Tag: Troy Davis

Rodney Reed and everyone else on death row are flesh-and-blood human beings who deserve humane and just treatment, not extermination, regardless of whether you believe they are innocent and haven’t had a fair legal process.

Keith LaMar (Bomani Shakur) is an innocent man on death row in Ohio who began a hunger strike Monday, Nov. 9. His execution date could be set as early as January. Ohio built a special prison for Bomani and their other scapegoats from the 1993 11-day Lucasville prison rebellion, the longest in U.S. history. They call Bomani the worst of the worst, and they can’t wait to exterminate him. Now more prisoners are joining the strike. Call prison officials to support their demands.

My sisters and brothers and all New Afrikan Black Panther Party comrades, we are coming up on our 11th anniversary of Black August. As the NABPP-PC minister of justice, I take observance of Black August very seriously. Many people have been killed or placed into prison in our struggle. Let us not be slack in honoring them. Let us rise together to break our chains of injustice and slavery! We will not have any peace until there is justice!

On July 13, President Barack Obama followed up his March 2015 pardons of 22 federal prisoners by commuting the sentences of 46 federal prisoners who had served time for what has been described by the Washington Post as overly harsh sentencing. On Thursday, July 16, Obama will meet with law enforcement officials and prisoners at El Reno, the first time a sitting president has visited a federal prison.

Keith LaMar, also known as Bomani Shakur, is a prisoner in Ohio, condemned to death on false charges following the 1993 Lucasville Prison Uprising. Bomani is one of five men condemned to death after being railroaded through forced snitch testimony. They are known as the Lucasville Five. The following is an interview with Bomani from death row, recorded on March 7, 2014.

Not quite a month ago, I wrote that we at Black Agenda Report had received word of a new self-organized hunger strike among prisoners in Georgia’s notorious Diagnostic and Classification Prison at Jackson. A second communication says eight prisoners are still refusing food and are on the receiving end of abuse and threats from correctional officers at Jackson. The note also sheds some chilling light on the reason for the prisoners’ self-organized action.

In classic Fox form, the interview with me would not be about the case or about the appointment of Adegbile. In the end, the point of the segment was for Fox to call Mumia “a thrice-convicted cop killer” as many times as possible, and to associate that with Debo Adegbile so as to strategically energize a right-wing agenda against the gains of the civil rights movement – following the same pattern as in their successful campaign to decommission Van Jones.

The deplorable beatings you’re witnessing occurred on New Year’s Eve, just before midnight, on Dec. 31, 2010. It’s taken two years and nearly eight months for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to release this video. A very persistent family member of one of the victims finally persuaded them to give it to her, and Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, a strong advocate for justice for prisoners, posted it to YouTube for the world to see.

The Re-Examining the Lucasville Uprising Conference, held April 19-21 in Columbus, Ohio, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Lucasville Uprising, was a resounding success by all reports. “A strong and vibrant coalition has come together to advocate for innocence of those convicted in the aftermath of the uprising,” reports Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio, one of the organizers.

For decades, the Oakland Police Department has been the focus of fear. For a brief time, the Black Panther Party put a crimp into their strut. But the Black Panther Party is no more, and the repression has come surging back. The family of Alan Blueford continue to organize resistance to this campaign of repression. You can join that campaign at justice4alanblueford.org.

The concept of Black August grew out of the need to expose to the light of day the glorious and heroic deeds of Afrikan women and men who recognized and fought injustice. We consecrate this month to those who have been taken from us but who will never be forgotten – for the love of freedom which their lives were dedicated to.

“It has been 33 days since these men have eaten. We must move swiftly or people are going to start dying,” writes Delma Jackson, wife of Miguel Jackson, the prisoner who was beaten with a hammer in retaliation for his role in the December 2010 mass sit-down strike protesting slave labor and other atrocities.

Since June 10 an undetermined number of Georgia prisoners have been on a hunger strike. Some of these men are the Jackson State prison strikers. After two weeks, according to the families of Miguel Jackson and Preston Whiting, they are weak from hunger and subject to fainting spells. But they seem to believe they have little to lose. They are, a letter from one of them asserts, “starving for change.” We must demand justice for Miguel Jackson and other Georgia state prisoners who are being targeted and brutalized for exposing their inhumane conditions and standing up for their most basic human rights.

I’ve been held against my will in San Quentin for the past 20 years, awaiting my state sanctioned MURDER. I was never truly given the opportunity to prove my innocence. Because our people are still marching, standing our ground in order to let this corrupt system know that the fight will remain steadfast, this is why this T-shirt was made.

Brother Mumia is a shining light for those of us in the belly of the beast who are in a struggle against a wicked system. He has demonstrated to us that even on Death Row, one can still educate, inspire and motivate – some of the same things that he was doing at the time of his arrest.

Martina Correia, the sister of Troy Davis, who was his strongest advocate, has succumbed to breast cancer. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago and given six months to live at that time, but she fought to stay alive so that she could fight for her brother, Troy, to stay alive.

I am not about to trust a “movement” that offers no critique of the role of state violence in upholding capitalist economic interests. I am not about to get arrested with some “white” guys whose interests are just their own, who only noticed injustice when they were the ones who got laid off, arrested, beat down or tased.

Troy Anthony Davis shouldn’t be dead. But on Sept. 21, 2011, at 11:08 p.m. ET, the candle flame of his brilliant, strong and beautiful physical life was snuffed out in the bloody hands of a state sanctioned illegal lynching.

This movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davises. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. 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!”

Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right here in the United States. The violence sponsored by the United States abroad has its origins inside the United States. As the United States and NATO drop bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an innocent Black man in Georgia.