The American justice system murdered Troy Davis on Wednesday, September 21, at 11:08pm.
Many of us have been following Troy's case for years. I won't repeat all the facts--you can read them here and here if you don't know--but suffice to say that in the state of Georgia, a Black man accused of killing a white cop can be sentenced to death despite the fact that there is not a shred of physical evidence linking him to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses who originally implicated him have since recanted their testimony, declaring in sworn affidavits that they were coerced and threatened by police into naming Troy Davis as the killer.
The racism and cruelty at work in Troy Davis's case were so blatant, the barbarity of the system so obvious, that it struck a chord with many people. In the past few years Amnesty International and the NAACP took up the case as well, and the number of people who knew about Troy Davis skyrocketed. He was almost put to death three times--once coming within 90 minutes of execution. Each time, a mass movement saved his life.
The week before the execution date was a frantic flurry of calls, emails, faxes to anyone who could be pressured to stop the execution. Troy's life had been saved by public pressure before. This time awareness of the case was bigger than ever, and it was his last chance. If ever a movement needed to do its job, the time was now. We appealed to the DA, the judge, the Georgia Board of Paroles, the governor, the Supreme Court, Obama. In London and Paris, people rallied outside US embassies. A Georgia state senator called on the prison workers who carry out the execution to strike and refuse to kill an innocent man. We know they all must have heard us. But Wednesday came and there was silence in response.
The night they killed Troy Davis, we canceled all other political plans and marched through Harlem, from the state office building to St. Mary's Church. As we marched down 125th St. chanting "We are all Troy Davis" and "They say death row, we say hell no!", we couldn't hand out flyers about Troy's case fast enough.
Some two hundred people packed into the main sanctuary at St. Mary's. Luckily this is Harlem and you don't need to be quiet in church. We chanted, shaking the rafters. As we lit candles and waited for a screen to be set up in front of the altar to watch the Democracy Now! livestream from outside the prison in Georgia, the pastor spoke and rang the church bell, over and over, for what must have been at least a minute. We all fell silent, listening to the bell toll. It wasn't a joyful sound. It was mourning and distress.
Then the livestream was up and we were connected, connected to all those people, hundreds of people, outside the remote prison where Georgia does its killing. Troy's family--his sisters Kim Davis and Martina Correia (who has battled breast cancer and the racist criminal justice system simultaneously for the past ten years), his teenage nephew DeJuan, who speaks with the maturity of a man twice his age--were all outside the prison with us. They were not allowed inside to watch the state of Georgia kill their loved one, although the family of the dead cop was.
We waited. As the 7pm execution time drew near, everyone held their breath. Many people in the church were crying, all united in grief for someone most of us had never met.
Then, suddenly, a few minutes after seven, people in Georgia began cheering. There was confusion, hoping-against-hope excitement, Amy Goodman trying to figure out what was going on, then someone from somewhere yelled, "He got a stay!" The church erupted, everyone was on their feet, people cheering, crying, chanting "The people united will never be defeated!" Ben Jealous of the NAACP says the American justice system has worked. For one brief moment--maybe two or three minutes--we believed we had saved him. Then we found out it wasn't true.
Troy had not received a stay of execution, we learned. It was just a reprieve--a temporary order to hold the needle while the Supreme Court deliberated.
The momentary elation turned into anxiety. Everyone is waiting, waiting. If the uncertainty is unbearable for us, what must it be like for Troy's family? What must it be like for Troy? Is he already strapped to the table where a doctor from Rainbow Medical Associates will pump three kinds of poison into his veins--the first to put him in a coma, the second to paralyze him, and the third to stop his heart? He is only forty-two. He's spent half his life in prison. Despite all the calming words to friends and family and supporters about being at peace and right with God, can you ever really be ready to die?
We waited and waited. Democracy Now! kept broadcasting, even though they were scheduled to end at eight. There was a rumor news would come at 8:30. No news came. We learned this temporary state of being held between life and death can last up to a week. If the Supreme Court is deliberating it must be good, right? It must mean we are having an impact, that he still has a chance. Right?
It had been a long night and most of us had come straight from work to the protest. Around 9:30, when it seemed like no news will come that night, some of us left the church to get something to eat and drink. We were sitting in the bar around 10:30 when the text messages and Twitter updates hit. With no dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court had rejected Troy's appeal. He would be killed tonight. And half an hour later, he was.
Now the momentary delay seemed not like a victory at all but premeditated sadism, four hours of torture added on to a coldblooded murder. Did they plan it like this, waiting until it was late at night so there wouldn't be a riot? The American justice system had worked, all right--exactly the way it was designed to. To reinforce the idea that they're stronger, they're in control, and they can kill you--especially if you are Black, brown, or poor.
The next day there was an emergency response protest at Union Square. It was scheduled to start at 5. By 5:05 when I arrived, there were already 200 people gathered, and they were angry. The murder hit a deep nerve and you can feel, suddenly, how all the buried rage at every injustice and brutality the system inflicts on us can come to the surface very quickly. You begin to understand how urban rebellions start--people reach a point where they just can't take it anymore. The atmosphere is explosive. Before anything at all happens, you can just tell--if the cops decide to start something, people will fight back.
It's clear people were not going to be satisfied with just hanging around Union Square. At some point people take to the streets. The crowd had swollen to between 500 and 1,000 at this point. Unsurprisingly, the cops were not happy--Troy Davis is a cop killer to them. They boxed people in on a side street and attacked, hitting and shoving people, trying to cut the march in half. At first people panicked and fled, but then enough people held their ground, too angry to be scared, others found their courage, and the march pushed through police lines chanting "We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell!" They marched for two hours, in the street, blocking traffic, all the way down Broadway. Some video is posted below.
I've been involved, on and off, in protests against the death penalty and the criminal injustice system for ten years now. These struggles often become very emotional, because they're built around individual cases; you get to know the person you're trying to save, their family, their friends, and the stakes for winning or losing are quite literally life and death. But something felt different this time around. People were not just devastated when Troy was killed. They were furious, and they were ready to fight back. Not just against the death penalty but against the whole racist system of mass incarceration--what people are increasingly calling the New Jim Crow. Against cops who can get away with murder and rape. It's too early to say if this will be a turning point, and toward what exactly. But something is smoldering, under the surface, and it's only going to take a few sparks to set it off.
Many of us have been following Troy's case for years. I won't repeat all the facts--you can read them here and here if you don't know--but suffice to say that in the state of Georgia, a Black man accused of killing a white cop can be sentenced to death despite the fact that there is not a shred of physical evidence linking him to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses who originally implicated him have since recanted their testimony, declaring in sworn affidavits that they were coerced and threatened by police into naming Troy Davis as the killer.
The racism and cruelty at work in Troy Davis's case were so blatant, the barbarity of the system so obvious, that it struck a chord with many people. In the past few years Amnesty International and the NAACP took up the case as well, and the number of people who knew about Troy Davis skyrocketed. He was almost put to death three times--once coming within 90 minutes of execution. Each time, a mass movement saved his life.
The week before the execution date was a frantic flurry of calls, emails, faxes to anyone who could be pressured to stop the execution. Troy's life had been saved by public pressure before. This time awareness of the case was bigger than ever, and it was his last chance. If ever a movement needed to do its job, the time was now. We appealed to the DA, the judge, the Georgia Board of Paroles, the governor, the Supreme Court, Obama. In London and Paris, people rallied outside US embassies. A Georgia state senator called on the prison workers who carry out the execution to strike and refuse to kill an innocent man. We know they all must have heard us. But Wednesday came and there was silence in response.
The night they killed Troy Davis, we canceled all other political plans and marched through Harlem, from the state office building to St. Mary's Church. As we marched down 125th St. chanting "We are all Troy Davis" and "They say death row, we say hell no!", we couldn't hand out flyers about Troy's case fast enough.
Some two hundred people packed into the main sanctuary at St. Mary's. Luckily this is Harlem and you don't need to be quiet in church. We chanted, shaking the rafters. As we lit candles and waited for a screen to be set up in front of the altar to watch the Democracy Now! livestream from outside the prison in Georgia, the pastor spoke and rang the church bell, over and over, for what must have been at least a minute. We all fell silent, listening to the bell toll. It wasn't a joyful sound. It was mourning and distress.
Then the livestream was up and we were connected, connected to all those people, hundreds of people, outside the remote prison where Georgia does its killing. Troy's family--his sisters Kim Davis and Martina Correia (who has battled breast cancer and the racist criminal justice system simultaneously for the past ten years), his teenage nephew DeJuan, who speaks with the maturity of a man twice his age--were all outside the prison with us. They were not allowed inside to watch the state of Georgia kill their loved one, although the family of the dead cop was.
We waited. As the 7pm execution time drew near, everyone held their breath. Many people in the church were crying, all united in grief for someone most of us had never met.
Then, suddenly, a few minutes after seven, people in Georgia began cheering. There was confusion, hoping-against-hope excitement, Amy Goodman trying to figure out what was going on, then someone from somewhere yelled, "He got a stay!" The church erupted, everyone was on their feet, people cheering, crying, chanting "The people united will never be defeated!" Ben Jealous of the NAACP says the American justice system has worked. For one brief moment--maybe two or three minutes--we believed we had saved him. Then we found out it wasn't true.
Troy had not received a stay of execution, we learned. It was just a reprieve--a temporary order to hold the needle while the Supreme Court deliberated.
The momentary elation turned into anxiety. Everyone is waiting, waiting. If the uncertainty is unbearable for us, what must it be like for Troy's family? What must it be like for Troy? Is he already strapped to the table where a doctor from Rainbow Medical Associates will pump three kinds of poison into his veins--the first to put him in a coma, the second to paralyze him, and the third to stop his heart? He is only forty-two. He's spent half his life in prison. Despite all the calming words to friends and family and supporters about being at peace and right with God, can you ever really be ready to die?
We waited and waited. Democracy Now! kept broadcasting, even though they were scheduled to end at eight. There was a rumor news would come at 8:30. No news came. We learned this temporary state of being held between life and death can last up to a week. If the Supreme Court is deliberating it must be good, right? It must mean we are having an impact, that he still has a chance. Right?
It had been a long night and most of us had come straight from work to the protest. Around 9:30, when it seemed like no news will come that night, some of us left the church to get something to eat and drink. We were sitting in the bar around 10:30 when the text messages and Twitter updates hit. With no dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court had rejected Troy's appeal. He would be killed tonight. And half an hour later, he was.
Now the momentary delay seemed not like a victory at all but premeditated sadism, four hours of torture added on to a coldblooded murder. Did they plan it like this, waiting until it was late at night so there wouldn't be a riot? The American justice system had worked, all right--exactly the way it was designed to. To reinforce the idea that they're stronger, they're in control, and they can kill you--especially if you are Black, brown, or poor.
The next day there was an emergency response protest at Union Square. It was scheduled to start at 5. By 5:05 when I arrived, there were already 200 people gathered, and they were angry. The murder hit a deep nerve and you can feel, suddenly, how all the buried rage at every injustice and brutality the system inflicts on us can come to the surface very quickly. You begin to understand how urban rebellions start--people reach a point where they just can't take it anymore. The atmosphere is explosive. Before anything at all happens, you can just tell--if the cops decide to start something, people will fight back.
It's clear people were not going to be satisfied with just hanging around Union Square. At some point people take to the streets. The crowd had swollen to between 500 and 1,000 at this point. Unsurprisingly, the cops were not happy--Troy Davis is a cop killer to them. They boxed people in on a side street and attacked, hitting and shoving people, trying to cut the march in half. At first people panicked and fled, but then enough people held their ground, too angry to be scared, others found their courage, and the march pushed through police lines chanting "We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell!" They marched for two hours, in the street, blocking traffic, all the way down Broadway. Some video is posted below.
I've been involved, on and off, in protests against the death penalty and the criminal injustice system for ten years now. These struggles often become very emotional, because they're built around individual cases; you get to know the person you're trying to save, their family, their friends, and the stakes for winning or losing are quite literally life and death. But something felt different this time around. People were not just devastated when Troy was killed. They were furious, and they were ready to fight back. Not just against the death penalty but against the whole racist system of mass incarceration--what people are increasingly calling the New Jim Crow. Against cops who can get away with murder and rape. It's too early to say if this will be a turning point, and toward what exactly. But something is smoldering, under the surface, and it's only going to take a few sparks to set it off.
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