Members of Amnesty International staged a march and vigil today for Troy Anthony Davis as part of a global day of action for the Georgian death row inmate. 
We did it!! After almost two years of grassroots organizing, the Texas House of Representatives Friday passed the Law of Parties Bill (HB 2267) and even adopted an amendment renaming the bill "The Kenneth Foster Jr, Act". The vote was 69-66, with 1 present not voting and several absent members. Three Republicans voted yes and only one Democrat voted no. This was a collective achievement of many legislators, staffers, activists, family members of death row inmates and other people and groups working together, but we still have to work to get the Texas senate to also pass the bill...
The conference was moved to the Holiday Inn Express, where the group relocated their protest. Protesters delivered a letter addressed to Watkins at the front desk of the hotel; attached to the letter was a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), FBI and DHS officials lingered outside the building and snapped photos of the protest participants.
Detainees at PIDC have identified Watkins as attempting to break up the hunger strike; using tactics such as isolating hunger strike participants and calling for their quick deportation. Hunger strikers continue to demand adequate health care and a right to due process. [read full story with photos]
There's a signless pinkish building at the corner of American and Metro in Bloomington Minnesota. Like US immigration policy, this building is hidden in plain sight--visible to immigrants and their allies but ignored by the rest of the nation. This is the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, anondescript place where deportees are held on the last night before they're driven to the airport and sent away. Sometimes they leave behind families and children; sometimes they return to countries they last saw while still too young to remember. One woman left her autistic and medically vulnerable son. "My father would never get to see me graduate high school," said Nick Espinosa, one of the activists who spoke at today's action in front of the ICE facility. Espinosa's father came to the US at the age of 18. Despite years of ordinary employment and participation in society, he was taken away by immigration agents in front of his family. ICE "sees immigration as a statistic," said Espinosa. "Immigration has a human face."
"If people don't listen to these words then we must act," Espinosa continued. He would later be arrested during a blockade of the facility.
MN Immigrant Rights Action Coalition | Related: Workday Minnesota Video | Photos from May 1 March for Immigrant Rights | Community Members Call for Protest at ICE HQ | Statement of Support from OWO Workday Minnesota: Supreme Court Bans Key Tool in Immigration Raids
Together, Robert King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement. They are known as the "Angola Three," a trio of political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers, and the ACLU. Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa says their case "has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire U.S. system." Read More | | | Related: THE DAILY PENNSYLVANIAN: One of "Angola Three" speaks on prison experience | Mother Jones series on the Angola 3 | Spanish article translation at Kaos en la Red | Angola 3 Resources for Action | Color of Change Petition | Free Zulu! UK Website
Despite needing only four votes to have his Batson claim argued, the Supreme Court on April 6, 2009 tersely denied Abu-Jamal’s request for a writ. The so-called “liberal block” of Justices Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter, and Breyer disintegrated, yielding to the awesome political power of the “Mumia exception.”
RELATED: More on O'Connor's book The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal | | Mumia & the D.A., by Milton McGriff, Daily News | | VIDEO: Angela Davis on Mumia's New Book | | Book Release and Birthday Party in Houston, TX | | Reviews of Jailhouse Lawyers by: Carolina Saldaña, Linn Washington, Jr., J. Patrick O'Connor, Jaisal Noor, Todd S. Burroughs and Kiilu Nyasha
We built a cell (with help from David G!) out of chicken wire and wooden stakes with 8 foot by 10 foot dimensions. The same size as cells at the T Don Hutto Detention Center, a former medium security center which currently incarcerates immigrant families. Our friends and allies at the dragon valley real school came to help us both as actors detained in the cell, and by helping to gather signatures and distribute pamphlets about T Don Hutto and family detention. We set up at 10am in Butler Plaza and stayed until about 3:30pm and in that time were able to gather 600 signatures to a petition asking Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to end the policy of family detention (you can sign an online version here), and distributed nearly 1,000 pamphlets produced by Grassroots Leadership about T Don Hutto.
While many students were uninterested in talking to us, the overwhelming majority of folks who were willing to stop and talk were supportive of the cause, and excited to sign the petition. While some students we spoke to were familiar with Hutto, the majority were not that familiar, and many were schocked that children are being locked up in prison, and even more so that a private company would profit from this incarceration. [Read Full Story with Photos] SDS Houston Blog
On the last day of April, several dozen death penalty abolitionists gathered on the steps of Harris County Criminal Courts building in downtown Houston to mark the impending milestone in Texas. But the tide is turning! Harris County, which since 1982 has sent more people to death row than the entire state of Virginia, did not condemn anyone to execution last year at all. The dozens of people held signs, chatted, listened to and applauded speakers during a period of time spanning 200 minutes, one for each of the people executed during Governor Perry's term, a number that even exceeds the previous record set by former Governor and ex-president George W Bush. There was a moment of silence at 6:00 PM to mark the execution of Derrick Johnson, the 198th under Governor Perry. [See statewide vigils]
Speakers included Sam Millsap, former Bexar County D.A.; Jared Feuer, AIUSA; Kristin Houlé, TCADP; Lee Greenwood, mother of executed inmate Joseph Nichols; Ron Carlson, brother of murder victim Deborah Ruth Carlson Davis Thornton. [full story with photos]
On the last day of April, the 101st day of Obama's administration, 62 protesters were arrested in front of the White House while protesting the continued existence of that infamous hellhole, Guantanamo Bay. Read More | | | Video: via Youtube | by Wm Hughes
On Saturday April 25th, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement hosted a birthday event and book release party for Mumia Abu Jamal and his new book Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.. Local activists Ray Hill of KPFT's Prison Show, civil rights activist Ester King, and Black Panther veteran Sister Ayana all read excerpts of Mumia's new book and added commentary about the contributions Mumia has made to our understanding of what is going on in the world and how he has impacted and radicalized a number of folks in attendance.
Following a poet, Bilal (I think), Gloria of TDPAM read the obituary she wrote for David Ruiz a prolific writ writer from east Austin who wrote a civil rights complaint which became Ruiz vs. Estelle, where the Texas Department of Criminal Justice(sic) was forced into the 20th century, by making the federal government take over the state prison system to ensure that basic constitutional and human rights were given to prisoners in Texas. [read full article with photos]
Update 4/28: Audio interview with hunger striker at Port Isabel - One of the detainees on hunger strike - Rama Carty - spoke to the Observer by phone on Friday about how he has been detained by ICE for more than 13 months.Detainees have stated that they face violations to their due process rights, do not receive adequate medical attention, and have experienced physical and verbal abuse from ICE and ATSI officers.
Organizations in Texas and New York are standing in solidarity with protesters, as many have received complaints from detainees and family members about conditions at PIDC since early this year. “We've heard of detainees being denied food, beaten and shackled as retaliation for speaking up about inadequate conditions. Many of the detainees are legal permanent residents from northeastern cities [and] they've been shipped to this desolate prison away from any kind of family and community support. ATSI staff is being very brazen in their lawlessness. I think there's a perception that no one will speak up in defense of immigrants. It all seems designed to break down the will of the detainees so that they will agree to being deported,” remarked Maria Muentes, an organizer from Families for Freedom in New York City. [Read Full Article]
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