A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Troy Davis will be laid to rest this weekend in a public ceremony at Jonesvill Baptist Church in Savannah. The public figures and civil rights honchos who gravitated to his case will have prominent front row seats. What they won't have is an answer to why their kind of movement did not save Troy Davis, or what it will take to save the Troy Davises who will come after this one.
On Saving The Next Troy Davises
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
From the standpoint of civil rights lawyers and activists, the case of Troy Davis had everything. It had an attractive and well spoken defendant, and an almost transparently false conviction without a murder weapon or any physical evidence. Most of the eyewitnesses recanted, declaring they had perjured themselves under threats from police and prosecutors.
In the tradition of political test cases dating back to the Scottsboro Boys eight decades ago, public prayers, letter writing campaigns, op-eds, demonstrations, meetings, celebrity endorsements and exhortations proceeded around the world while Davis's lawyers worked every available legal angle, managing to bring his case to the Supreme Court not once but twice. By last week, tens of thousands were in the streets declaring their opposition to the death penalty and nearly a million had signed petitions demanding a new trial for Troy Davis. Corporat e news outlets like MSNBC even devoted several hours of breathless “coverage” at the countdown to this legal lynching.
Davis went to his death praying for his accusers and executioners, and talking about the Troy Davises that came before and will come after him. The civil rights style mobilization around his case could not and did not save this Troy Davis, and it will not save the Troy Davises who will come after this one.
It's good that so many people marched and met and prayed and circulated and signed petitions to save Troy Davis. But until we build a movement that stands up for the human rights of ALL the imprisoned, ALL the convicted and formerly incarcerated, including those whose innocence, however you construe that word is not so obvious, and those who may in fact not even be innocent ---- until we stand up for their human rights to education, to jobs and justice including the right to vote, even when behind bars, to health care and a decent chance at life by radically shrinking and ultimately ending the institution of prison, the machinery that convcts the literally innocent will retain its legitimacy and roll on, doing what it has always done.
In other words, coming out to oppose the execution of an attractive, well spoken and clearly innocent person like Troy Davis is low-hanging fruit. It's great that so many people are willing to reach for it. But we will rarely be able to save even these until our movements take conscious, public and deliberate aim at chopping the whole rotten tree down, at de-legitimizing and ending the institution of prison as we know it.
The day we get a million signatures on a petition not just to save an innocent man's life, but to roll back the prison state ---- that will be the day we know we have a movement that can free the next wave of Troy Davises, the day we are close to welcoming them back to help heal and rebuild their own lives, our broken families and our devastated communities.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com .
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a state committee member of the Georgia Green Party. He lives and works in Marietta GA, and can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
The U.S. reprises Iraq, inventing a WMD threat from Syria. The FBI concocts home-grown terror through stings, while the NSA claims it has secretly saved many lives. “Why this steady stream of…
An essay by the late Glen Ford recounts the perverse origin story of the twisted life and lies of Clarence Thomas.
As the late Glen Ford said, the Black misleadership class has no shame. Congresswoman Karen Bass's campaign for mayor of Los Angeles is full of empty promises. She proposes nothing that would…
The Black misleaders have been busy selling out Black people for half a century, but are still only barely tolerated by the rich man’s Democratic Party and its racist figurehead, Joe Biden.
