Amy Goodman's Blog, page 27

"Globalizing Dissent, From Tahrir Square to Liberty Plaza" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country. They formed in 2008 to demonstrate solidarity with workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, Egypt. Then, in December 2010, a young man in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the frustration of a generation. His death sparked the uprising in Tunisia that toppled the long-reigning dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Similar acts of protest spread to Egypt, where at least four men attempted self-immolation. One, Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed of Alexandria, died. Asmaa Mahfouz was outraged and posted a video online, staring directly into the camera, her head covered, but not her face. She identified herself and called for people to join her on Jan. 25 in Tahrir Square. She said (translated from Arabic): "I'm making this video to give you one simple message: We want to go down to Tahrir Square on January 25. If we still have honor and want to live in dignity on this land, we have to go down on January 25. We'll go down and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights. … I won't even talk about any political rights. We just want our human rights and nothing else. This entire government is corrupt—a corrupt president and a corrupt security force. These self-immolators were not afraid of death but were afraid of security forces. Can you imagine that?"

Nine months later, Asmaa Mahfouz was giving a teach-in at Occupy Wall Street. Standing on steps above the crowd Monday night, she had a huge smile on her face as she looked out on a sea of faces. After she finished, I asked her what gave her strength. She answered with characteristic humility, speaking English: "I can't believe it when I saw a million people join in the Tahrir Square. I'm not more brave, because I saw my colleagues, Egyptian, were going towards the policemen, when they just pushing us, and they died for all of us. So they are the one who are really brave and really strong. … I saw people, really, died in front of me, because they were protecting me and protecting others. So, they were the most brave, bravest men."

I asked how it felt to be in the United States, which had for so long supported the Mubarak regime in Egypt. She replied: "While they giving money and power and support to Mubarak regime, our people, Egyptian people, can success against all of this, against the U.S. power. So, the power to the people, not for the U.S. bullets or bombs or money or anything. The power to the people. So that I am here to be in solidarity and support the Wall Street Occupy protesters, to say them 'the power to the people,' and to keep it on and on, and they will success in the end."

The Egyptian revolution has not been without consequences for her. Last August, she was arrested by the Egyptian military. As my colleague Sharif Abdel Kouddous reported from Cairo, Asmaa sent two controversial tweets that prompted the arrest by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the military government that has ruled Egypt since Mubarak's fall.

Her arrest provoked a worldwide response, with groups ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to Amnesty International condemning it. She was released, but, as Sharif noted at the time, Asmaa was only one of 12,000 civilians arrested since the revolution.

The arrests are happening here in the U.S. now, at many of the protest sites across the country. As Asmaa was preparing to head back to Egypt, hundreds of riot police descended on Occupy Oakland, firing beanbag rounds and tear gas. The University of New Mexico is threatening to evict the encampment there, which is called "(Un)occupy Albuquerque" to highlight that the land there is occupied native land.

Asmaa Mahfouz is running for a seat in the Egyptian Parliament, and maybe someday, she says, the presidency. When I asked her what she had to say to President Barack Obama, who had given his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, she replied: "You promised the people that you are the change and 'yes, we can.' So we are here from the Wall Street Occupy, and we are saying the same word: 'yes, we can.' We can make the freedom, and we can get our freedom, even if it's from you."

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Globalizing Dissent, From Tahrir Square to Liberty Plaza

The winds of change are blowing across the globe. What triggers such change, and when it will strike, is something that no one can predict.

Last Jan. 18, a courageous young woman in Egypt took a dangerous step. Asmaa Mahfouz was 25 years old, part of the April 6 Youth Movement, with thousands of young people engaging online in debate on the future of their country. They formed in 2008 to demonstrate solidarity with workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, Egypt. Then, in December 2010, a young man in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire to protest the frustration of a generation. His death sparked the uprising in Tunisia that toppled the long-reigning dictator, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Similar acts of protest spread to Egypt, where at least four men attempted self-immolation. One, Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed of Alexandria, died. Asmaa Mahfouz was outraged and posted a video online, staring directly into the camera, her head covered, but not her face. She identified herself and called for people to join her on Jan. 25 in Tahrir Square. She said (translated from Arabic): "I'm making this video to give you one simple message: We want to go down to Tahrir Square on January 25. If we still have honor and want to live in dignity on this land, we have to go down on January 25. We'll go down and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights. … I won't even talk about any political rights. We just want our human rights and nothing else. This entire government is corrupt—a corrupt president and a corrupt security force. These self-immolators were not afraid of death but were afraid of security forces. Can you imagine that?"

Click here to read the rest of Amy Goodman's column at Truthdig.org

"The Arc of the Moral Universe, From Memphis to Wall Street" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. was dedicated last Sunday. President Barack Obama said of Dr. King, "If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there." The dedication occurred amidst the increasingly popular and increasingly global Occupy Wall Street movement. What Obama left unsaid is that King, were he alive, would most likely be protesting Obama administration policies.

Not far from the dedication ceremony, Cornel West, preacher, professor, writer and activist, was being arrested on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. He said, before being hauled off to jail: "We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. … We will not allow this day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial to go without somebody going to jail, because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love."

West was arrested with 18 others, declaring "solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world, because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King Jr. to smile from the grave that we haven't forgot his movement."

Over the same weekend as the dedication, the U.S. military/CIA's drone campaign, under Commander in Chief Obama, launched what the independent, nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in London, called the 300th drone strike, the 248th since Obama took office. According to the BIJ, of the at least 2,318 people killed by drone strikes, between 386 and 775 were civilians, including 175 children. Imagine how Obama's fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. King, would respond to those grim statistics.

Back in 1963, King published a collection of sermons titled "Strength to Love." His preface began, "In these turbulent days of uncertainty the evils of war and of economic and racial injustice threaten the very survival of the human race." Three of the 15 sermons were written in Georgia jails, including "Shattered Dreams." In that one, he wrote, "To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor." King revisited the idea of shattered dreams four years later, eight months before his assassination, in his speech called "Where Do We Go From Here," saying: "Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. … Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

Earlier in that year, 1967, a year to the day before he was killed, King gave his oft-overlooked "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church in New York City. King preached, "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government."

With those words, with that speech, King set the tone for his final, fateful year. Despite death threats, and his close advisers urging him not to go to Memphis, King went to march in solidarity with that city's sanitation workers. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Deeply impacted at the time by the assassination, we can follow two young men along King's arc of moral justice all the way to Occupy Wall Street. One was John Carlos, a U.S. Olympic track star. Carlos won the bronze medal in the 200 meter race at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Carlos and his teammate Tommie Smith, who won the gold, raised their black-gloved fists in the power salute on the medal stand, instantly gaining global fame. They both stood without shoes, protesting black children in poverty in the United States. Last week, John Carlos spoke at Occupy Wall Street, and he told me after, "I'm just so happy to see so many people who are standing up to say: 'We're not asking for change. We demand change.' "

The other person is the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He was with King when he was assassinated. Late Monday night, the New York Police Department seemed to be making a move on Occupy Wall Street's first-aid tent. Jackson was there. Just days past his 70th birthday, Jackson joined arms with the young protesters, defying the police. The police backed off. And the arc of the moral universe bent a bit more toward justice.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

The Arc of the Moral Universe, From Memphis to Wall Street

The national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. was dedicated last Sunday. President Barack Obama said of Dr. King, "If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there." The dedication occurred amidst the increasingly popular and increasingly global Occupy Wall Street movement. What Obama left unsaid is that King, were he alive, would most likely be protesting Obama administration policies.

Not far from the dedication ceremony, Cornel West, preacher, professor, writer and activist, was being arrested on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. He said, before being hauled off to jail: "We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. … We will not allow this day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorial to go without somebody going to jail, because Martin King would be here right with us, willing to throw down out of deep love."

West was arrested with 18 others, declaring "solidarity with the Occupy movement all around the world, because we love poor people, we love working people, and we want Martin Luther King Jr. to smile from the grave that we haven't forgot his movement."

Over the same weekend as the dedication, the U.S. military/CIA's drone campaign, under Commander in Chief Obama, launched what the independent, nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in London, called the 300th drone strike, the 248th since Obama took office. According to the BIJ, of the at least 2,318 people killed by drone strikes, between 386 and 775 were civilians, including 175 children. Imagine how Obama's fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. King, would respond to those grim statistics.

Back in 1963, King published a collection of sermons titled "Strength to Love." His preface began, "In these turbulent days of uncertainty the evils of war and of economic and racial injustice threaten the very survival of the human race." Three of the 15 sermons were written in Georgia jails, including "Shattered Dreams." In that one, he wrote, "To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor." King revisited the idea of shattered dreams four years later, eight months before his assassination, in his speech called "Where Do We Go From Here," saying: "Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. … Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

Read the rest of Amy Goodman's column on the Truthdig website.

"A New Bush Era or a Push Era?" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, "Make me do it." He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph's demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House.

Enter the 99 percenters. The Occupy Wall Street ranks continue to grow, inspiring more than 1,000 solidarity protests around the country and the globe. After weeks, and one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, Obama finally commented: "I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." But neither he nor his advisers—or the Republicans—know what to do with this burgeoning mass movement.

Following the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allows unlimited corporate donations to support election advertising, the hunger for campaign cash is insatiable. The Obama re-election campaign aims to raise $1 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the financial industry was Obama's second-largest source of 2008 campaign contributions, surpassed only by the lawyers/lobbyists industry sector.

The suggestion that a loss for Obama would signal a return to the Bush era has some merit: The Associated Press reported recently that "almost all of [Mitt] Romney's 22 special advisers held senior Bush administration positions in diplomacy, defense or intelligence. Two former Republican senators are included as well as Bush-era CIA chief Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff." But so is the Obama presidency an expansion of the Bush era, unless there is a new "Push era."

The organic strength of Occupy Wall Street defies the standard dismissals from the corporate media's predictably stale stable of pundits. For them, it is all about the divide between the Republicans and the Democrats, a divide the protesters have a hard time seeing. They see both parties captured by Wall Street. Richard Haass, head of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations, said of the protesters, "They're not serious." He asked why they are not talking about entitlements. Perhaps it is because, to the 99 percent, Social Security and Medicare are not the problem, but rather growing inequality, with the 400 richest Americans having more wealth than half of all Americans combined. And then there is the overwhelming cost and toll of war, first and foremost the lives lost, but also the lives destroyed, on all sides.

It's why, for example, Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was down at Occupy Wall Street on Monday night. He told me: "It's no secret that a lot of veterans are facing unemployment, homelessness and a lot of other issues that are dealing with the economy. A lot of people get deployed multiple times and are still struggling. … I've met a lot of veterans who have come here. I just met a guy who is active duty, took leave just to come to Occupy Wall Street."

The historic election of Barack Obama was achieved by millions of people across the political spectrum. For years during the Bush administration, people felt they were hitting their heads against a brick wall. With the election, the wall had become a door, but it was only open a crack. The question was, would it be kicked open or slammed shut? It is not up to one person. Obama had moved from community organizer in chief to commander in chief. When forces used to having the ear of the most powerful person on earth whisper their demands in the Oval Office, the president must see a force more powerful outside his window, whether he likes it or not, and say, "If I do that, they will storm the Bastille." If there's no one out there, we are all in big trouble.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

A New Bush Era or a Push Era?

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, "Make me do it." He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph's demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House.

Enter the 99 percenters. The Occupy Wall Street ranks continue to grow, inspiring more than 1,000 solidarity protests around the country and the globe. After weeks, and one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, Obama finally commented: "I think people are frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." But neither he nor his advisers—or the Republicans—know what to do with this burgeoning mass movement.

Following the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which allows unlimited corporate donations to support election advertising, the hunger for campaign cash is insatiable. The Obama re-election campaign aims to raise $1 billion. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the financial industry was Obama's second-largest source of 2008 campaign contributions, surpassed only by the lawyers/lobbyists industry sector.

The suggestion that a loss for Obama would signal a return to the Bush era has some merit: The Associated Press reported recently that "almost all of [Mitt] Romney's 22 special advisers held senior Bush administration positions in diplomacy, defense or intelligence. Two former Republican senators are included as well as Bush-era CIA chief Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff." But so is the Obama presidency an expansion of the Bush era, unless there is a new "Push era."

Read the rest of this column at Truthdig.org

"Policing the Prophets of Wall Street" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The Occupy Wall Street protest grows daily, spreading to cities across the United States. "We are the 99 percent," the protesters say, "that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent."

The response by the New York City Police Department has been brutal. Last Saturday, the police swept up more than 700 protesters in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. The week before, innocent protesters were pepper-sprayed in the face without warning or reason.

That is why, after receiving a landmark settlement this week from the police departments of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as the U.S. Secret Service, my colleagues and I went to Liberty Square, the heart of the Wall Street occupation, to announce the legal victory.

On Labor Day 2008, the "Democracy Now!" news team and I were covering the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Thousands protested outside. I was on the convention floor, interviewing delegates from what that week was the hottest state, Alaska. Blocks away, my colleagues Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were covering a police assault on the dispersing crowd of marchers.

The riot police had hemmed the protesters into a parking lot, along with credentialed journalists. The police charged at Nicole, shouting "On your face!" She shouted back "Press, press!" holding up her press credentials in one hand and filming with the other, video-recording her own violent arrest. She screamed as they brought her down on her face, a knee or boot in her back, dragging on her leg and bloodying her face. The first thing they then did was pull the battery from her camera, if there was any question about what they did not want documented. As Sharif tried to calm the riot(ing) police, they pushed him against a brick wall, kicked him in the chest twice, threw him down and handcuffed him.

I got a call on my cell phone and raced from the Convention Center to the scene of the arrests. The riot police had encircled the area. I ran up to the police, my credentials hanging around my neck. I asked for the commanding officer to get my journalist colleagues released. It wasn't seconds before they tore me through the police line, twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me. Finally brought to stand next to Sharif, as fully credentialed journalists, we demanded to be released, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped the credentials from around our necks.

We filed suit. This past week, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police and the Secret Service have settled with us. In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations — including police handling of media coverage of mass demonstrations — and to pursue implementation of the training program in Minneapolis and statewide.

As we move into the next conventions and cover protests like Occupy Wall Street, this largest settlement to come out of the 2008 RNC arrests should be a warning to police departments around the country to stop arresting and intimidating journalists, or engaging in any unlawful arrests. We shouldn't have to get a record while trying to put things on the record.

But do police actually pay the price? Before the 2008 Republican and Democratic national conventions, each party bought insurance policies to indemnify the convention cities from any damages resulting from lawsuits.

Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, told me: "St. Paul actually negotiated a special insurance provision with the Republican host committee so that the first $10 million in liability for lawsuits arising from the convention will be covered by the host committee. ... It basically means we (the city) can commit wrongdoing, and we won't have to pay for it."

Jump forward to today. The bailed-out Wall Street megabank JPMorgan Chase gave a tax-deductible $4.6 million donation to the New York City Police Foundation, which has protesters asking: Who is the NYPD paid to protect, the public or the corporations? The 99 percent or the 1 percent?

Marina Sitrin, part of Occupy Wall Street's legal working group, told me that the protest was going to be based at Chase Plaza, but the NYPD pre-emptively closed it. The protesters moved to Zuccotti Park, which they renamed Liberty Square.

According to an undated press release on JPMorgan Chase's website, in response to the $4.6 million donation: "New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing 'profound gratitude' for the company's donation." Given the size of the donation, and the police harassment and violence against the protesters, we must question how Kelly shows his gratitude.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Policing the Prophets of Wall Street

The Occupy Wall Street protest grows daily, spreading to cities across the United States. "We are the 99 percent," the protesters say, "that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent."

The response by the New York City Police Department has been brutal. Last Saturday, the police swept up more than 700 protesters in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. The week before, innocent protesters were pepper-sprayed in the face without warning or reason.

That is why, after receiving a landmark settlement this week from the police departments of Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as the U.S. Secret Service, my colleagues and I went to Liberty Square, the heart of the Wall Street occupation, to announce the legal victory.

On Labor Day 2008, the "Democracy Now!" news team and I were covering the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Thousands protested outside. I was on the convention floor, interviewing delegates from what that week was the hottest state, Alaska. Blocks away, my colleagues Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were covering a police assault on the dispersing crowd of marchers.

The riot police had hemmed the protesters into a parking lot, along with credentialed journalists. The police charged at Nicole, shouting "On your face!" She shouted back "Press, press!" holding up her press credentials in one hand and filming with the other, video-recording her own violent arrest. She screamed as they brought her down on her face, a knee or boot in her back, dragging on her leg and bloodying her face. The first thing they then did was pull the battery from her camera, if there was any question about what they did not want documented. As Sharif tried to calm the riot(ing) police, they pushed him against a brick wall, kicked him in the chest twice, threw him down and handcuffed him.

I got a call on my cell phone and raced from the Convention Center to the scene of the arrests. The riot police had encircled the area. I ran up to the police, my credentials hanging around my neck. I asked for the commanding officer to get my journalist colleagues released. It wasn't seconds before they tore me through the police line, twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me. Finally brought to stand next to Sharif, as fully credentialed journalists, we demanded to be released, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped the credentials from around our necks.

We filed suit. This past week, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police and the Secret Service have settled with us. In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations—including police handling of media coverage of mass demonstrations—and to pursue implementation of the training program in Minneapolis and statewide.

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"Troy Davis and the Machinery of Death" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

On Sept. 21 at 7 p.m., Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die. I was reporting live from outside Georgia's death row in Jackson, awaiting news about whether the Supreme Court would spare his life.

Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. Seven of the nine nonpolice witnesses later recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police intimidation for their original false statements. One who did not recant was the man who many have named as the actual killer. No physical evidence linked Davis to the shooting.

Davis, one of more than 3,200 prisoners on death row in the U.S., had faced three prior execution dates. With each one, global awareness grew. Amnesty International took up his case, as did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Calls for clemency came from Pope Benedict XVI, former FBI Director William Sessions and former Republican Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, in granting a stay of execution in 2007, wrote that it "will not allow an execution to proceed in this state unless ... there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused."

But it is just that doubt that has galvanized so much global outrage over this case. As we waited, the crowd swelled around the prison, with signs saying "Too Much Doubt" and "I Am Troy Davis." Vigils were being held around the world, in places such as Iceland, England, France and Germany. Earlier in the day, prison authorities handed us a thin press kit. At 3 p.m., it said, Davis would be given a "routine physical."

Routine? Physical? At a local church down the road, Edward DuBose, the president of Georgia's NAACP chapter, spoke, along with human rights leaders, clergy and family members who had just left Davis. DuBose questioned the physical, "so that they could make sure he's physically fit, so that they can strap him down, so that they could put the murder juice in his arm? Make no mistake: They call it an execution. We call it murder."

Davis had turned down a special meal. The press kit described the standard fare Davis would be offered: "grilled cheeseburgers, oven-browned potatoes, baked beans, coleslaw, cookies and grape beverage." It also listed the lethal cocktail that would follow: "Pentobarbital. Pancuronium bromide. Potassium chloride. Ativan (sedative)." The pentobarbital anesthetizes, the pancuronium bromide paralyzes, and the potassium chloride stops the heart. Davis refused the sedative, and the last supper.

By 7 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court was reportedly reviewing Davis' plea for a stay. The case was referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who hails from Pin Point, Ga., a community founded by freed slaves that is near Savannah, where Davis had lived.

The chorus for clemency grew louder. Allen Ault, a former warden of Georgia's death row prison who oversaw five executions there, sent a letter to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, co-signed by five other retired wardens or directors of state prisons. They wrote: "While most of the prisoners whose executions we participated in accepted responsibility for the crimes for which they were punished, some of us have also executed prisoners who maintained their innocence until the end. It is those cases that are most haunting to an executioner."

The Supreme Court denied the plea. Davis' execution began at 10:53 p.m. A prison spokesperson delivered the news to the reporters outside: time of death, 11:08 p.m.

The eyewitnesses to the execution stepped out. According to an Associated Press reporter who was there, these were Troy Davis' final words: "I'd like to address the MacPhail family. Let you know, despite the situation you are in, I'm not the one who personally killed your son, your father, your brother. I am innocent. The incident that happened that night is not my fault. I did not have a gun. All I can ask ... is that you look deeper into this case so that you really can finally see the truth. I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight. For those about to take my life, God have mercy on your souls. And may God bless your souls."

The state of Georgia took Davis' body to Atlanta for an autopsy, charging his family for the transportation. On Troy Davis' death certificate, the cause of death is listed simply as "homicide."

As I stood on the grounds of the prison, just after Troy Davis was executed, the Department of Corrections threatened to pull the plug on our broadcast. The show was over. I was reminded what Gandhi reportedly answered when asked what he thought of Western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea."

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Troy Davis and the Machinery of Death

On Sept. 21 at 7 p.m., Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die. I was reporting live from outside Georgia's death row in Jackson, awaiting news about whether the Supreme Court would spare his life.

Davis was sentenced to death for the murder of off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. Seven of the nine nonpolice witnesses later recanted or changed their testimony, some alleging police intimidation for their original false statements. One who did not recant was the man who many have named as the actual killer. No physical evidence linked Davis to the shooting.

Davis, one of more than 3,200 prisoners on death row in the U.S., had faced three prior execution dates. With each one, global awareness grew. Amnesty International took up his case, as did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Calls for clemency came from Pope Benedict XVI, former FBI Director William Sessions and former Republican Georgia Congressman Bob Barr. The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, in granting a stay of execution in 2007, wrote that it "will not allow an execution to proceed in this state unless ... there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused."

But it is just that doubt that has galvanized so much global outrage over this case. As we waited, the crowd swelled around the prison, with signs saying "Too Much Doubt" and "I Am Troy Davis." Vigils were being held around the world, in places such as Iceland, England, France and Germany. Earlier in the day, prison authorities handed us a thin press kit. At 3 p.m., it said, Davis would be given a "routine physical."

Routine? Physical? At a local church down the road, Edward DuBose, the president of Georgia's NAACP chapter, spoke, along with human rights leaders, clergy and family members who had just left Davis. DuBose questioned the physical, "so that they could make sure he's physically fit, so that they can strap him down, so that they could put the murder juice in his arm? Make no mistake: They call it an execution. We call it murder."

Read More