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Written by DC Tedrow
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Saturday, 21 July 2007 |
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This piece appears in the August 2007 edition of We The People.
Texas loves executing people; especially if they’re poor minorities; bonus points if they’re mentally impaired or innocent. Sounds a bit cynical, doesn’t it? But how else do we explain how four death penalty cases were railroaded through Texas courts only to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court this year? Why is it that a mentally retarded man was executed in April, and another, innocent man committed suicide on death row last October? More importantly, as progressives and radicals, what the hell are we going to do about it? Texas death row inmates are disproportionately black or Hispanic. Almost all are indigent or poor. The mentally handicapped are sentenced to death at an alarming rate. And, recent Supreme Court rulings show that the capital punishment system in Texas is rife with corruption and judicial laziness. On April 25, the Supreme Court overturned three Texas death penalty cases in a single day: LaRoyce Smith’s, Jalil Abdul-Kabir’s, and Brent Ray Brewer’s. In Smith’s case, the court ruled that the state court misinterpreted federal law by not allowing jurors to consider helpful or mitigating evidence, such as a defendant's background or character, that could warrant a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. Similarly, Abdul-Kabir and Brewer were entitled to jury instructions about evidence presented, such as mental impairment and childhood mistreatment that might have prevented a death sentence. On June 29, the Supreme Court blocked the execution of Scott Panetti, whose mental illness prevented him from understanding why he was to be executed. Panetti knew that he was convicted and what the charges were, and understood that he was to be executed. However, Panetti also believed that Satan and the State of Texas conspired to use the capital punishment system in order to prevent him from spreading the Gospel. Satan, eh? Maybe Panetti’s on to something. James Lee Clark, who was demonstrably mentally retarded, was executed on April 11. Michael Johnson, an innocent man, committed suicide out of desperation on Oct. 19, 2006. Using his own blood, he wrote “I DIDN’T DO IT” on his cell wall before slitting his throat with a shank. And unless we act soon, Kenneth Foster will be executed on Aug. 30 for the heinous crime of driving a car. Abolitionists—anti-death penalty activists—generally agree that Texas is the lynchpin in the national struggle to abolish capital punishment in the United States. And we’re in a hard spot if we can’t even save the innocent and mentally disabled. “Texas is number one in executions and [at the] heart of the struggle to end the death penalty,” according to Hooman Hedayati, founder of Texas Students Against the Death Penalty. “It is very similar to the civil rights movement. The solution to winning the civil rights movement was to end segregation in southern states, not in states like Vermont. So I think fighting the death penalty is very similar to the civil rights movements. However, today the national anti-death penalty leadership is doing exactly the opposite by trying to end the death penalty in states that have not executed anybody for more than a decade. I think they should put their resources into states like Texas and Virginia, who execute more people than states like Wisconsin that don't even have the death penalty.” “A major problem in Texas is that funders and some national leaders have seen Texas as a lost cause and [have] not directed funding here for us to develop a grassroots infrastructure that we can mobilize. Right now, we have an enormous opportunity looming in Texas to actually achieve a moratorium on executions because of the three innocence cases that have come to light in the past 19 months, but because funders have not invested enough resources into Texas for us to have built a grassroots infrastructure of people to mobilize, we are not in a very good position to be able to take advantage of this ripe political moment. Look at the amount of anti-death penalty money that has gone to states like New York, New Jersey and North Carolina. If that kind of money had come to Texas in the last two years, we would have no problem putting serious pressure on policy makers.” Yeah, things are rough in Texas. So what might we do? Clearly, part of an effective national abolitionist strategy would be to channel resources towards states with high execution rates, and especially Texas. Likewise, an effective strategy for Texas abolitionists should be to focus on fewer death penalty cases. As of this writing, Texas has executed 19 people this year. July, in fact, marks the 400th execution for Texas. When we attempt to protest each execution or attend every vigil, it spreads us thin and makes it impossible for us to retain new, younger activists. And, let’s face it, we won’t be anything without numbers. Building death row solidarity also matters. The Death Row Intercommunalist Vanguard Engagement, or DRIVE Movement, connects activists with Texas death row inmates who actively resist their impending executions and protest against prison conditions so that all prisoners might suffer less. They have keen advice when it comes to strategy. We should listen. We must also overcome the challenge posed by media. In Corpus Christi, most news stations are either indifferent or pro-death penalty. For instance, KIII-TV refused to cover Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) protests at the corner of SPID and Staples because of the station’s pro-death penalty stance. When CEDP members finally protested KIII-TV’s policies in front of the station, the best they got was a soundbite. This isn't conspiracy theory. It happened. When we’re shut out like this, we must find other inroads into popular consciousness. We need to take advantage of progressive and independent media such as We the People and Turning the Tide. More broadly, we must connect the abolitionist movement with anti-war efforts, the immigrant rights movement, feminism, queer liberation, participatory economy, democratic society, and other struggles on behalf of social justice and human dignity. In any case, we shouldn’t give up. Fighting Satan is always worth it.  Be first to comment this article |  Add as favourites (23) |  Quote this article on your site | Views: 151
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Friday, 20 July 2007 |
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I found a very good website devoted to the French anarchist Daniel Guerin. Some of you know him as the author of No Gods No Masters and Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. (Two very good books on anarchism.) Text is available in French and English. Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (22) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 173 |
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A Race Traitor in the Classroom |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Thursday, 19 July 2007 |
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If you can believe that I taught high school students for a year, then you can believe anything. But it's true. Between August 2006 and May 2007, I had four periods of freshmen English and then taught yearbook at the end of the day for two whole semesters. Maybe five of my students were considered white. They were overwhelmingly minorities from working class families, some of them working class themselves. There was minimal parent influence, which explains a lot. You'll be less surprised to hear that I routinely talked about off-topic topics, including but not limited to: the war in Iraq, 9/11 conspiracy theories, the Bush administration, death metal, punk rock, capitalism, and anarchism. And unlike other teachers who daily spout pious waffle about important issues in order to "engage" their students with the "real world," I usually didn't equivocate or hide what I thought. I always hated when teachers did that. I think my third period students first caught on when they realized I never asked them to stand for the pledge. How could I? When I was a senior, I was kicked out of the classroom for not standing for the pledge. Every day, in fact. Eventually they quit standing for the pledge -- including most of the students in ROTC. So much for national pride. Fifth period caught on next. There, we talked about the war on drugs, and why it's really just a war on the poor. We talked about the history of marijuana, and how it was first criminalized to target black jazz musicians and Mexican railroad workers. We drew comparisons to early 20th century prohibition. Some students keenly perceived that race issues undergirded the whole damn thing. I'm probably the first and only teacher they've had who openly said that marijuana and most other drugs should be decriminalized for precisely this reason. (I've never smoked anything, either.) In fourth period, we had some fun. We talked about the politics of punk rock, and why Metallica sucks. On May Day, I brought an anarchist flag to class and we talked about class struggle, the Haymarket Incident, the role of state violence in suppressing dissent, and the reasons people celebrate holidays. I picked out a couple days to talk about important historical events, actually. You know, the really important ones: 9/11, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the assassination of Fred Hampton, Columbus Day. Reminds me of a limerick: In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
In fourteen hundred ninety-three
Columbus stole all he could see. Another one of those things that we talked about in my class was the death penalty. (It wasn't hard to get the conversation started, since I often wore a CEDP hoodie to class that said "STOP STATE SPONSORED MURDER" on the back.) We talked about it a lot, in fact. About how non-whites are ten times more likely than whites to be sentenced to death. About how it condemned the poor, the innocent, and the mentally impaired to die. About how the United States was the only advanced industrialized country to still put people to death. About Michael Johnson, who killed himself in his cell, hours before his execution, even though he was on suicide watch. About alternatives to the death penalty and regional efforts to abolish it.
We didn't learn much English in my class (hell, we speak it, don't we?), but we talked a lot about race, class, drugs, and other issues that affected my students in a way that hopefully wasn't completely alienating. Several of my friends have asked me how my students reacted to all this, to having an anarchist for an English teacher. It's hard to say. I was usually the one lecturing and they were the ones napping or listening or joking around. But I get the distinct impression that it was a good thing for a white male, a so-called responsible authority figure, to purposefully and daily erode the myths that white supremacy uses to construct a dominant culture. They probably thought I was trying to be cool, but I really wasn't. My goal was to radicalize to whatever extent I thought I could get away with. Few things have made me happier than students literally thanking me for washing away lies surrounding the invasion of Iraq or the war on drugs. I kind of miss that, you know. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have been my students, to hear some crazy--but not really crazy--white guy exploding the myths of white culture. The Love and Rage Federation has a term for white activists that do "non-white" things in order to destabilize or undermine white supremacy: race traitor. On a day to day basis, I tried to be a race traitor for my non-white students. I carried this out with some success. A department chair even told me that my very presence undermined the authority figure role that teachers at the school played. She intended to be critical, but I took it as a compliment. If I have any advice for radicals who want to become public school teachers, the first thing I would probably encourage them to do is become race traitors. It's totally worth it.
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Tuesday, 17 July 2007 |
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It looks like I'm still having some problems getting the Update Mailer to send out emails to people after posts are made. I just toggled some settings, so maybe it works now. Tell me if it does. Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (37) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 184 |
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Moving Forward with Turning the Tide |
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Written by DC Tedrow
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Tuesday, 17 July 2007 |
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I've been thinking a lot lately about moving to Austin and the graduate program I'm about to get into. (For those who haven't heard, I was accepted to the Master's program in Journalism at UT-Austin.) In particular, I'm curious about what sort of activism I'll be doing in addition to graduate studies. I imagine that the Journalism department will encourage me to write or work for the Daily Texan, which is UT's student newspaper. It's just so liberal, though. Instead, I'd like to continue working independently of mainstream and pseudo-mainstream publications (which includes the Daily Texan). In my view, I basically have three options: My first option is to find an existing publication that I empathize with and write for that. I cannot see myself doing this long-term, however. The second option is that I can start a new newspaper or magazine with other radical and progressive students in Austin. Maybe it would focus on activism or some specific activist movement in Texas. The immigrant rights and abolitionist movements come to mind. Getting started would be a complete pain in the ass, but probably very exciting if and when we found the right bunch of people to get things rolling. It's hard to say much about this option, though, since it involves working with a bunch of as-of-yet unknown people with as-of-yet unknown ideas and aspirations about what such a project might look like. The third option is to simply continue working on Turning the Tide, albeit with broader horizons than we currently enjoy. I'm personally leaning towards this, although we might have to change the name of the publication. (Turning the Tide is currently the name of an anti-racist/anti-prison newspaper.) Magazine content could be divided into feature pieces, letters, etc., but also include news stories from other "bureaus" in different cities such as Houston, Corpus Christi, Austin, Laredo, Dallas, etc. Each bureau could be responsible for collectively writing, editing, and contributing news stories from those regions, as well as selling/distributing the magazine to wider and wider audiences. We could also use the magazine as a tool for connecting activists across cities, spreading word about major demonstrations, including a directory of a radical and progressive groups throughout Texas, and many other things. In short, if I pursue this option then Turning the Tide could possibly evolve into something comparable to a federated Z Magazine for South Texas, but with a stronger emphasis on movement building. A 32-page newsprint magazine should fit the bill, and wouldn't cost an insane amount to print. One of the things I like about Z Magazine is that it does attempt to connect activist efforts throughout the world. No other magazine that I know of does this. A problem with Z Magazine, though, is that often it is too broad for people who want to effect change locally. In Texas, it seems like certain issues preoccupy many of our most committed and talented radicals: the death penalty and immigration, for instance, are in a way very "Texan" causes. Wouldn't it be nice if Texas radicals had a magazine they could better relate to, where they could read articles and say, "Hey, I was actually at that protest! I felt the same way"? Be first to comment this article | Add as favourites (24) | Quote this article on your site | Views: 134 |
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