with how this case has been dealt with is a big step back to the days of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scot decision—that Black people had no rights the system needs to respect. At every level, from the cops to the prosecutors to the courts, the message has been the same. We railroaded you the way we so often do to poor people and oppressed people, and we don’t give a damn if you’re guilty or not! Every appeals court, including the Supreme Court, has refused to consider the mounting evidence that Troy is innocent and allowed his execution to steamroll ahead.
     Thinking about this injustice reminds me of Shaka Sankofa. The state of Texas executed him despite a lot of evidence that he was innocent, and in that case too the courts ruled that process — "we railroaded him fair and square" — trumped evidence of innocence. And it brings to mind Mumia Abu Jamal, another victim of a railroad by a lynching judge presiding over a kangaroo court. Mumia has spent three decades on death row.
     These cases concentrate the way this system treats Black people! It is intolerable that people get railroaded to prison on trumped up charges and coerced evidence, that people can be executed on the basis of shit like this. And it must be stopped.
     We must do everything we can down to the final minute tonight to fight to save Troy’s life. And we must stand up and fight to end the way horrific numbers of Black and Latino youth are warehoused in prisons across the US. Cornel West and I have issued a Call for a day of Stopping “Stop & Frisk.” The aim of this day of resistance is to take the movement against racially targeted mass incarceration to a whole new level. This Call is available at www.revcom.us, or you could get a copy by writing to the Network to Stop Mass Incarceration at stopmassincarceration@ymail.com. I urge people to take up this Call, spread it and help make this resistance as powerful as possible.
     It’s going to take revolution, millions of people rising up to get rid of this system and replace it with a totally different system that serves the interests of the people, to end mass incarceration and all the other horrors this system enforces on humanity. And a big part of getting ready to revolution is mobilizing people to resist the system’s attacks — Fighting the Power, and Transforming the People, for Revolution.
     So stand up and fight back, for Troy’s life, to end mass incarceration and to end everything this system brings down on the people.