Here is a press release reporting yesterday's Troy Davis Campaign meeting held at my school last night...
Not so long ago, young black Afro-Americans were routinely strung up on the nearest tree; any black man would do. The Troy Davis case is just another of countless judicial racist lynchings.
Last night, at Lister Community School – a deprived multi-ethnic comprehensive in London's East End – 100 students aged 13-15, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and European, sat with rapt attention for an hour and a half as Troy’s sister Martina Correia, an electrifying speaker; Richard Hughes of the band Keane; and speakers from Amnesty International spelt out why Troy must not die. In particular, they were spellbound as their own contemporary De’Jaun Correia, Troy’s fifteen-year-old nephew, demonstrated brilliantly – with the help of volunteers from the audience – the ludicrous nature of the prosecution case.
The Troy Davis meeting belongs to a proud and unparalleled tradition. Previous CARBOLIC events have included meetings with the newly-released former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg; campaigners for justice for Zahid Mubarek, the Asian teenager murdered in his prison cell; and a protest rally against the invasion of Gaza, where both Muslim and Jewish speakers spoke in solidarity. Up to 200 students have participated in these meetings.
Even a full hour after the close of the meeting, it was nevertheless impossible to drag our students, so often sullen and demotivated in the classroom, out of the hall, as they exchanged stories and jokes with De’Jaun and the other speakers, queued up for stickers, and eagerly collected start-up packs for the new youth branch of Amnesty International they decided on the spot to set up.
Who says young people today have a short attention span? Who says they are non-political? Give them something worth listening to, and something worth fighting for, and they'll soon surprise us all.
Troy Davis was framed on a charge of murdering a police officer in Savannah, Georgia in 1989. Nearly all the original prosecution witnesses have retracted their evidence, saying they were pressurised by the police, and several witnesses have given compelling evidence against one of the two remaining witnesses. He has several times come within hours of execution.
You can read more about this at the following sites...
www.troyanthonydavis.org
www.aiusa.org/troy
www.justicefortroy.org
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12970&msource=semgooglg&cid=psgi2970
Roger Silverman
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