The Night They Killed Troy Davis

[sasha031]

Rutgers historian William Jelani Cobb was outside of the prison, last night, where Troy Davis was held and executed. He filed this report while bearing "witness to a great evil." Jelani has guest-posted here before. We're always happy to have him back offering his unique mix of politics, history and on-site reporting.

JACKSON, Georgia -- The Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison sits a quarter mile off Interstate 75 in Jackson, just outside the commuter suburbs of Atlanta. The technical name for the place obscures its most notorious function: it houses the death chamber for the state's executions. Last night, for more than seven hours, hundreds of people prayed, chanted, sang, hoped and shouted in front of that building in a vain effort to prevent the state of Georgia from extinguishing the life of Troy Davis.

A trickle of people began showing up outside the prison in the late afternoon. By 5 p.m. they had grown to about 200 and been cordoned off by police tape in front of a truck stop across from the prison. A knot of organizers from Amnesty International unfurled a huge banner saying "Free Troy Davis" and another set of activists held a sign saying we had returned to the days of the Scottsboro Nine. A principal came out with several of his elementary school students and a busload of students poured in from Spelman and Morehouse Colleges. But the largest group was from Al Sharpton's National Action Network -- at least thirty of whom had driven up from Savannah, where the murder of Mark McPhail took place. They set about coordinating the chants, moving people with signs to the forefront so that passersby could see exactly what we were protesting and generally keeping the protests going.

I think this is an important read, there is much more later in the article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/the-night-they-killed-troy-davis/245515/

[The Straight Story]

1. Guessing the headline is a reference to this:

The night the lights went out in Georgia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpkE5Ee3AOo

[sasha031]

2. I don't think they ever have been turned on

"
Both the state legislature and the governorship are firmly in the hands of the GOP and, though the newly elected Nathan Deal remains the subject of a federal corruption probe, no Democrat has stood a chance of becoming governor since Roy Barnes was turned out of office for opposing the Confederate flag nearly a decade ago. This is Georgia in the 21st century"

[alsame]

3. k&r

[EFerrari]

4. Our governments are now not only not accountable

they are openly predatory.

[handmade34]

5. disturbing truth...

"But what was most surprising and disturbing is that the group was more than 90% black. For all the discussion about the implications of the death penalty for the country at large this broke down, as always, to an issue of race and black people would have to do the heavy lifting if any change were going to occur..."

[Gregorian]

6. We were all punished on that night of September 21st.

America didn't realize it, but it's status became conscious to those who were watching that night.

A crime was committed. A crime that violated no known law of the legal system. It was a crime against humanity and civility.

[sasha031]

7. ...

Steve Bell
The Guardian,