Death Penalty Poll

[nattyreb]

This is my first poll (hopefully i can figure out how to do it!), i want to broadly introduce this topic for discussion inspired by Bro. Pantha's most recent posting in the POW forum that deals with the case of Bro. Tyrone Williams. So let's get to it and please respond honestly. i really want to struggle around this incredibly important issue. Asante Sana!

[Jacuma]

Asante Sana Sister Queen NattyReb for drawing the much needed attention to this important issue, I chose "This corrupt gov't has no right to be killing anybody!"
I am totally opposed to the death penalty, there are too many variables involved.
This wicked bastard country in particular epitomizes why I’m so opposed to "capital punishment" from the racial make up of the judges, prosecutors to the racial profiling speaks to another issue white supremacy.
The prison military industrial complex is just another tool in our oppression here take a look at the money trail and those who profit from it, it’s a multi-billion dollar operation. The Prison Industrial Complex

[Baba Ahmed]

My answer is to keep battling to free our imprisoned/enslaved people. 'Cause for me the phrase political prisoner, if it were my decision to make, would be expanded.... until we gain Power

Then I think it'd have to be re-examined. By our people. It will happen: we will manifest kujichagulia...

Its advisable to remember that the present forms of struggles for Reparations was underpinned by a group called Freedom Now, a campaign seeking amnesty for political prisoners and prisoners of war in the United States and presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1989.

[Tehuti-4]

Revolutionary love Natty,

I don't think a society as morally bankrupt as the US has any right taking the life of another in the name of "justice" which they neither understand nor respect. What passes for "justice" in most societies today is of course revenge. The inability to distinguish between revenge and justice is a critical point with respect to this question.

Ma'at defines for us what justice is and HeruKhuti enforces it. Until a society understands and is governed by these divine principles it hasn't evolved sufficiently to properly administer justice.

[rebelAfrika]

Congratulations on a successful "first poll" . I voted for "This corrupt gov't has no right to be killing anybody!" That's not to say that I don't believe that some people deserve to die, because I DO believe that some people deserve death. It's just that for "THIS" government (of "ALL" governments) to make a moral judgement about whether someone lives or whether someone dies based off of the crime (no matter how heinous it is) is like the "HEIGHT" of hypocracy.

[IfasehunReincarnated]

Study Shows Justice Dept. Lawyers Seek Death Penalty Most For Minorities -
Jet, Oct 2, 2000

Wide racial and geographic disparities exist in the federal government's request for death sentences, according to a U.S. Justice Dept. study.

The study was requested by Attorney General Janet Reno, a follow-up to a new system she imposed in 1995 that requires U.S. Attorneys to get her approval for all death-sentence recommendations after a review of each case by a team of senior Justice officials. Reno's goal was to achieve a more uniform system.

However, those Justice Department recommendations for death sentences in federal cases roughly reflected the racial percentages of the pool of defendants charged with capital crimes.

Between 1995 and July of this year, U.S. attorneys forwarded for review the cases of 682 defendants who faced capital charges, of which 20% were White and 80% were minorities. U.S. attorneys recommended the death penalty be sought for 183 of them, 26% of them Whites and 74% minorities.

Reno approved seeking death penalties for 159 of them, of which 28% were Whites and 72% minorities.

Ultimately, during this period, 20 defendants have been sentenced to death, of which 20% were White and 80% minorities.

The proportion of those minorities charged with capital crimes, those recommended for the death penalty and those sentenced to death, was far higher than the proportion of minorities in the national population.

Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder noted, "I knew there would be a disparity, but I did not expect (one) quite that large ... No one can help but be troubled by this. Ours is still a race-conscious society."

Geographically, only five of the 94 U.S. attorney districts accounted for about 40% of the 682 death penalty cases submitted for review. They were Puerto Rico, the western district of Virginia, Maryland and the eastern and southern districts of New York.

---------------------------------------------------

Blacks much more likely to face death penalty, study says -
Amnesty International USA
Jet, May 12, 2003


Blacks who murder Whites are 15 times more likely to be executed than if they murdered other Blacks, so says a report from Amnesty International USA.

AIUSA, which opposes the death penalty, said 80 percent of the 845 people executed since the United States resumed the practice in 1977 were put to death for killing Whites. Since that time, according to the human rights organization, 200 Blacks have been executed for killing White victims, which is 15 times as many the number of Whites put to death for killing Blacks during that period. Also, juries containing no Blacks convicted those Blacks that were executed, the group stated in its report, Death By Discrimination--The Continuing Role Of Race In Capital Cases.

"A jury of one's peers is supposed to be broadly representative of one's peers," said William F. Schulz, the group's executive director, who contends that the death penalty in the United States remains an act of racial injustice as well as an inherently cruel and degrading punishment. "At least one in five of the African-Americans executed since 1977, and a quarter of the Blacks put to death for killing Whites, were tried in front of all-White juries," Schulz continued. "What are the odds that this happened for entirely non-discriminatory reasons?

"President Bush has promised that the U.S. will always stand firm for equal justice. If that's true, he must call for an immediate halt to federal executions and encourage states to follow suit ..."

AIUSA's findings, compiled from government statistics and its own tracking, show the death penalty is applied unfairly. Blacks comprise 12 percent of the U.S. population, but 41 percent of those on death row and 35 percent of those executed between 1977 and 2001 were Black, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics.

A Justice Department report in 2000 found that between 1995 and 2000, almost three-fourths of the 183 federal defendants facing the death penalty were minorities, and 43 percent of the defendants came from just nine of the 94 U.S. attorney districts: Puerto Rico; the Eastern District of Virginia; Maryland; the Eastern and Southern districts of New York; Western District of Missouri; New Mexico; Western District of Tennessee; and Northern District of Texas.

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court-appointed commission reported last month that Black defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death and recommended a moratorium on executions while the issue was studied. In Illinois, a study discovered that juries were three times more likely to sentence a Black person to death. Gov. George Ryan cited those findings in January when he commuted 167 death sentences (JET, Feb. 24).

-------------------------------------

Putting a lock on justice: the hidden costs of disproportionately incarcerating minorities
Civil Rights Journal, Fall, 2000 by Carl M. Cannon

THIS AUTUMN, earlier than expected, the United States attained the dubious milestone of having put behind bars some 2 million of the people living within its borders. This is twice the number of a decade ago, and the end is not in sight. The incarceration rate is still increasing yearly.

The trends fueling this upsurge are not an explosion in crime, which declined markedly in the decade of the 1990s to pre-1970 levels, but rather the enactment, in a piecemeal fashion, of a vast array of state and Federal legislation that constituted nothing less than a radical overhaul of the nation's myriad criminal justice systems.

These changes started on the street, where a doctrine known as "community policing" gave way to a less sentimental method known in law enforcement circles as "pro-active" policing. This no-nonsense approach, implemented most famously in New York City, is the cops' answer to James Q. Wilson's famous "broken window" theory of crime prevention. Under this theory, pro-active police do not ignore broken windows, or loitering by suspicious-looking young people--or jaywalking, for that matter. Typically, those seen as potential troublemakers--and race has often been shown to be a factor in who gets stopped by the police--are detained and frisked. The illegal weapons that turn up in such pat-downs no longer result in the weapon merely being confiscated, but in felony charges against the offenders.

In the courts, the changes of the last 15 years are even more sweeping.

Those legislatively mandated changes include "mandatory minimum" sentences for an array of offenses, including firearms convictions and drug cases; the adoption of "truth in sentencing" statutes, which lengthens the minimum a prisoner must serve; the virtual abolition of parole in many states; longer prescribed prison sentences for most felonies; the systematic lowering of the age juveniles can be tried as adults; and, finally, a proliferation of "three strikes and you're out" laws. These measures, all pursued under the banner of fighting crime, were enacted by legislatures from Maine to Alaska and ratified by governors as conservative as Republican John Sununu of New Hampshire and as liberal as Democrat Ann Richards of Texas. Likewise, the Federal versions of these laws passed Congress whether Democrats had control or whether Republicans were in the majority. They were signed into law by Ronald Reagan and George Bush; they were signed into law by Bill Clinton as well. In the election of 2000, neither Vice President Al Gore, nor Texas Governor George W. Bush ever raised their voices in any opposition to the nation's rush to incarcerate. Quite the contrary, both enunciated their support for it and, when discussing crime, advocated policies that would add to it.

Because this is an election year, a great deal of attention has been focused in recent months on the Texas death penalty system. That spotlight appears to have lessened public support for capital punishment, albeit only slightly. But its real value may have been that it shed some light into the shadows of the rest of the criminal justice system, the vast majority of which deals with non-capital cases. And the picture it illuminated wasn't pretty. During the furor over the Gary Graham execution, for example, it was disquieting to learn that even in a case that threw the Bush campaign off its game and generated international interest, the Texas parole board didn't bother to meet in person before faxing--faxing--in its 19-0 decision not to intervene. It doesn't take much imagination to envision the level of scrutiny this parole board gives to clemency requests in non-capital cases. Indeed, the utter lack of interest authorities display in determining who among their inmates are worthy of release appears to be the norm everywhere:

* In Virginia, under the administration of two Republican governors, George Allen and James Gilmore, the state has all but eliminated parole for new inmates. Virginia's parole board has, in fact, applied this law retroactively as well--even in the face of statutory and judicial mandates that it not do so. In practice, inmates with perfect records routinely see their petitions for parole dismissed with the vaguest and most general language: "Board needs to see further development to warrant parole," or "Release at this time would diminish seriousness of the offense."

* In California, Gov. Gray Davis has gotten crosswise with his state's Supreme Court by thumbing his nose at the state's parole provisions and simply forbidding his state's Board of Prison Terms from ever releasing any inmate convicted of homicide.

It is instructive to note that in doing so Governor Davis is carrying out a campaign pledge he made when he ran for office, a fact that underscores the popularity these law-and-order measures have with the voting public. These policies are cheerfully carried out by elected prosecutors--and ratified on a daily basis by juries. The stray Federal judge protests here and there at the lack of discretion trial judges are accorded under the law, but the Supreme Court has not put the brakes on any of it and the harsh approach to law-and-order scores well in nearly every public opinion poll done on the subject.

The upshot is that after holding relatively steady for half a century, the incarceration rate in America doubled in the 1980s--and then doubled again in the 1990s. As the United States enters a new millennium in an era of unprecedented prosperity, it is the midst of an incongruous boom in prison construction. The boom has produced a new industry, privately owned prisons, and a new force in American politics: the prison guards unions. Perhaps most serious, the quadrupling of the incarceration rate has also worsened one of the most depressing legacies of racism in this nation, the historical disparity in ethnic makeup of the prison population. In state and Federal prisons, African Americans, who constitute 12 percent of the nation's population, comprise 48 percent of the inmate population. Latinos make up 19 percent of those in prison, more than twice their numbers in society. Among the nation's approximately 400,000 jail inmates, the numbers are only slightly less disproportionate.

In defense of such numbers, law and order advocates make two broad assertions:

First, they insist as an article of faith that the rise in incarceration is directly responsible for the current, seven-year downward trend in violent crime in this country. Certainly the voting public subscribes to that view, and their elected officials follow suit. Second, in response to the racial dimensions of this issue, the architects of the incarceration boom maintain that since minorities are disproportionately the victims of crime, policies that remove perpetrators from the street do a tremendous service to the minority community.

Both of these claims appear to have a straightforward logic to them, but almost none of the nation's prominent criminologists believe that the equation between the incarceration rate and the crime rate is that simple. And even if there is some truth in the second point, there are also associated costs to a national policy that locks up such a disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics. It is past time for the nation's policy-makers to openly acknowledge these costs and to begin a serious discussion of some remedies.

The Disproportionate Impact

In the 19th century, Southern legislatures deliberately tailored the law so that statutes considered to be those most likely to be violated by blacks were those that carried added sanctions, such as forfeiting the right to vote or to bear arms on release from prison. At the dawn of the 21st century, disparities in the treatment of white and black defendants are documented at every phase of the criminal justice system from arrest through parole.

The most well-known example, the penalties for crack cocaine, was denounced almost as soon as it became apparent that it was an unintended consequence of the 1986 crime bill. (Blacks disproportionately use cocaine in its crack form; whites in its powder form.) And yet, despite acknowledgment from the bill's authors of its awful price among black offenders, despite the fact that the U.S. Sentencing Commission recommended in 1995 that it be rectified, despite promises from both Democrats and Republicans that it would be fixed, the law remains that it takes 100 times as much powder cocaine as crack to get the same--mandatory--prison sentence in Federal court.

Law and order hardliners, even while admitting the law is unfair, say that the crack-powder disparity is an anomaly. But it isn't. The government's own statistics suggest that blacks comprise 13 percent of the nation's illegal drug users, which is about right, considering they are 12 percent of the population. But they constitute 38 percent of the drug arrests and 59 percent of those convicted of drug crimes. And the average sentence in state courts, where judges have wide latitude, is 27 months for white defendants and 46 months for blacks. Given that 60 percent of all inmates serving time in Federal prison are drug offenders--up from 25 percent in 1980--and that the racial disparities are only getting worse, is it any surprise that increasing numbers of citizens view the "war on drugs" as a war on blacks?

"These racial disparities are a national scandal," said Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization. "Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system. This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all."

It's not only the drug war that is having a disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics. Testifying before a House subcommittee on May 11, 2000, John R. Steer, vice chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, painted a stark picture of what impact the nation's "mandatory minimums" have on minorities. Since 1993, the percentage of mandatory minimum cases in which the defendant is white has decreased from 30 percent to 23 percent. But Hispanics have experienced an increase from 33 to 39 percent--roughly the same percentage as African Americans. And while the percentage of black defendants has evened off for the last three years, they are also much more likely to receive the harshest categories of those mandatory minimums. For cases in which there is a 20-year mandatory minimum term, blacks were the defendant in a stunning 60 percent of the cases. That's a long time away from home.

The Cost to Families

On August 30, 2000, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics released a study showing that some 1.5 million children had at least one parent in a state or Federal prison in 1999, an increase of 60 percent since 1991. Half those children are black. The criminal justice system, of course, makes no provisions for those kids, even those who have single moms as parents and even when those mothers are incarcerated for long stretches of time for "victimless crimes," such as drug possession. (The $30 billion omnibus crime bill passed by Congress in 1994 and signed by Clinton contained money for a prison facility that was supposed to house inmate mothers with their infants and toddlers. It has never been built.) Thus, state and local social agencies are supposed to assume the burden. But they aren't. In Louisiana, the state with the highest incarceration rate in the country, Judy Watts, president of Agenda for a New Orleans child advocacy group, says those agencies are simply overwhelmed by the needs of children with parents in prison.

"These are children who need very careful attention and nurturing, and unfortunately, they are often not getting it," she said. "The government is sending these people away to prison, but the government is not picking up the slack for their children in any way whatsoever."

To be sure, some of these children are better off without violent or drug abusing parents in the household, but as Julie Stewart, founder and president of organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums, points out, if the Federal government is going to be so aggressive in removing these parents from society--for drug crimes--it ought to concern itself with the wreckage it leaves behind in the form of shattered family groups. Keeping these family units in contact, providing mental health benefits for the family members, counseling and mentors for the children, and offering services to re-integrate the family upon the release of the parent--all these obvious needs are not being addressed on a Federal level. "Congress is so very shortsighted," Stewart laments. "The entire emphasis is on taking people off the street and incarcerating them. The children are always forgotten."

Those are the effects of laws passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush and President Clinton. And while it never pays for a politician to be seen as "soft" on crime, to the little ones whose lives are turned upside down by such draconian sentencing laws, the world can seem unforgiving indeed.

"President Clinton, can you please talk to the judge ...?" implored 11-year-old Crystalle Jada Warren in a recent letter. "If he goes to jail for a long time, I'll never get to spend any time with him again."

Nine-year-old Emerson Chamberlain also sent a missive to the White House. "My Dad is in jail and my family needs him home," the boy wrote. "My little baby brother needs his Dad and so do I."

The most poignant cases of all are those where single mothers fall victim to drug prosecutions, often for doing the bidding of a husband or boyfriend in the drug trade. One such defendant, Monica Clyburn of Sarasota, Fla., had four children, none of whom has any recollection of their mother not being behind bars. They live with their maternal grandmother an hour-and-forty-five minute drive from the prison. The oldest, Crystal, cries herself to sleep nights. The mother was sentenced to 15 years under a Federal mandatory minimum for gun possession, although she was actually caught pawning a gun that had never been used and which she swore was her boyfriend's. The U.S. Attorney in Tampa, Florida, asserted two years ago that she never made that claim at trial; a sentencing transcript proves him wrong.

"God has been good to us," Monica's mother Naomi told me, "but I do know that these children need their mom."

All of these hardships on the families of convicted felons, of course, are exacerbated by a growing practice in modern American jurisprudence: the exporting of prisoners from one state to another for the simple expediency of prison space--often private prison space built for the express purpose of making a profit. The most egregious example of the capriciousness of this system is right in the nation's capital. With the gradual closing of Lorton Prison, located in nearby Fairfax County, Va., convicts from Washington, D.C.--almost all of whom are black--are now simply processed into the Federal prison system, some ticketed to do their time as far away as New Mexico. It is a policy that seems calculated to sabotage the bonds between inmates and their families. "If you're going to lock people up, lock them up in their communities," says Todd Clear, a criminologist at John Jay College in New York. "They're close to their families, and it's easier to transition them back into the neighborhood."

The Cost to Neighborhoods

Professor Clear is one of the most prominent criminologists in this country to have begun to document some of the negative effects of the wholesale removal of young males from African American communities. Law-and-order advocates point out that when chronic offenders are taken away from a community, that community is spared the considerable costs that their future crimes would have exacted on business, homes and individuals. This is not a trivial concern, to be sure, but it is not the whole story.

One flaw to the throw-away-the-key model is that society doesn't really throw away the key forever. When offenders are released from prison, they often return to their home communities, and do so without increased skills--if anything, their skills and work habits have atrophied in prison--and with chips on their shoulders.

"Take the re-offender," says Delray Beach, Fla. police captain William McCollom. "Ideally someone serves their time and is able to return to the whole," he says. "But we know that is not happening." Instead, the ex-con returns to a blighted community where his job prospects are compromised and where his reputation is tarnished.

New laws have only made this problem worse. The 1994 crime bill ended the practice that allowed Federal prisoners to qualify for Pell grants so they could take college courses behind bars. This may be one of the more self-defeating bills Congress has ever passed.

"Every single study shows that the more education you have, the less the crime," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, and author of The Race to Incarcerate. "So what do they do? Cut education for inmates." This is typical of the incarceration boom: Prison sentences are not only longer, but state and Federal governments have ensured that the time is harder to do as well. And despite claims from its law and order defenders that rates of recidivism would decline as prison life became harsher, the exact opposite appears to be happening.

But even if the net impact were positive, Professor Clear has shown that when large groups of young men are removed from their communities, it leaves a gap in those communities even if those men were committing crimes. "It changes the structure of the neighborhood," he says. "Imagine a place with no men. The people in the community lose all the things that men do. Crime, yes, but the good things, too."

Typically, the loss of the male adult requires a woman and her children to change housing, usually moving to a more crowded accommodation. This often necessitates changing schools. It often leaves an income gap, as these men, even those actively pursuing crime usually have some sort of part-time employment or off-the-books income, income they share with the kids in the family unit. "The men sent to jail usually have done a lot of bad things in the previous year," Clear says. "Most of them have done a lot of good things, too. When you incarcerate, you are taking away the bad as well as the good."

A model attracting a smattering of attention in this country holds that these men must be seen as community "assets" instead of community burdens. Under the umbrella term "community justice," various localities are experimenting with ways to implement this theory, ranging from diversionary drug-treatment clinics to requiring men to perform restitution or community service in lieu of warehousing them in a far-away jail cell.

In the meantime, black and Latino mothers across this country have instituted a poignant ritual that has no name: Saturday sessions where children are brought to the jail to receive advice or even discipline from their father or father figure. In this way, do the women left to fend for themselves during the incarceration boom do their part to try and keep their communities together. (And these, as we have seen, are the less unfortunate ones: Many relatives now face cross-country trips they can make only a few times a year.)

The Cost to the Nation

In the process of implementing its drug war and incarceration policies, the Federal government has sent a harsh, if unintended, message, to poor Latino and black males in this country. That message is blunt: We kind of expect that you will rotate through the criminal justice system at some point in your early lives. But evidence mounts that this is society's self-fulfilling prophesy. In minority neighborhoods ranging from Latino barrios of San Jose, Calif., to all-black enclaves in West Baltimore, prison holds no stigma for the simple reason that so many of the young men from the neighborhood end up there. The Southern California-based Mexican Mafia is, in fact, a prison gang that operates on both sides of The Wall and whose members wear tattoos that constitute a kind of human graffiti announcing that they've been to prison--or expect to go when they are older.

"I've talked to many kids, and they tell me that going to prison is like going into the Army was for the previous generation," says Barry Krisberg, president of the San Francisco-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "Prison doesn't scare them because almost everyone they know has been to prison."

Other impacts affect us all. What is to be made of the fact that of a voting-age population of less than 11 million, something like 1.5 million blacks have lost the franchise? Or that the Federal government's statistics for minority unemployment have become skewed to look more favorable than they really are because those behind bars are not counted? Even on a strictly cost-benefit analysis, our incarceration policies have become self-defeating.

Changes Are Needed

Asserting that racial bias "infects" every state of the criminal justice process, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has targeted five specific areas that need changing. The reforms they advocate start with curbing the disproportionate number of minorities improperly stopped by law enforcement officials on a pretext or on some overly-broad, generic "profile" basis. They end with a call for "determining the appropriateness" of death penalty statutes meted out disproportionately to blacks. Until such reforms are addressed, the United States can expect to reap what it is sowing in the minority communities. That crop includes:

* Hundreds of black and Latino neighborhoods where large numbers of the men cannot vote and have no political clout.

* A common perception among African Americans that police departments are a hostile force, with their own rules of conduct, and that those rules allow for quicker arrests and harsher use of force against blacks.

* A whole generation of black and Latino boys who lack role models in their own households or neighborhoods.

* The fact that these boys must make the intellectual choice between believing that a) their father is a problem or b) the criminal justice system is a problem.

"Which do you think they choose?" asks Professor Clear. "That one is a no-brainer."

[Sun Ship]

Though I am against the death penalty, especially in America… I am concerned about the ability of some demented Black people who are sometimes driven by an addiction or the associated profits, (especially, crack cocaine) raising the bar of destruction on our people…The delusional realities created by this drug along with other distortions in our social/psyche has fractured our sacred love and continuity to our elders and children which has brought about a different type of spiritual deviant in our community …those who believe they can feed off the lives of the innocent.

Now I know the American justice system could never properly make consistent judgments concerning guilt and is driven by the genocidal machinations of imperialism, rather than justice, while upholding draconian punishments reinforced by the science of racism. But…my heart tells me that any Black man or woman that harms their mother and willfully cause the death of their own mother…especially if he or she admits it…is worthy of death…racist system and all. And you can expand this sentiment to the murder of innocent children.

But this is just my heart speaking…

Though all murder is hideous, when I hear about any Black person committing these types of crimes (harming innocent mothers and children)…this kind of madness is way, way outside of our spiritual and cultural psyche.

Peace,

Brother Sun Ship

[Baba Ahmed]

yeah Sun Ship its a tough call; maybe Shaka Zulu's bruthas' felt your pain after Shaka's death was ordered for stabbing his Mama in her thigh. That was a Zulu culture.

there is no universal law to govern a person's killing of another. Tho many "Scriptures" command as such. But in my opinion most if not all Western flip-flop'd Scriptures are overlays for conquests.

However in our situations here and keeping in mind that our ancestors/people have been here a very long time, and its why some call us - & I agree "New Afrikans." Like all human creations we came from something. Personally I see Amerikkka as Omowale Malik Shabazz described it: down souf & up souf; that everything below the Canadian border is Souf, a Bible belt of dogs and wolves.

Like the first post shows, its statistical analysis and report can be applied to all other areas in Amerikkkan politico/economic life of applying grants, rewards, punishments, etc its a numbers' game within this systemic Racism. And its redundant to expect morality to fit anywhere in this system. We should know this by now. As fine of a speech is old Frederick Douglas' July 4th one, basically he appealed to their consciences. To no avail. A skanning of our Stories/HisStories say from the 14th Century on this way, will show a steady digression of the aims, tones, means of our revolutions Plus our inabilities to stay focused on who the external enemy(s) is/are. We've become weaker, if we can see ourselves as a people, and more "enlightened," more "educated" more "sophisticated" too much more "cosmopolitan." And yet in cycles our Maroon-ness rears its beautiful head. To me that's what our valiant BLA represented. Such spirits will never die. Yt hopes so. But to make sure, this system controlled 99.9% by Europeans is bent on annihilating our asses. Its not a moral call for them; its pure injustice that they leave us to discuss and cry the blues about. It will not stop in nor of itself.

It must be destroyed, physically.

Spiritual battles have always been won by us. Otherwise like the Arawaks (sp?) there'd be hardly identifiable traces of us. We in my opinion just have to re-connect with our spirits consciously. Our ancestors are still in our corners. What'd the Jackson Five sang? Just call my naaaaame... I'll be therrrre! There it is.

Europeans, seemingly if dem wanted to, can't stop and onareal don't wanna stop do n what dem been do n for over 500 years to us directly. Huh?


A luta continua in the Spirts of the Maroons who today live in us...

[Notiq]

No person walking this earth should have the right to determine if someone is gonna die

[Baba Ahmed]

have a right to or not, murderers do it everyday in amerikkka.... now in utopia a whole other set of dreams prevail.

murderers just as do all other people do not live in an abstract utopia.

maybe u'd care to present why u think about and share with the board your basis besides or in addtion to a belief, desire &/or a hope.

[Kweku_Omowale]

sis natty reb hope your kids and family is doing alright secondly thanks a million for the post, the UNITED SNAKKES OF AMERIKKKA,has no right to kill anybody since,death penalty isa vindictive system and doesnt redress any kind of justice but only brings the animosity in people,when the AMERIKKKAN government has the most records of human rights violations in the world. by sponsoring dictators and death squads world wide to over throw perfectly democratic governments,fuck bush because amerika is amBUSHed natty reb,like the coup says on his album'' time to turn this system upside down'' hotep and uhuru!

[Elisa Keisha]

They have no right

[Baba Ahmed]

Originally Posted by afrikanwarriorzumbi2020

sis natty reb hope your kids and family is doing alright secondly thanks a million for the post, the UNITED SNAKKES OF AMERIKKKA,has no right to kill anybody since,death penalty isa vindictive system and doesnt redress any kind of justice but only brings the animosity in people,when the AMERIKKKAN government has the most records of human rights violations in the world. by sponsoring dictators and death squads world wide to over throw perfectly democratic governments,fuck bush because amerika is amBUSHed natty reb,like the coup says on his album'' time to turn this system upside down'' hotep and uhuru!

OK lets say the polls are closed; and lets say that there's an overwhelming vote that u.s. gov't on any level has no right to sentence to death a convicted person...and proceeds to execute.

what's the next step? the venting is done... now what to do? I don't really know about other nations, but here in Amerikkka lynchings are still b n done! And that's clearly illegal, immoral, just plain ole ILL. Not one white boy has been reported as found hanging by his neck. The few who're executed by the State are tokens. And r usually what used to be called "white trash;" i.e., expendable collaterial exchange.

Not one cop has been indicted for gun'n down an Afrikan here in Amerikkka; its ruled justifiable legally. This new way, the Taser gun, is killing even young boys: 50,000 volts and more into their bodies that literally shocks and burns them to death!

That's wrong too.... question remains unanswered? What's to be done?

I predict that someday soon, an updated BLA will arise. The social, economical and political conditions are very similar to those of the 1950s-'60s. And this new crew will be more formidable. Its natural in oppression/repressive reactions.

Congratulate yourselves and get red-day fo' judgment day.... RIGHT'S on our side

So what to do???

[nattyreb]

Originally Posted by Baba Ahmed

OK lets say the polls are closed; and lets say that there's an overwhelming vote that u.s. gov't on any level has no right to sentence to death a convicted person...and proceeds to execute.

what's the next step? the venting is done... now what to do? I don't really know about other nations, but here in Amerikkka lynchings are still b n done! And that's clearly illegal, immoral, just plain ole ILL. Not one white boy has been reported as found hanging by his neck. The few who're executed by the State are tokens. And r usually what used to be called "white trash;" i.e., expendable collaterial exchange.

Not one cop has been indicted for gun'n down an Afrikan here in Amerikkka; its ruled justifiable legally. This new way, the Taser gun, is killing even young boys: 50,000 volts and more into their bodies that literally shocks and burns them to death!

That's wrong too.... question remains unanswered? What's to be done?

I predict that someday soon, an updated BLA will arise. The social, economical and political conditions are very similar to those of the 1950s-'60s. And this new crew will be more formidable. Its natural in oppression/repressive reactions.

Congratulate yourselves and get red-day fo' judgment day.... RIGHT'S on our side

So what to do???

What phenomenal feedblack on this poll, asante sana to y'all! i'm so impressed with the digging deep y'all gave in your responses and that this is a topic worthy to so many of you for a well thought out response. It is really gratifying.

OK, Baba, you posed that great eternal question and here's what i advocate we do. We gotta make it a discourse in our communities, taking all the feelings we all share regarding heinous crimes, and adding our own alternatives to the prevailing thought process out there of how to respond to them. Organizations of every progressive stripe should have a prisons piece in it and thus the d.p. has to be part of that discussion, particularly in Black organizations. We recognize that the death penalty is an extension of those lynchings you describe so vividly, and even though these "strange fruit" may be guilty of a heinous act that other lynching victims certainly were not, nonetheless, it is what it is. Judged, juried, anesthetized, legalized lynching.

The Innocence Project http://www.innocenceproject.org (PLEASE Y'ALL, CHECK THEIR HOME PAGE!) is a tremendous resource for the anti-DP movement and many brothas are available for speaking, such as Bro. Hurricane Carter. http://deathpenaltyinfo.org is also a fantastic resource with an e-mail list that can be subscribed to. A ton of informational materials, experts and exonerated captives await our full utilization of them. People need to be aware of the numbers of innocents who are exonerated, or even the numbers of people charged with similar crimes in the same prisons as someone on the Row who have Life WithOut Parole or even lesser sentences. The arbitrary nature with which its meted out is cause for pause in and of itself.

My response to "what to do" is to stay up to date with new developments, PUSH information whatever our affiliations, invite speakers to come in, raise questions when DP cases come up in our own towns, and insist that discussions on prisons and the d.p. be included in any gathering we are involved with. There is so much info that it would absolutely flood anyone's efforts to speak in favor of the DP!

The "unofficial" DP handed out on the streets via tasers and other weapons are the same murderous head of the same beast, we definitely need to connect the dots between all issues regarding policing/courts/prisons. It's the greatest contributor to our ongoing holocaust on these shores!

Keep on!

[Baba Ahmed]

I've re-read these replies and will offer for clarification's sake. The exception brought forth by Sun Ship hits a vital area: w/o mama's where'd we be. We wouldn't be period, if that became a statistically over whelming majority of murder cases... among us. But its one type of a heinous crime affecting us. Keeping mind that cops murder many of our people, too. I know y'all that's one of the "no-no" words. Forgive this old man I know not a more clearer descriptive term, do u? Capital murder? 1st degree murder? Premeditated murder? Conspiracy to murder?

But methinks nattyreb's poll is seeking to test the pulses of how we see the legally sentencing of folk to death by execution and do we accept it all; if not why? Do we oppose it? Why?

Execution is one aspect of a generally unjust system not only of criminal justice; but also with its partnas big bizness and the militarty at home and abroad. Executions are b n ordered by reps of an unjust system. As it is today. Do we wait until it becomes, as one post dreams, a society ruled by divine law? Priniciples?

No one has a right, huh? Says who? Pure rhetoric.

Methinks nattyreb is encouraging us to see this issue as vital NOW. I'm encouraging us to keep this issue in the context of history and what's happening to our people NOW. So right here what she's suggested is to click on the site cited and help to stop it now. And to seek out other's in the vanguard of this ASPECT of our struggles and join them. To appeal to a proven unjust people's conscious or sense of morality is a done deal. Except philosophically and in realms of rational spirituality. And to stop it NOW is the objective. Some as in any group action will benefit whether we think they shouldn't or not. For sure the ones we're concerned about are joined with others. This is not lead by purists, I giv thanks, but folk who see a means accomplished - no death penalty for nobody - in our overall struggle to exact Justice in this land; which will help in the int'l arenas.

We know that philosophers can produce absolute "truth" per written rules for the abstract world. And rational spiritualist are so far removed from everyday reality, it will have us dreaming for a utopia. By & by. I suggest to our respected spiritualist to test their everyday actions while flying high.

Both positions need to take a few chill pills; they're not wrong; but they alone are useless in today's struggles. We need both in actions. NOW

Thanks for the reminder nattyreb I vaguely recall a program via our radio RFG-FM (radio free georgia) hosting folk from the innocence project. I'll look into it. There's sooo much stuff to do and soooooo many org's to do it with.... ya kno? Bit by bit piece by piece our puzzle must be connected.