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Troy Davis and Jamey Rodemeyer: By A Jury Of Our Peers

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1
Troy Anthony Davis is dead, executed by the state of Georgia, September 21, 2011 at 10:00 pm. Ten days later, now that other stories have caught the media’s eye, Davis may seem forgotten. But in Harlem, where I live, his face stares out from orange posters plastered to lampposts along my street, announcing an emergency rally organized to save his life.

It feels like a bad dream, the kind you can’t shake for days: the final countdown to his death by the protests around the country, the supporters from all over the world, including politicians, celebrities and religious figures, asking that his life be spared so that questions about the fairness of his trial could be answered. That day, riding on the subway at seven o’clock, the original time set for his execution, I assumed Troy Davis was gone, only to arrive home and find out that he’d had another reprieve: the U.S. Supreme Court was considering his case; there was hope. Hours later, his appeal rejected, Davis was dead by lethal injection.

I didn’t know Troy Davis, and I don’t know whether he committed the crime he was convicted of or not. But I know that with Troy Davis dead, there won’t be another appeal for him, no new trial. There will be many more conversations about Troy Davis in the years to come, but the critical one, the one that might have saved his life, is over.

Execution is a curious kind of death. Some deaths are natural, others accidental, or premeditated; some people are killed out of jealousy, taken in the passion in the moment. But execution is death you can set your watch to.  Knowing that at a specific time, at a specific hour, someone is going to be killed, creates a strange psychological predicament for all involved. Regardless of whether you believe the person is guilty or not, the instinct to preserve life is suppressed; you know they are going to be murdered and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, we live out the mundane aspects of our lives against the backdrop of “justice being served”: I have to go pick up the kids from school (Troy Davis will be dead in four hours), What are we having for dinner? (Troy Davis will be dead in two hours), I forgot to pick up the dry-cleaning, will you get it tomorrow? (Troy Davis will be dead an hour from now.)

The morning after Troy Davis’ execution, I kept seeing him everywhere I looked, the almost serene look on his face, the round glasses, the hint of challenge. On the posters, Davis doesn’t look like a cold-blooded killer, but like a graduate student. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have killed that officer. But it’s easier to deal with the horror of Troy Davis’ execution if you think to yourself, despite the number of “witnesses” who recanted their testimonies after his trial, “Maybe he did do it.” And if he didn’t do it, he probably did something else. Because life can’t be this unfair, God can’t be this unfair. An innocent person can’t be executed; he must have done it.

Underneath Davis’ picture was the slogan that became part of the campaign to save his life: “I am Troy Davis.”  My mother’s maiden name was Davis, and he actually looks like a cousin of mine. When I look at those posters I want to protect Troy — many of us felt that way. But if our system chose not to protect him, why didn’t it protect justice? Justice – what we teach our 4th grade kids about in history, what our country is supposedly built on.

Just when I start feeling self-righteous about the unfairness of the death penalty, I read that Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in Texas for the murder of James Byrd, Jr., the same day Davis was put to death. Good ol’ Texas, where at times it seems they are so eager to execute, you can practically get the death penalty for having your credit card declined. According to the Los Angeles Times, Rick Perry, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, was asked during a GOP debate about Texas’ 234 executions during his nearly 11 years as governor. He said he “never struggled” with the issue because “the state of Texas has a very thoughtful, very clear process in place.”

If there was ever a death penalty case where the person seemed to deserve it it’s Brewer’s. An avowed white supremacist, with an accomplice still on death row, Brewer beat Byrd severely, urinated on him, and then chained him, still conscious, to the back of his truck, dragging him three miles to his death. Part of me wants Brewer hurt in unimaginable ways, slowly brutalized. But more than revenge, I want him alive, so that we can question him, so that he can be studied. I want his brain to be examined before and after his death so that we can understand what circumstances in our culture, or biologically, created someone capable of this kind of evil; so that we can figure out what to do before the next white supremacist comes off the assembly line.

We must ask where this violence comes from, specifically in men: what are we teaching our boys? How can anyone be capable of the cruelty shown recently in Fullerton, California, where six police officers beat and tasered 37-year-old Kelly Thomas to death? Bystanders watched as Thomas screamed for help, calling out, “Dad! Dad!” as police beat him beyond recognition, as Thomas no longer resisted. When you look at the picture of Thomas released to the media before his beating, you will see an “All-American” white man, and you can’t help but think this isn’t the face the police usually vent their rage on. But if you compare it to the photograph taken after his murder, you realize this isn’t the face the police saw that day. Kelly Thomas was schizophrenic and homeless. With a long red beard, and unkempt tangled hair, he wasn’t the boy next door anymore. He was the homeless, mentally ill nuisance on the street corner – someone killable because mental illness pushed him outside the familiar circles. We no longer recognized him as someone who deserved to be saved, and so he didn’t belong to us anymore.

Maybe it is enough, for some, that Troy Davis had to pay for the crime of killing off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail, whether he did it or not, because the person who did it was probably black, and as long as a black person pays, any black person, then that’s enough. Which makes Troy Davis’ execution a lynching. Perhaps Troy Davis was just another black man in America whose life was worth something only as a consumer – not worth enough to protect, not worth enough to save.

2

Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old boy from Buffalo, New York, is dead. Bullied by children at his school, Jamey asked for help, but at some point it clearly became too much for him and he took his own life on September 18, 2011.

Jamey acknowledged before his death that he was teased, in part, because most of his friends were girls. ABC News reported that Jamey received messages from his peers that said, “JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND [sic] UGLY. HE MUST DIE!” Another read, “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it. It would make everyone WAY more happier!”

Jamey’s death particularly stings because he had resources. He had “come out” as a bisexual, and knew where to get some help and support, at least online. He was a fan of Lady Gaga, and her song, “Born This Way” inspired him. He knew about Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” Project, and had even recorded a video to encourage other gay and bisexual people to have hope.  Jamey had some help, but in the end it wasn’t the help he needed.  It simply wasn’t enough.

The loss of Jamey Rodemeyer recalls the suicides last year of 14-year-old Kameron Jacobsen, bullied on Facebook by other students in Orange County, New York because of his perceived sexual orientation, of 18-year-old Rutgers student Tyler Clemente who, after being video-streamed kissing another man by his roommate without his knowledge, and rejected by his mother after coming out, jumped off the George Washington Bridge; and Joseph Jefferson, a 26-year-old black gay-rights activist based in Brooklyn, New York. Jefferson, who had been a graduate from Harvey Milk High School and belonged to several gay organizations, wrote before his death:

“Belonging is one of the basic human needs; when people feel isolated and excluded from a sense of communion with others, they suffer. I have been an advocate for my peers and most importantly youth because most have never had a deep emotional attachment to anyone. They don’t know how to love and be loved in return. The need to be loved can sometimes translate to the need to belong to someone or something. Driven by that need….most will do anything to belong.”

 

Please continue to Part II.

Max Gordon is a writer and activist. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996) and Mixed Messages: An Anthology of Literature to Benefit Hospice and Cancer Causes. His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally.

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Senator Suggests Trump Engaging in ‘Stochastic Terrorism’ Amid Pet-Eating Immigrant Lies

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September 13, 2024

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Donald Trump is on his fourth day of promoting his false claim that 20,000 undocumented Haitian migrants were dumped on Springfield, Ohio and have destroyed the townsfolk’s way of life, including by stealing people’s pet cats and dogs and eating them. Now, one U.S. Senator is suggesting the Republican presidential nominee is using “stochastic terrorism” to help his flailing presidential campaign.

A bomb threat and another, unspecified threat forced several Springfield elementary schools and one middle school to evacuate or not open Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, the Springfield city hall was evacuated and shut down, as were some state motor vehicle offices.

The emailed bomb threat on Thursday echoed Donald Trump’s and U.S. Senator JD Vance’s racist lies.

“My hometown of Springfield is becoming a thirdworld (expletive) because you allowed the federal government to dump these (expletive) here,” the email stated, USA Today reports. “We have Haitians eating our animals and then you lie and claim this is not happening when we see this happening. I’m here to send a message, I placed a bomb in the following locations…”

RELATED: ‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies

During Tuesday’s presidential debate Trump had falsely said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

On Thursday he used the lie to promote the candidacy of a Republican seeking to unseat Ohio Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.

And on Friday, despite the bomb threat and other unspecified threat, Trump said in a press conference he would travel to Springfield and vowed to do “large deportations” from that city and send the legal immigrants he removes to Venezuela.

The “20,000 illegal Haitian migrants” are reported 12,000 to 15,000, ABC News reports, and they are not “illegal.” They are in the country legally, and the town as far back as a decade ago resolved to invite immigrants to help rebuild their failing economy and businesses.

Also on Friday, while reportedly not repeating the racist pet-eating lie, Trump dismissed the bomb threats as unimportant.

U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is not dismissing them, but he is asking how anyone could function again under a Trump presidency, and suggesting Trump is engaging in stochastic terrorism.

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

“Think about what it would be like to have four years of a President engaging in overtly racist stochastic terrorism against people pursuing the American dream and then just ask yourself what your immigrant grandparents would want you to do. Kids deserve to go to school safely,” Senator Schatz wrote.

Wajahat Ali is a New York Times contributing op-ed writer, Daily Beast columnist, and author of “Go Back to Where You Came From.” Responding to the news Friday of more school evacuations, Ali wrote: “Stochastic terrorism thanks to Trump and Vance.”

Mother Jones’s D.C. bureau chief David Corn, an MSNBC analyst, also noted: “Trump and Vance incite. Look up stochastic terrorism.”

And Mother Jones on X posted: “Days after Trump went on a racist rant during the presidential debate, the city of Springfield, Ohio, received a bomb threat that was explicitly hostile to immigrants and Haitians. This further proves that Trump’s demonizing rhetoric portends violence.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

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‘Hell Isn’t Hot Enough’: Fury at Trump as More School Evacuations Follow ‘Pet-Eating’ Lies

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September 13, 2024

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For the second day in a row, elementary school children in Springfield, Ohio, were forced to be evacuated due to threats: a bomb threat on Thursday and an unspecified threat on Friday. The threats come after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, have repeatedly spread lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield this week, including that they are stealing residents’ cats and dogs and eating them.

Thursday’s bomb threat specifically mentioned the false claims about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, USA Today reported.

“Three schools in Springfield were evacuated or closed Friday, based on guidance from police, school officials said,” local NBC affiliate WLWT reports. “Officials with the Springfield City School District said that based on information they got from the Springfield Police Division, students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary were evacuated and moved to another district location.”

A Springfield middle school was also ordered closed Friday morning, before classes began, and “at least one Springfield location of the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles is closed.”

READ MORE: ‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump

On Thursday, a bomb threat targeting Springfield city hall and an elementary school forced evacuations of those buildings.

“Police Chief Allison Elliott said that due to the seriousness of the threat, officials evacuated multiple buildings in addition to City Hall, including BMV Springfield Driver’s Exam Station, Ohio License Bureau Southside, Springfield Academy of Excellence and Fulton Elementary School.”

Despite the reports of the bomb threat on Thursday, hours later Donald Trump used his Truth Social platform to promote the Republican nominee working to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, by spreading more anti-Haitian immigrant racism.

“Bernie Moreno has a very good chance of winning Ohio against a Radical Left Democrat, Sherrod Brown, with what is happening in Springfield, and other parts of the State,” Trump declared Thursday afternoon, referring to the far-right extremist Republican who is currently leading in the polls by low single digits.

Trump then invoked his racist Haitian immigrant lies.

“Ohio is being inundated with Illegal Migrants, mostly from Haiti, who are taking over Towns and Villages at a level and rate never seen before.”

On Truth Social, Trump on Thursday also posted memes of cats, including one with them holding a sign that says, “Don’t let them eat us, vote for Trump.”

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump had falsely claimed, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

USA Today also reported that the “false rumor that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets began to circulate in the days leading up to the debate and was further popularized through posts from running mate J.D. Vance about his own state and AI-generated images shared by Trump, Elon Musk and the Republican House Judiciary Committee.”

J.J. Abbott, former press secretary to then-Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, responded to ABC News immigration reporter Armando Tonatiuh Torres-García’s viral social media post reporting Friday’s threat and evacuations:

“In 2018, the GOP and Trump’s anti-immigrant conspiracies led to the deadliest mass shooting in recent PA history at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The gunman took him seriously and literally. There’s nothing funny or intriguing about this dangerous racism.”

Many others responded to that reporter’s post.

“No sanitizing this. @jdvance and @realDonaldTrump bear full responsibility. They’re promoters of terrorism; and they did it intentionally,” wrote columnist, reporter, and former editor in chief of Crooked Media Brian Beutler.

“Ohio should look at this insanity and vote accordingly. Conspiracy peddling has real consequences. You can’t unring that bell. Donald Trump and JD Vance don’t care,” noted constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance are terrorizing schoolchildren. They are unfit for any public office, let alone the highest,” responded attorney Andrew L. Seidel.

“JD Vance and MAGA influencers whipped up a blood libel panic and now children in Springfield are being traumatized by their lies. Hell isn’t hot enough,” commented the co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, Leah Greenberg.

“There’s a line from Charlottesville to Jan 6 to this. Trump speaks, his supporters act,” wrote political analyst and researcher Arieh Kovler.

“Trump could stop this but he won’t because he believes it serves his interests. It’s the same J6 behavior of spreading false conspiracy theories to inflame his supporters and then sitting back and watching instead of stopping it,” noted political science professor Michael McDonald.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

 

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‘Screaming About Eating Cats Is Not a Solution’: Walz Rallies Michigan Crowd, Slams Trump

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September 13, 2024

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Minnesota Governor and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz took aim at Donald Trump Thursday night at a rally in the battleground state of Michigan, where the Harris campaign is leading the ex-president by an average of less than two points.

The Detroit News’ Craig Mauger posted a photo of the overflow crowd at the Grand Rapids Public Museum:

Gov. Walz’s speech (full video here) was decidedly down-home and neighborly, but he had no trouble going on the attack as well.

He told the audience that their friends and neighbors had watched Tuesday night’s presidential debate, during which Trump had lied that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Walz did not denigrate Trump supporters. Instead, he said that after the debate, “I don’t hear them out there much. I don’t see them out there much. They’re a little bit – because they’re good people. They’re our neighbors. They’re like, ‘that didn’t look very presidential.’ Screaming about eating cats is not a solution. It’s not a solution.”

RELATED: Loomer Invokes Hannibal Lecter as Trump Triples Down on Lies About Immigrants Eating Pets

“Well,” Walz continued, “what Kamala Harris was talking about is things that you actually care about. They might not be sitting down at the bar talking about banning books, but they might down there be talking about, ‘how can I afford a house? I’m working hard. I’m working hard. I want to have a house,’ and because that house becomes a home to some of these folks. Your real estate mogul, venture capitalist, whatever, that’s just an asset to be traded and sold to whoever you want. For us, it’s a place we gather around the kitchen table to talk to our kids about what happened in school. That’s what Kamala Harris wants for you. That’s what she wants for you.”

The 60-year old governor who is the only one of the four candidates on either ticket with a positive net approval rating (Harris comes in second), focused on midwestern values.

“What I am most proud of is because of all the things Donald Trump has stolen and all the things he did, what is unforgivable, is him stealing our joy. So here’s the thing, Kamala Harris is bringing not only solutions that focus on you. She’s doing it with a smile and joy on her face.”

“This guy, this guy on purpose, and make no mistake, it’s on purpose. He broke our political system. He tried to break our faith in one another. He tried to break the thing that makes Midwesterners stick together. We’re positive people, for God’s sakes. We walk on water half the year, we have to be it’s cold as hell,” Walz said. “We don’t care. We dig our neighbors out. This guy is trying to tell you your neighbors the enemy. This guy’s trying to tell you that he knows best about what folks in Grand Rapids need. Well, trust me, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“So here’s the deal, we’re nice folks. We’ll dig you out after a snow storm. We’ll say ‘hi’ at the store. Some of us might even let you merge on the highway. Not all of us,” he joked. “We have a saying for that. It’s Minnesota Nice, is what we call it. I’m sure you have it too. But the one thing I’ll tell you about Midwesterners that stretches across that beautiful blue wall of Northern America here, the one thing about us is, don’t ever mistake our kindness for weakness.”

READ MORE: Multiple-Location Bomb Threat Follows Trump and Vance’s False Dog-Eating Immigrants Claims

Walz also went after school shootings while reassuring supporters Democrats support the Second Amendment.

“Leaves are changing,” Walz said, as The Detroit News reported. “Friday night football’s back. Our kids have a new start and they’re going in. It’s a time of excitement and hope. Everything we want. That’s what we want for our kids.”

“But too many of our kids, these first days of school, are a time of sheer terror. A time that is going to stick with them forever,” he said, referencing school shootings.

“I know guns, you know guns,” he said. “Kamala Harris is a gun owner, by the way, which you found out. I’m not going to take any crap (from Republicans) about the Second Amendment. We support the Second Amendment.”

“But our first responsibility,” Walz continued, “is keeping our children safe. And you can have both.”

He also referred to shootings as “that crap,” and reminded the crowd that it “does not happen in other places in the world.”

Walz, a former U.S. Congressman who served for 24 years in the U.S. Armed Forces, called Donald Trump a “criminal.” Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York for business fraud in an attempt to subvert the 2016 election.

He told the crowd Vice President Harris’s debate performance should have not been a surprise.

“She took on the predators. She took on the fraudsters,” Walz said. “She took down career criminals and powerful corporate interests, which, by the way, was on the stage the other night, all those things so, so this time, just to be clear, that criminal being on the stage got put in his place.”

“And this is what true leadership looks like. And she says this time and time again, and I love it. A mark of true leadership is not who beats people down, it’s who lifts people up, who lifts them up. So so when it’s a bully, and there’s a time she proved she can beat some people down if they need it.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Faces Increasing Calls to Participate in Second Debate

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