Atlanta GMB Statement on the Planned Execution of Troy Davis
Submitted on Tue, 09/20/2011 - 4:16pm
Troy Anthony Davis is obviously the most innocent man on the face of this earth.
Yet he continues to face down his executioner. There is no physical evidence against him. No court testimony which is not tainted by obvious bias. No doubting that Sylvester Coles, one of those to testify in court and one of the few who did not recant his testimony, identified that he himself was the shooter.
In our world innocence is a thing which must be proven, like in the old days of the Napoleonic Code of Law, as during the days of kings and queens and dungeon-and-cudgel justice. Until then, we are guilty.
The Atlanta Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World stands in solidarity with Troy Davis and his family. We call for the indefinite stay of his death sentence, and the death sentences of all those imprisoned by the laws of a country which prosecutes innocence by the testimony of the guilty. We call for his immediate release, without exception, without hesitation, and without doubt.
The IWW demands that the State of Georgia will recognize the impermissible and unacceptable nature of the “evidence” and testimony submitted in court against him. We stand not just for the very serious and well-documented questions that exist about Troy Davis’ guilt; we stand for common decency, common justice, and common sense.
There are some things that the state of Georgia is guilty of itself: the worst history in the nation of executing and lynching innocent black people is one. It is a very old, hallowed tradition and we should like to see its continuance brought to an end. The State, too, is guilty of having the seventh highest rate of capital punishment convictions in the country. We call for an immediate end to this. We call for an end to all this vulgarity that is advanced as justice in this country. We call for all such poisons as pentobarbital and sodium thiopental to be neutralized, made harmless, and discarded.
The IWW intends to continue to march in solidarity with those in support of Troy Davis up to his planned execution date of Wednesday, September 21st, and beyond. We lock arms with those who call him friend, brother, son, and lover and expect to welcome him back into our midst any day now, when the conscience and good reason of those who detain him finally gives way to the plain notion that those who are innocent are not guilty, too.
We stand definitively and decidedly against those, like U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr., who will condemn Mr. Troy Anthony Davis to his death by the statement:
“Troy Davis is not innocent.”
If this is not innocence, indeed, and if this is what not-innocence deserves, perhaps we are all guilty.
The IWW is Troy Davis, too.
In Solidarity,
The Atlanta General Membership Branch of The Industrial Workers of the World.