MEDIA ROOTS- Yesterday I went out to cover the first day of Occupy Oakland at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown. Despite the thick mud and slick rain, there was a solid crowd of about 300 people buzzing with energy and lively discussion. Grievances were expelled by chanting and marching together, all with passionate determination.
Those of us who shared the evening together put our differences aside to stand upon one common thread– the system has failed us, and we demand representation. We were participating in something bigger than ourselves, and it was beautiful to witness the movement coalesce in my own backyard. It’s nothing short of thrilling to see people spilling out in the streets demanding real change, and I can’t wait to see where this leads.
MEDIA ROOTS- Abby Martin, founder of Media Roots, speaks to students at San Francisco State
University about the landscape of media censorship, the formation of her citizen
journalism project Media Roots and why she is collaborating her efforts with Project Censored.
Abby Martin of Media Roots speaks with students at SFSU
MEDIA ROOTS- In 2007, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles stated that Troy Davis, a man charged with killing a police officer in 1991, would never be put to death unless there was “no doubt” of his guilt. Despite a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the case and a lack of hard evidence linking him to the actual killing, Troy Davis was executed last night by lethal injection at 11:08 EST while the world watched in horror.
No matter what opinion one holds on the death penalty, it is worth noting that over 130 people on death row have been exonerated through DNA evidence that proved their wrongful convictions. Taking that statistic into consideration, it’s likely that people have already been put to death by the state who were not guilty of their crime.
Besides the disturbing fact that innocent people have been placed on death row before, the death penalty judicial process is extremely costly to taxpayers. In CA, taxpayers pay $90,000 more annually per death row prisoner than those regularly incarcerated. Furthermore, the appeals process usually takes decades to complete while death row inmates are held in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement.
Personally, I don’t support the death penalty. There is no ‘humane’ way to kill someone, and I think the process of executing a prisoner by any means is barbaric– especially in front of an audience. More importantly, I would rather have a murderer live out the rest of their life than to risk (literally) sponsoring the murder of one innocent person.
The murder of an alleged killer might be a gratifying moment of closure for the victim’s family members, but it will never fill the void left from losing a loved one. Instead, it will only fuel a vicious cycle of vengeance and hate.
Abby Martin
***
For those who think the execution was justified, read the following reasons why the case wasn’t cut and dry via THE GUARDIAN:
1. Of
the nine witnesses who appeared at Davis’s 1991 trial who said they had
seen Davis beating up a homeless man in a dispute over a bottle of beer
and then shooting to death a police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was
acting as a good samaritan, seven have since recanted their evidence.
2.
One of those who recanted, Antoine Williams, subsequently revealed they
had no idea who shot the officer and that they were illiterate –
meaning they could not read the police statements that they had signed
at the time of the murder in 1989. Others said they had falsely
testified that they had overheard Davis confess to the murder.
3.
Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been
cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been
threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not
co-operate.
4. Of the two of the nine key
witnesses who have not changed their story publicly, one has kept silent
for the past 20 years and refuses to talk, and the other is Sylvester
Coles. Coles was the man who first came forward to police and implicated
Davis as the killer. But over the past 20 years evidence has grown that
Coles himself may be the gunman and that he was fingering Davis to save
his own skin.
5. In total, nine people have come
forward with evidence that implicates Coles. Most recently, on Monday
the George Board of Pardons and Paroles heard from Quiana Glover who
told the panel that in June 2009 she had heard Coles, who had been
drinking heavily, confess to the murder of MacPhail.
6.
Apart from the witness evidence, most of which has since been cast into
doubt, there was no forensic evidence gathered that links Davis to the
killing.
7. In particular, there is no DNA evidence of any sort. The human rights
group the Constitution Project points out that three-quarters of those
prisoners who have been exonerated and declared innocent in the US were
convicted at least in part on the basis of faulty eyewitness testimony.
8.
No gun was ever found connected to the murder. Coles later admitted
that he owned the same type of .38-calibre gun that had delivered the
fatal bullets, but that he had given it away to another man earlier on
the night of the shooting.
9. Higher courts in
the US have repeatedly refused to grant Davis a retrial on the grounds
that he had failed to “prove his innocence”. His supporters counter that
where the ultimate penalty is at stake, it should be for the courts to
be beyond any reasonable doubt of his guilt.
10.
Even if you set aside the issue of Davis’s innocence or guilt, the
manner of his execution tonight is cruel and unnatural. If the execution
goes ahead as expected, it would be the fourth scheduled execution date
for this prisoner. In 2008 he was given a stay just 90 minutes before
he was set to die. Experts in death row say such multiple experiences
with imminent death is tantamount to torture.
DEMOCRACY NOW–Troy Anthony
Davis was killed by lethal injection by the state of Georgia at At
11:08 p.m. EDT despite widespread doubts about his guilt. The execution
occurred shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the
execution. Democracy Now! was the only news outlet to continuously
broadcast live from the prison grounds last night where hundreds of
supporters Troy Davis held an all-day vigil in Jackson, Ga.
Today we
hear the voices of Troy Davis’ sister Martina Correia, hip-hop artist
Big Boi, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, Ed DuBose of the Georgia
chapter of the NAACP, two members of the Troy Davis legal team, and
more. We also hear from journalist Jon Lewis, a witness to the
execution: “[Davis] said to the family [of slain police officer Mark
MacPhail] that he was sorry for their loss, but also said that he did
not take their son, father, brother. He said to them to dig deeper into
this case, to find out the truth. And then he said to the prison staff —
the ones he said, ‘who are going to take my life,’ — he said to them,
‘may God have mercy on your souls,’ and his last words were to them,
‘may God bless your souls.'”
Democracy Now Special Report on Troy Davis Execution: Did Georgia Kill an Innocent Man? 1/2
Democracy Now Special Report on Troy Davis Execution: Did Georgia Kill an Innocent Man? 2/2
Russia Today covers the outrage surrounding Troy Davis’s death on the day of his execution.
MEDIA ROOTS- Forty years ago, Finland began
transforming its educational system to a more personalized methodology of teacher to student
learning as part of the
government’s economic recovery plan. Finland’s youth has since
shot up to the highest in the world in reading, math and science skills.
Conversely, America’s impersonal initiation of marketplace competition into its educational system has caused the US to fall behind.
The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds
in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of
34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a
below-average 25th for mathematics.
Although Obama has slammed his predecessor’s controversial ‘No Child Left Behind’ legislation, he has implemented the same broken concept of a standards based education reform into his administration’s ‘Race to the Top’ policy.
Diane Ravitch, educational policy analyst and former US Assistant Secretary of Education, claims that President Obama’s ‘Race to the Top’ program will further weaken the country’s education process by embracing the following key elements: regular teacher evaluations in accordance with students’ test scores, privatizing schools with
low test scores, mass firings in low-performing schools and making states compete for federal money with test ratings.
This current educational model of standardization is inherently flawed. By basing a complete faith in standardized testing statistics to determine the competence of teachers and abilities of children, there is a human element eliminated from the equation– an element that Finland has incorporated as the main pillar of their education strategy.
Many schools are small enough so that teachers know every student. If one method fails, teachers consult with colleagues to try something else…
There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians…
Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.
Furthermore, the solutions posed by ‘Race to the Top’ to improve education will result in private entities looting the system, revealing more collusion between private interests and politicians. In an egregious grab to profit off the
public sector, hedge funds along with billionaire Bill Gates
have initiated a massive PR push to privatize education, and their campaign has paid off– ‘Race to the Top’ calls for a dramatic expansion of privately owned charter schools.
They’re engaged in a process of rent seeking, which has no productive value.
By taking tax dollars that currently provide public services and
channeling them to the private sector, which contracts to provide the
service at lower cost – and therefore at lower quality – these wealthy
individuals can add new income streams while also blunting any effort to
raise their taxes to provide these services.
The trajectory of education in this country is drastically off course. Human beings are complex creatures and learning isn’t black and white; some of us are brilliant in ways that cannot be expressed through multiple choice answers. Instead of penalizing teachers for low test scores, teachers should be encouraged to develop alternative teaching methods based on students’ differing needs.
MEDIA ROOTS- Doug Mckenty from KZYX’s Thursday Morning Report conducts an hour interview with Bay Area artist and community activist Abby Martin of Media Roots, where she reports from “outside party lines”. They discuss the false left/right paradigm, the electability of non establishment candidates, the renaissance of citizen journalism, censorship in the corporate press and 9/11.
MEDIA ROOTS- In 2007, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles stated that Troy Davis, a man charged with killing a police officer in 1991, would never be put to death unless there was “no doubt” of his guilt. Despite a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the case and a lack of hard evidence linking him to the actual killing, Troy Davis was executed last night by lethal injection at 11:08 EST while the world watched in horror. 
MEDIA ROOTS- Forty years ago, Finland began
transforming its educational system to a more personalized methodology of 