Dear Governor Blanco
After listening to a report on National Public Radio on July 30 about a case involving youngsters in the Jena area, I became appalled by one of Louisiana’s district attorneys, specifically Reed Walters of Jena.
NPR’s Wade Goodwyn reported on events that began to unfold last year at Jena High School, a school apparently plagued by racial tension and self-segregation.
Here is the link to the story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12353776
To make along story short, Robert Bailey, a young black student got into a scuffle in a liquor store after a long, drawn-out confrontation between whites and blacks at the school. The white youngster ran and grabbed a gun from his car, and Bailey was able to take it from him, perhaps saving his own life.
Afterward, a young white student named Justin Barker was beaten by six black students after loudly gloating about a fight between Bailey and white students at a previous party. Barker was beaten by six black students. The injuries he received were so minor that he was treated by a doctor and released from care that same day.
Walters chose to charge Robert Bailey with theft of a firearm, second degree robbery and disturbing the peace, while the young white man who fought with Bailey and tried to pull a gun on him got off without any charges at all. I find this completely outrageous and criminally unfair on Walters' part.
I also feel Walter’s charging the six youngsters with attempted murder is ludicrous. The fact that Justin Barker managed to survive an attack by six young men, some of them athletes, with nothing but superficial cuts and scrapes proves the opposite of Walters’ charge. This was not attempted murder. The six boys obviously used a great deal of restraint. They easily could have killed him if they had not.
This to me is an obvious display of racism on Walters’ part. As a white American, I am sickened and embarrassed that in the year 2007, this blatant bigotry is allowed to persist in our legal system. It has been a half-century since institutionalized racism has been abolished. It is an embarrassment to the American criminal justice system, the state of Louisiana and the entire country that Walters is allowed to carry on this way.
I feel Walters has no respect for the laws of this country, and that he believes laws should be applied differently according to a person’s skin color. People like this should not be allowed to practice law, let alone function as district attorneys. He is frighteningly backward and I can only hope he is an abnormality among Louisiana’s practicing attorneys.
I hope, for the sake of credibility and decency, you as governor consider removing him from his district attorney post.
Sincerely,
Bethania Palma
Orange County, California
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Interview With Esther Brown of Project Hope Discussing the Execution of Darrell Grayson
On becoming aware of the case of Darrell Grayson, the 46-year-old Black man who was executed this past thursday on flimsy evidence that did not include DNA testing and who was found guilty by an all white jury in 1981 Alabama, I felt that I had to do something. I contacted Lisa Thomas, whose dedication to Grayson's cause obliged her to stage two walks-one from Selma to Washington D.C. and one from Selma to Montgomery in protest of the death penalty and in support of Grayson, and I asked her if I could interview her for JuliusSpeaks. In turn, Ms. Thomas gave my information to Esther Brown of Project Hope, an organization for people on death row in the state of Alabama that serves as a support group, works to abolish the death penalty, and advocates for the cases of death penalty inmates. Brown serves as the outside contact person for the group. We had a lengthy discussion over the phone and later she replied to some direct questions over email.
Esther Brown is a fiesty older lady, a German immigrant who came to the United States fifty years ago and who has dedicated a large part of her life to ending the death penalty, a cause which burns deep within her soul. When asked if there was anything she might say to Alabama governor Bob Riley, Brown replied, " It perhaps would not be printable." When I asked her to talk about Grayson, she told me that over the years she and Grayson had become the closest of friends. She described him as being "more thirsty for knowledge than anyone I ever met." When Grayson entered prison in 1982 at the age of 19, he suffered a severe depression, after which he vowed to "make something of his life." He applied for a pell grant, earned an Associate's Degree and became a poet and writer, publishing three chapbooks and serving as a correspondent for a Black-owned Alabama newspaper.In that time, Grayson also helped to found and became the chairperson of Project Hope, which was founded by Alabama Death Row Inmates in 1989.
When I asked Ms. Brown what life was like for Grayson on Death Row, she said that life for him was solitary, but that he kept himself involved because he "wanted to make a difference and leave the world a better place than he found it." In a conversation between the two of them about his life, she says he sighed and said whimsically, "Darling, this is prison." Over the years, Brown says that she and the Alabama Death Row inmates of Project Hope have become a close-knit family, saying that "family isn't about bloodlines, it's about connection." In terms of family, Grayson has one sister who stuck by him throughout his ordeal in the justice system.
In terms of allies who aided in Grayson's case, Brown says one of the strongest allies they had was Alabama state senator, Hank Sanders, Democrat. Senator Sanders has constantly introduced moratorium resolutions before the state assembly over a number of years to no avail, objecting to the racial and class discrimination that is inherent in the death penalty. According to Brown, Senator Sanders said of the moratorium bill, "anything concerning race and poverty has a tough time in Alabama." Other allies in Grayson's struggle were the NAACP who have their own effort to end the death penalty, the group Alabama Arise, and the New South Coalition.
Racial and class bias are inherent in death penalty cases throughout the United States; cases where white victims are involved recieve death penalty sentences far more than those in which there are black victims, blacks are the usual victims of violent crimes, black defendants recieve death penalty sentences more than white defendants and throughout the system many who are convicted cannot afford adequate representation, leaving lower-income defendants to the mercy of uncaring public defenders who do little to advocate on their behalf. In the case of Darrell Grayson, Grayson, who grew up in poverty in Alabama and was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1981, was not able to afford decent representation and as a result witnesses who needed to be interviewed regarding the case were not interviewed and all of the evidence that pointed away from Grayson and that was taken care of through affadavits was ignored by the current governor of Alabama and other state officials. One of the major issues in Grayson's case was the failure of the state to do a post-conviction DNA test, a test which Grayson and others felt might exonerate him. When he was convicted in 1981 by an all-white jury, there was no such thing as DNA testing. After Grayson recieved his execution date, the Innocence Project, a national organization that pushed for DNA testing in death penalty cases, picked up Grayson's case and advocated for him. Alabama's governor Bob Riley refused all pleas for DNA testing in Grayson's case, even after Grayson supporter Lisa Thomas staged a walk from Selma to Montgomery in support of Grayson and to end the death penalty.
In turning to a discussion of the injustice and inhumanity that is the death penalty, Ms. Brown adamantly told me that the death penalty and the practice of lynching are the same thing. Indeed, lynching and the practice of the death penalty in the United States have a related and twisted history in the United States. In her reasoning for abolishing the death penalty, Ms. Brown stated that "Fallable people are in charge of the justice system, for that reason alone there should be no death penalty." Brown says that the Association of African American Police Chief Deputies has recently issued a statement declaring that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. In her fight to end the death penalty, Brown says that her message to the public is "We are going to continue our fight in the spirit of Darrell Grayson."
--------
Interview with Esther Brown
Question:
Who was Darrell Grayson?
Brown: Darrell was a poet/activist, a leader and father figure to many on the Row, a man with a thirst for knowlege with the desire to leave the world better than he found it. He was also my very dear friend.
Question:
How did you become involved with this case?
Brown: I became involved in the case because of our very close friendship.
Question:
Tell me about Project Hope. How did it get started?
Brown: Phadp was founded in 1989 by Alabama death row inmates who wanted to reach out to a mentally retarded brother on the row. The board is on the row and I am the executive director on the outside. We publish a newsletter 4 times a year which is printed and formatted on death row and then sent to me for printing and mailing. We also have an email group and our focus is to educating the public on the death penalty. We have also been working on a moratorium and you will find the city councils/county commissions and Al churches and organizations that have come out in support of this.
Question:
What was Darrell's life like in prison? What were his living conditions?
Brown: Darrell's life in prison was solitary. He spent much of the time reading, writing poetry, working on phadp matters and on the phone with me for 3-4 hours daily. The board of phadp meets once a week and they call me from their meeting.
Question:
How big was Project Hope? How many people were involved?
Brown: How big is phadp? Depends on how you count it. About 30 men on death row, I am the full time volunteer chief cook and bottle washer, our web master and 600+ on our email list and 1,000 on our mailing list, not all of these in Alabama. We work together with grassroots organizations, Alabama New South Coalition, Alabama Arise, Peace groups around the state, NAACP where I am the chair of its Death Penalty/Moratorium committee. Smaller groups as well as the Quest of Social Justice in Mobile, TOPS of Dothan and others.
Question:
It seems that Darrell was making something of his life. He was getting his education, becoming an activist and an organizer. How did this transformation come about?
Brown: His career as an activist and organizer was fostered by joining phadp, working his way up through the ranks and of course my giving him a voice. Hard to be heard from death row unless there is someone on the outside who promotes you.
Question:
Did Grayson have any relatives? How are they coping?
Brown: Family? One sister who stayed devoted to him and who is now coping by making sure I am okay, calling every night.
Question:
At any time did Darrell recieve any ehlp from the ACLU, NAACP, or other civil rights organizations?
Brown: The help Darrell received from civil rights organizations came from Alabama New South Coalition,(of which I am a member) and the NAACP. Both made statements, wrote to the Governor, came to the rally on Wednesday, ie Senator Hank Sanders and Ed Vaughn. Judy Collins Cumbee, my close friend is first vice chair of ANSC and was a large degree instrumental in rallying the forces for the rally.Greater Birmingham Ministries. I'm just hoping that I am not leaving anyone out!
Question:
Tell me about the Innocence Project.
Brown: The Innocence Project takes on cases where there is DNA and the possibility of innocence.
Question:
Alabama has a legacy with regards to Black men and the death penalty, whether with the courts or through the practice of lynching. Do you think that Darrell Grayson was a victim of racism?
Brown: Of course! An all white jury in 1981, an all white courtroom, a white victim? The modern day lynching. 80% of the men on death row are there because of a white victim, yet more African Americans are murdered than whites!
Question:
If you had the opportunity, what would you say to Governor Riley?
Brown: What would I say to the Governor? Perhaps not printable! I hope you never take the pledge of allegiance and say with justice for all! Alabama does not know what that means and the rest of the world cannot believe how we are still back in the dark ages of racism. And you know, to quote Bryan Stevenson of EJI Alabamians with their terrible history do not have the right to execute a black man. The question we must ask is not whether that person deserves to die but whether we deserve to kill.
Question:
Do you have anything else you would like to say? Perhaps to the public?
Brown: We will persevere, now more than ever and we will overcome one day!
Good talking to you!
Esther
Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty:
www.phadp.org
Esther Brown is a fiesty older lady, a German immigrant who came to the United States fifty years ago and who has dedicated a large part of her life to ending the death penalty, a cause which burns deep within her soul. When asked if there was anything she might say to Alabama governor Bob Riley, Brown replied, " It perhaps would not be printable." When I asked her to talk about Grayson, she told me that over the years she and Grayson had become the closest of friends. She described him as being "more thirsty for knowledge than anyone I ever met." When Grayson entered prison in 1982 at the age of 19, he suffered a severe depression, after which he vowed to "make something of his life." He applied for a pell grant, earned an Associate's Degree and became a poet and writer, publishing three chapbooks and serving as a correspondent for a Black-owned Alabama newspaper.In that time, Grayson also helped to found and became the chairperson of Project Hope, which was founded by Alabama Death Row Inmates in 1989.
When I asked Ms. Brown what life was like for Grayson on Death Row, she said that life for him was solitary, but that he kept himself involved because he "wanted to make a difference and leave the world a better place than he found it." In a conversation between the two of them about his life, she says he sighed and said whimsically, "Darling, this is prison." Over the years, Brown says that she and the Alabama Death Row inmates of Project Hope have become a close-knit family, saying that "family isn't about bloodlines, it's about connection." In terms of family, Grayson has one sister who stuck by him throughout his ordeal in the justice system.
In terms of allies who aided in Grayson's case, Brown says one of the strongest allies they had was Alabama state senator, Hank Sanders, Democrat. Senator Sanders has constantly introduced moratorium resolutions before the state assembly over a number of years to no avail, objecting to the racial and class discrimination that is inherent in the death penalty. According to Brown, Senator Sanders said of the moratorium bill, "anything concerning race and poverty has a tough time in Alabama." Other allies in Grayson's struggle were the NAACP who have their own effort to end the death penalty, the group Alabama Arise, and the New South Coalition.
Racial and class bias are inherent in death penalty cases throughout the United States; cases where white victims are involved recieve death penalty sentences far more than those in which there are black victims, blacks are the usual victims of violent crimes, black defendants recieve death penalty sentences more than white defendants and throughout the system many who are convicted cannot afford adequate representation, leaving lower-income defendants to the mercy of uncaring public defenders who do little to advocate on their behalf. In the case of Darrell Grayson, Grayson, who grew up in poverty in Alabama and was convicted of murder by an all-white jury in 1981, was not able to afford decent representation and as a result witnesses who needed to be interviewed regarding the case were not interviewed and all of the evidence that pointed away from Grayson and that was taken care of through affadavits was ignored by the current governor of Alabama and other state officials. One of the major issues in Grayson's case was the failure of the state to do a post-conviction DNA test, a test which Grayson and others felt might exonerate him. When he was convicted in 1981 by an all-white jury, there was no such thing as DNA testing. After Grayson recieved his execution date, the Innocence Project, a national organization that pushed for DNA testing in death penalty cases, picked up Grayson's case and advocated for him. Alabama's governor Bob Riley refused all pleas for DNA testing in Grayson's case, even after Grayson supporter Lisa Thomas staged a walk from Selma to Montgomery in support of Grayson and to end the death penalty.
In turning to a discussion of the injustice and inhumanity that is the death penalty, Ms. Brown adamantly told me that the death penalty and the practice of lynching are the same thing. Indeed, lynching and the practice of the death penalty in the United States have a related and twisted history in the United States. In her reasoning for abolishing the death penalty, Ms. Brown stated that "Fallable people are in charge of the justice system, for that reason alone there should be no death penalty." Brown says that the Association of African American Police Chief Deputies has recently issued a statement declaring that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. In her fight to end the death penalty, Brown says that her message to the public is "We are going to continue our fight in the spirit of Darrell Grayson."
--------
Interview with Esther Brown
Question:
Who was Darrell Grayson?
Brown: Darrell was a poet/activist, a leader and father figure to many on the Row, a man with a thirst for knowlege with the desire to leave the world better than he found it. He was also my very dear friend.
Question:
How did you become involved with this case?
Brown: I became involved in the case because of our very close friendship.
Question:
Tell me about Project Hope. How did it get started?
Brown: Phadp was founded in 1989 by Alabama death row inmates who wanted to reach out to a mentally retarded brother on the row. The board is on the row and I am the executive director on the outside. We publish a newsletter 4 times a year which is printed and formatted on death row and then sent to me for printing and mailing. We also have an email group and our focus is to educating the public on the death penalty. We have also been working on a moratorium and you will find the city councils/county commissions and Al churches and organizations that have come out in support of this.
Question:
What was Darrell's life like in prison? What were his living conditions?
Brown: Darrell's life in prison was solitary. He spent much of the time reading, writing poetry, working on phadp matters and on the phone with me for 3-4 hours daily. The board of phadp meets once a week and they call me from their meeting.
Question:
How big was Project Hope? How many people were involved?
Brown: How big is phadp? Depends on how you count it. About 30 men on death row, I am the full time volunteer chief cook and bottle washer, our web master and 600+ on our email list and 1,000 on our mailing list, not all of these in Alabama. We work together with grassroots organizations, Alabama New South Coalition, Alabama Arise, Peace groups around the state, NAACP where I am the chair of its Death Penalty/Moratorium committee. Smaller groups as well as the Quest of Social Justice in Mobile, TOPS of Dothan and others.
Question:
It seems that Darrell was making something of his life. He was getting his education, becoming an activist and an organizer. How did this transformation come about?
Brown: His career as an activist and organizer was fostered by joining phadp, working his way up through the ranks and of course my giving him a voice. Hard to be heard from death row unless there is someone on the outside who promotes you.
Question:
Did Grayson have any relatives? How are they coping?
Brown: Family? One sister who stayed devoted to him and who is now coping by making sure I am okay, calling every night.
Question:
At any time did Darrell recieve any ehlp from the ACLU, NAACP, or other civil rights organizations?
Brown: The help Darrell received from civil rights organizations came from Alabama New South Coalition,(of which I am a member) and the NAACP. Both made statements, wrote to the Governor, came to the rally on Wednesday, ie Senator Hank Sanders and Ed Vaughn. Judy Collins Cumbee, my close friend is first vice chair of ANSC and was a large degree instrumental in rallying the forces for the rally.Greater Birmingham Ministries. I'm just hoping that I am not leaving anyone out!
Question:
Tell me about the Innocence Project.
Brown: The Innocence Project takes on cases where there is DNA and the possibility of innocence.
Question:
Alabama has a legacy with regards to Black men and the death penalty, whether with the courts or through the practice of lynching. Do you think that Darrell Grayson was a victim of racism?
Brown: Of course! An all white jury in 1981, an all white courtroom, a white victim? The modern day lynching. 80% of the men on death row are there because of a white victim, yet more African Americans are murdered than whites!
Question:
If you had the opportunity, what would you say to Governor Riley?
Brown: What would I say to the Governor? Perhaps not printable! I hope you never take the pledge of allegiance and say with justice for all! Alabama does not know what that means and the rest of the world cannot believe how we are still back in the dark ages of racism. And you know, to quote Bryan Stevenson of EJI Alabamians with their terrible history do not have the right to execute a black man. The question we must ask is not whether that person deserves to die but whether we deserve to kill.
Question:
Do you have anything else you would like to say? Perhaps to the public?
Brown: We will persevere, now more than ever and we will overcome one day!
Good talking to you!
Esther
Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty:
www.phadp.org
Sad Tidings
Ingmar Bergman is dead. What a wonderful director he was. My favorites were Wild Strawberries and Fanny and Alexander.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
There's Hope
India Arie
Two, one, two, one, two, two, two, one
(there's hope)
two,one,two,one,two,two,two,one
(ther's hope)
two,one,two,one,two,two,two,one
(the india arie)
Back when I had a little,I thought that i needed alot. A little was over rated, but alot was a little to complicated. See zero didn't satisfiy me , a million didn't make me happy. That's when I learned the lesson that its all about your perceptions. Hey, are you a papa or a super star so you act ,so you feel, so you are. It aint about the size of your car, It's about the size of the faith in your heart
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. There's hope
Off in the back country of Brazil, I met a young brotha that made me feel that, that i could accomplish anything. Ya see just like me he wanted to sing he had, NO windows and NO doors, he lived a simple life and was extremely poor. On top of all that he had no eye sight, but that didnt keep him from seeing the light he said, Whats it like in the USA, and all I did was complain. he said living here is paradise, he taught me paradise is in your mind,you know that ....
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. There's hope
Every time i turn on the t.v ( there's hope)
Somebody's acting crazy (there's hope)
If you let it'll drive you crazy (there's hope)
But im taking back my power today (ther's hope)
Gas prices they just keep on rising(there's hope)
The government they keep on lying (there's hope)
But we gotta keep on surving, keep living our truth and do the best we can do because
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.( Yea yea ).There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. (Yea yea yea) There's hope
[There's Hope Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com]
Stand up for your rights, Keeping shining your life, and show the world your smile
Stand up for your rights, Keeping shining your life, and show the world your smile
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.( Better thank God for that) .There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. Yea yeaThere's hope
Two, one, two, one, two, two, two, one
Two, one, two, one, two, two, two, one
(there's hope)
two,one,two,one,two,two,two,one
(ther's hope)
two,one,two,one,two,two,two,one
(the india arie)
Back when I had a little,I thought that i needed alot. A little was over rated, but alot was a little to complicated. See zero didn't satisfiy me , a million didn't make me happy. That's when I learned the lesson that its all about your perceptions. Hey, are you a papa or a super star so you act ,so you feel, so you are. It aint about the size of your car, It's about the size of the faith in your heart
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. There's hope
Off in the back country of Brazil, I met a young brotha that made me feel that, that i could accomplish anything. Ya see just like me he wanted to sing he had, NO windows and NO doors, he lived a simple life and was extremely poor. On top of all that he had no eye sight, but that didnt keep him from seeing the light he said, Whats it like in the USA, and all I did was complain. he said living here is paradise, he taught me paradise is in your mind,you know that ....
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. There's hope
Every time i turn on the t.v ( there's hope)
Somebody's acting crazy (there's hope)
If you let it'll drive you crazy (there's hope)
But im taking back my power today (ther's hope)
Gas prices they just keep on rising(there's hope)
The government they keep on lying (there's hope)
But we gotta keep on surving, keep living our truth and do the best we can do because
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.( Yea yea ).There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. (Yea yea yea) There's hope
[There's Hope Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com]
Stand up for your rights, Keeping shining your life, and show the world your smile
Stand up for your rights, Keeping shining your life, and show the world your smile
There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that.( Better thank God for that) .There's hope. It doesn't cost a thing to smile, you dont have to pay to laugh, you better thank God for that. Yea yeaThere's hope
Two, one, two, one, two, two, two, one
Project Hope
Inmates and concerned citizens, working with supporters, family members, and advocates, in Alabama and nationally, to abolish the death penalty.
Total on Death Row 196:
African American (93) White (103)
Latino (2)
Women (2) Juveniles (14)
Executions in Alabama Since 1976: 37
36 Male 1 Female (2002)
Executions in the USA Since 1976 (through January 15, 2005): 945
Executions by Region Since 1976:
South (779 )
West (61)
Midwest (102)
Northeast (3)
Alabama does NOT forbid the execution of juvenile offenders.
Sentencing is decided by a Judge who can override the jury’s recommendation.
COSTS OF THE DEATH PENALTY
IS IT WORTH IT?
The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the cost of a non-death penalty murder case with a life sentence. (Duke University, May 1993)
Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions – that is an average of $3.2 million per execution.
While we have been unable to find numbers for Alabama specifically, it is fair to assume that we are spending a great deal of money over what it would cost to keep someone in prison for life. Alabama’s justice system is bankrupt and yet, they are pushing ahead to spend $250,000 on the lethal injection chamber and untold amounts to fight the new ruling from the United States Supreme Court against executing the mentally retarded and the role of Judges in the sentencing process. How might this money be better spent?
ALABAMA is 44th in the nation on per pupil expenditures. The states that spent less are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee. (National Center for Education Statistics) Spending in 2002: Alabama $5,937 Georgia $7,633 Louisiana $6,270
From 1992 – 2000, ALABAMA was below the national average in every tested area in grades 4 and 8. The areas tested are Math, Reading, Science and Writing. In 2001 the ACT-tested graduates in Alabama scored below the national average.
PROJECT HOPE TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
WWW.PHADP.ORG
P. O. BOX 1362
Lanett, Al 36863
Total on Death Row 196:
African American (93) White (103)
Latino (2)
Women (2) Juveniles (14)
Executions in Alabama Since 1976: 37
36 Male 1 Female (2002)
Executions in the USA Since 1976 (through January 15, 2005): 945
Executions by Region Since 1976:
South (779 )
West (61)
Midwest (102)
Northeast (3)
Alabama does NOT forbid the execution of juvenile offenders.
Sentencing is decided by a Judge who can override the jury’s recommendation.
COSTS OF THE DEATH PENALTY
IS IT WORTH IT?
The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the cost of a non-death penalty murder case with a life sentence. (Duke University, May 1993)
Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions – that is an average of $3.2 million per execution.
While we have been unable to find numbers for Alabama specifically, it is fair to assume that we are spending a great deal of money over what it would cost to keep someone in prison for life. Alabama’s justice system is bankrupt and yet, they are pushing ahead to spend $250,000 on the lethal injection chamber and untold amounts to fight the new ruling from the United States Supreme Court against executing the mentally retarded and the role of Judges in the sentencing process. How might this money be better spent?
ALABAMA is 44th in the nation on per pupil expenditures. The states that spent less are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee. (National Center for Education Statistics) Spending in 2002: Alabama $5,937 Georgia $7,633 Louisiana $6,270
From 1992 – 2000, ALABAMA was below the national average in every tested area in grades 4 and 8. The areas tested are Math, Reading, Science and Writing. In 2001 the ACT-tested graduates in Alabama scored below the national average.
PROJECT HOPE TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
WWW.PHADP.ORG
P. O. BOX 1362
Lanett, Al 36863
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Abandon Israeli Military
I would encourage all young Israelis to refuse military service in the Israeli military and I would encourage all Israeli parents to help their children avoid mandatory service.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Lullaby For Myself
Barbra Streisand
Self-contained and self-content
No promises to keep
I've got things so together
That I just can't fall asleep
Walked the night and drank the moon
Got home at half-past four,
And I knew that no-one marked my time
As I unlocked my door.
It's really lovely to discover
That you like to be alone
Not to owe your man an answer
When he gets you on the phone
Not to share a pair of porkchops
When you crave champagne and cheese
And your aim becomes to please yourself
And not to aim to please
Oh they sold me when they told me
Two can live as cheap as one
But I'm learning twice you're earning
Doesn't mean it's twice the fun
If you spend your each dime and all your time
On someone else's schemes
I'm not needy but I'm greedy
And I live my deepest dreams
Take an hour in the shower
Use the water while it's hot
In the tub a hand to scrub my back
Is all I haven't got.
Self-aware with self-esteem
Is selfishness a crime?
I take the day for quite a ride
And I take my own sweet time
Time to spare and time to share
And grateful I would be
If just one damn man would share the need
To be alone with me.
Self-contained and self-content
No promises to keep
I've got things so together
That I just can't fall asleep
Walked the night and drank the moon
Got home at half-past four,
And I knew that no-one marked my time
As I unlocked my door.
It's really lovely to discover
That you like to be alone
Not to owe your man an answer
When he gets you on the phone
Not to share a pair of porkchops
When you crave champagne and cheese
And your aim becomes to please yourself
And not to aim to please
Oh they sold me when they told me
Two can live as cheap as one
But I'm learning twice you're earning
Doesn't mean it's twice the fun
If you spend your each dime and all your time
On someone else's schemes
I'm not needy but I'm greedy
And I live my deepest dreams
Take an hour in the shower
Use the water while it's hot
In the tub a hand to scrub my back
Is all I haven't got.
Self-aware with self-esteem
Is selfishness a crime?
I take the day for quite a ride
And I take my own sweet time
Time to spare and time to share
And grateful I would be
If just one damn man would share the need
To be alone with me.
US Crimes in Haiti
AMY GOODMAN: 10,000 people marched in the Haitian capital of Port Au-Prince last Sunday. They were calling for the return of the exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It was his fifty-fourth birthday. This is Haitian folksinger and Lavalas leader Annette Auguste, more well known as “So An,” speaking at the rally.
ANNETTE AUGUSTE: [translated] It is a nice way to say happy birthday to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is in exile in South Africa today. There are people watching the final between Brazil and Argentina. Still, it is good to see so many of the population who took to the streets for a good cause. I always say that since December of 1991. nothing has changed for the population.
LOUIS GERARD GILLES: [translated] Today’s rally shows that the majority of the Haitian people are asking for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. If there is a state of right existing in Haiti today, it is just for the government of President Rene Preval to do the right thing. It is unjust to have this politician in exile.
DEMONSTRATOR: [translated] President Aristide will come back, and when he does, we will all cry for victory, because the real hope is with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not with Preval.
AMY GOODMAN: On February 29th, 2004, three years ago, the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was removed from office by the United States and flown to the Central African Republic. Two weeks later, in defiance of the United States, a delegation led by California Congressmember Maxine Waters and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson chartered a plane and headed off to the Central African Republic themselves to bring President Aristide and his wife Mildred back to the Caribbean. I accompanied them on that trip. After hours of negotiating with the dictator in the capital Bangui, they freed the Aristides. As we flew back over the Atlantic President Aristide said he had been kidnapped in a US-backed coup d'etat.
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I will not go into details, maybe next time. But as I said, they used force. When you have militaries coming from abroad, surrounding your house, taking control of the airport, surrounding the national palace, being in the streets, and taking you from your house to put you in a plane where you have to spend twenty hours without knowing where they were going to go with you, without talking about details, which I already did somehow on other occasions, it was using force to take an elected president out of his country.
AMY GOODMAN: And was that US military that took you out?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: There were US military, and I suspect it could be also completed with the presence of other militaries from other countries.
AMY GOODMAN: When they came to your house, in the early morning of February 29th, was it US military that came?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: There were diplomats. There were US military. There were US people.
AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration said that when you -- after you got on the plane, when you were leaving, you spoke with CARICOM leaders. Is this true?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They lied. I never had any opportunity from February 28 at night, when they started, to the minute I arrived in car, I never had any conversation with anyone from CARICOM within that frame of time.
AMY GOODMAN: How many US military were on the plane with you?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I cannot know how many were there, but I know it’s the plane with fifty-five seats. Among them we had nineteen American agents […] The rest, they were American militaries.
AMY GOODMAN: Were they dressed in military uniform?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They were not only dressed in -- with their uniform, it was like if they were going to war. For the first period of time on the ground, when we went to the plane, after the plane took off, that's the way they were. Then they changed, moving from the uniform to other kind of clothes.
AMY GOODMAN: Civilian clothing?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And did they go with you all the way to the Central African Republic?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They did, without telling me where they were taking me, without telling me how long it would take us to be there.
AMY GOODMAN: Exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a plane heading back to the Caribbean. Then it was to Jamaica. It’s now more than three years later. The Aristides remain in exile in South Africa. And Randall Robinson has just written a book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. He flew in from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts last night and joins us in our firehouse studio today. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Randall Robinson.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it’s been three years since you and Congressmember Maxine Waters, Sharon Hay-Webster, the member of parliament from Jamaica, led that delegation on this small plane to the Central African Republic, actually won the release of the Aristides and brought them to Jamaica. Talk about that, as you watched President Aristide three years ago in the plane that you were in, as well, what you have learned since?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, we talked to -- I talked to a number of witnesses, eyewitnesses to the abduction itself, witnesses in Antigua who saw the plane on the ground, airport officials, and, of course, witnesses to the whole operation and things that have gone on in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you flesh out that entire experience that President Aristide was just talking about, as you understand it today? What happened February 29, 2004?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Franz Gabriel was the president’s helicopter pilot. Franz Gabriel was a sergeant in the US military and a Haitian citizen who had gone home to serve in the government and to helicopter the president around. At about 3:00 on the morning of the 29th, he was called by one of the Haitian security people at the president's home in Tabar and told that something wrong was developing in the president's house.
I had placed a call to the president earlier that evening on the 28th, and a voice that didn’t belong to the house answered the phone. It was an American voice, a male American voice. And I said, “May I speak to President Aristide?” “He’s not here.” “May I speak to Madame Aristide?” His American-born wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide. And, “She’s not here.” “When will they be?” And I’m cut off. I became concerned. I had never heard a strange voice answer their private phones before.
We had -- my wife Hazel had worked to arrange a visit of Tavis Smiley to Haiti on the 29th. He was to interview the president downtown in central Port-au-Prince at the palace about this turmoil that was unfolding in the north of the country. The rebels, armed by the United States, had entered the country early in February, moved north and away from the capital and never showed, never demonstrated any inclination to attack Port-au-Prince. And so, we were concerned in the United States, because most of us didn’t know that they posed no threat to the democratic government, and so Tavis was going there to interview the president, and George Stephanopoulos was to interview him, as well.
And so, after I was unable to reach the president, Tavis Smiley called me, or called my wife, because my wife was the one who was organizing his visit. He said, “The visit’s off.” And my wife said, “Oh, no! Has something happened to them?” And Tavis said, “No. I just got a call from Secretary of State Colin Powell. And Secretary of State Powell said to me that” --
AMY GOODMAN: This is Tavis?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Tavis, no -- well, yes, no. Tavis said that he got a call from Ron Dellums. And Ron Dellums also worked with my wife on the Haiti team. And Ron Dellums reported to Tavis that he had just gotten a call from Secretary of State Colin Powell and that the secretary said that Guy Philippe, the leader of the paramilitaries, the American-armed and -trained paramilitaries, was coming to Port-au-Prince on Sunday to kill the president. “And I want you, Ron Dellums, to let the president know that this is going to happen, and let him know that the United States will do nothing to protect him.” And so, Tavis said, of course, the trip is off.
And then my wife called Ron Dellums, and Ron said, “Yes, I’ve just heard from the secretary, and Guy Philippe is in Port-au-Prince and will kill Aristide tomorrow, according to Secretary of State Powell,” who had to have known that Guy Philippe was nowhere near Port-au-Prince. President Aristide, of course, knew, because he had gotten reports from Franz Gabriel. The idea was to frighten Aristide into abdicating his office and fleeing the country on a plane provided by the United States. And Aristide refused.
Later that morning, about thirty American Special Forces troops in full combat gear, in twelve or thirteen white Chevy Suburbans of the American embassy, surrounded the Aristide home, took positions on the wall around the home. And you could see the red tracer pattern crisscrossing, crosshatching in the yard of the home. And into the yard came one Chevy Suburban with one of the Special Forces people fully armed, who was attending Luis Moreno of the American embassy, who walked into the house and told the president, “I was here when you came back in ’94, and I’m here tonight to tell you it’s time for you to leave.”
They removed the president -- Moreno and the American Special Forces -- from his home, took them to the airport -- the president, Mrs. Aristide and Franz Gabriel -- took them from their home, boarded them on this large wide-bodied aircraft with no markings, no tail number, only the sort of large flag, American flag, on the vertical tail assembly, and flew off, making their first refueling stop in the eastern Caribbean in Antigua.
Friends of ours at the airport in Antigua, airport officials, were not allowed to board the plane, as is the custom for customs purposes. All of the windows were drawn. The plane sat on the tarmac for five hours or so. Secretary Rumsfeld said that when President Aristide was in Antigua, he had met with members of the Caribbean leadership community. President Aristide, as he said on the tapes -- quite right, and this is borne out by witnesses in Antigua -- couldn’t have known where he was. He was not allowed to see out of the plane, and no one on the outside was allowed access to anyone who was on the plane.
And as I’ve published in the book -- I’ve published copies of the American customs declarations -- and one of the declarations has been altered from fifty present on the plane to no people on the plane by the Americans who submitted the customs declarations to the Antiguan authorities.
And then they flew off to the Ascension Island. And only when they were approaching the Central African Republic were the Aristides told where they were. And after they landed, no American official deplaned, no soldiers, no one else. The Aristides were simply put off the plane, as if they were parcels, along with Franz Gabriel. They weren’t even told or treated or given any medication for the sometimes lethal malaria strand that affects the Central African Republic and were kept there in a small room for two weeks until our delegation arrived to try and negotiate their release.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll find out what happened after. This is Randall Robinson. He’s just written a book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Randall Robinson. He has just flown up from St. Kitts in the Caribbean where he has lived for the past six years. He has written a new book. It’s called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Randall Robinson is founder and past president of TransAfrica, also author of The Debt, The Reckoning, and Defending the Spirit. Randall Robinson, you just described that day, February 29, into March 1, as the Aristides were taken by the US military and security from their home in Haiti to the Central African Republic. Why CAR, the Central African Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Any number of Caribbean countries would have welcomed the Aristides, but the United States wanted to get him out of the hemisphere, as far away from Haiti as they possibly could. And they wanted to send him to a country over which either the United States or France had great sway.
The Central African Republic is de facto still a colony of France. And it was under military dictatorship at the time that President Aristide was taken there. And so, when we arrived, we saw cheek-by-jaw to the airport was a French military establishment. It was no common civilian-use airport. There were no planes. It was a very frightening affair. Troops were all about. Obviously, the president was very nervous about threats to his one-year-old military coup. And so, that’s how he was sent there, and that’s how the country was chosen.
And President Bozize made plain to us that he had done this at the request of the United States. Prime Minister Patterson of Jamaica demonstrated enormous courage in giving to his parliamentarian Sharon Hay-Webster, who went with us, a letter saying that he would welcome to -- providing temporary refuge, asylum to President Aristide in Jamaica. And it was with the presentation of that letter that we were able to prevail, but not before President Bozize had to call France and the United States to seek permission to release the Aristides to us. It was clear that the United States was in control and that President Bozize was doing this at the request of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: We were reporting back to Pacifica and to Reuters, following these hours of negotiations. As you negotiated with the president, went to the presidential palace, the decision was being made, are the Aristides going to be released. But the US had an unusual situation here. They said that the Aristides had chosen to go there, were free to leave. And yet, here you were negotiating, not with them, but with the dictator for their release.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Oh, it was absolutely clear that they weren’t free to go anywhere. And Bozize made that clear. The Aristides had never been to that country before, knew no one in that country and certainly wouldn’t have gone to a country that was a virtual colony of France, because France was implicated in the coup with the United States. I think Secretary Powell confesses much of his role in a recent statement that he made. He said on April the 18th, says -- “If there are people who don’t want American troops there, should they be there?” was the question. “It depends. They’re there because they serve our interest, American troops, and they also hopefully serve the interest of the country. In the case of Haiti, Haiti is an example where we were not invited in, but there was a civil war.” There was no civil war, and the secretary knew that.
AMY GOODMAN: On March 1, 2004, Democracy Now! broke the story, because you, Randall Robinson, and Congressmember Maxine Waters called us right after President Aristide called you, saying he was trapped in the Central African Republic. We broke the story that Aristide was directly accusing the United States of overthrowing him in a coup, kidnapping him and taking him and his wife Mildred by force to the Central African Republic. So that day, after we broadcast your and the Congressmember Maxine Waters’s descriptions of that scratchy phone call that the President Aristide had made to you from the CAR, our transcripts went online. Reporters took those transcripts and questioned US officials both at the Pentagon and the White House about Aristide’s accusations. Then Secretaries of Defense and State Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell responded.
DONALD RUMSFELD: The idea that someone was abducted is just totally inconsistent with everything I heard or saw or am aware of. So I think that, that -- I do not believe he is saying what you say -- are saying he is saying.
COLIN POWELL: He was not kidnapped. We did not force him onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that’s the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: “And thats the truth,” says then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Your response, Randall Robinson?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, several things. Number one, a cursory investigation would demonstrate the factual accuracy of what I have described here. The Caribbean countries asked for an investigation, and they were told by the United States that were they to press for an investigation at the UN Security Council level, that either France or the United States, or both, would veto such a resolution. And so, the US was prepared to block any investigation into what they had done that night.
Of course, the president didn’t go on the plane voluntarily. All of the previous coups that have occurred in Haiti of dictators that were there with the support of the United States, when they were chased out of the country, all of the cameras were there to record that. Then they were taken to nearby places like Panama to live comfortably, the US even renting the house of Cedras in Haiti, taking care of these American client dictators. When Aristide left the country, there was no camera, not one, not one reporter at the airport. And I -- you did what no other American journalist, save Eisner of the Washington Post, was willing to do. The New York Times suggested in their description that President Aristide left Haiti and went to South Africa, never even reported that they were taken to the Central African Republic.
AMY GOODMAN: You also point out in An Unbroken Agony the video clips that the media was showing after Aristide left. I mean, here you had -- they were not at the airport, yet they did show video of President Aristide shaking hands with dignitaries, I think, at the airport.
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was making his way along a long line of government ministers in daytime clips, making his way along a line, leaving the country. And that was represented to the American public to be film of his departure from the country. He left the country at 4:00 a.m., boarding a plane at the airport with absolutely nobody there.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, I interviewed Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, on Haiti, about Haiti, November 2005. He defended the US role in the removal of President Aristide from power.
AMY GOODMAN: He said it was the US that pressed him to leave, that pushed him out, that put him onto this plane with US military and security. He had no idea where he was going until he was dumped in the Central African Republic.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can’t imagine a man like Aristide, whose will to power is excessive, even obsessive, saying anything differently. Colin Powell, as you said, did know the situation in Haiti, probably as well as anyone in America. Colin Powell made the decision based on our ambassador in Haiti's very clear presentation of the circumstances, and the President made the decision ultimately, and it was a good decision, and I would stand by that decision.
Haiti is a situation that picks at all our hearts all the time. Haiti is right next to being a failed state. And because of its proximity to the United States, we know what that failure means. And Haiti is not apparently capable of coming out of that situation. It's a situation that, as I said, drags at all our hearts, but in this particular instance, I think a good decision was made, a decision that prevented further bloodshed that would have been widespread had it not been made.
AMY GOODMAN: Why say that the president, Aristide, had an obsession with power? This was a man who was the democratically elected president of Haiti, certainly got a higher percentage of the vote than President Bush got in this country.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Please, don't refer to the percentage of vote as equatable to democracy, as equatable to the kinds of institutions we have reflecting democracy in America. Hitler was elected by popular vote.
AMY GOODMAN: I spoke to the head of the Steele Foundation. That was the American foundation that provided the security for the people around President Aristide, who was not allowed to send in reinforcements. Again, since we're talking about such a small group of people who are moving in on the capital, the Steele Foundation felt he could be secured, but the US government stopped Aristide's own security from being able to come in.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Aristide felt like he couldn't be secured. That's the only -- I was privy to the cables that came in from our ambassador. I was privy to some of the information that the secretary let me know about what was happening down there in terms of telephone calls and so forth. Aristide made the decision deep into the night that his life was in danger and that the bloodshed that would occur would probably fall at his feet, and so Aristide made a mutual decision with our ambassador to leave the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Why would --
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Despite what he says now, that's what the record reflects.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of the former secretary of state, Colin Powell. Randall Robinson?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, here are the facts. No one disputes that the United States provided weapons, uniforms, steel pots, recoil-less rifles, rocket-powered grenades, all of that, to some 200 paramilitary forces that were trained in the Dominican Republic. The US armed and trained them. No one disputes that they crossed the border, went north, away from the capital, and stopped at Gonaive, at least a hundred kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, which was where they were spotted, verifiably, on the evening of the 28th and the morning of the 29th. They never came near Port-au-Prince. No one in Haiti would dispute that they ever posed a threat to the government. No 200 armed men could overrun a city of a million people that were hostile to them and supportive of the president.
The president won two elections, the last with 90% of the vote. If he were in Haiti today and he ran again, he would win overwhelmingly again. The United States provided money through the International Republican Institute to form a false opposition to Aristide in the country. The rich and the elites, who were threatened because he raised the minimum wage from $1 to $2 a day, threatened because he had proposed to banish the use of the word “peasants” on the birth certificate of poor black Haitians, threatened by a man who was loved by his people because he wanted to protect the interests of the poorest among them. And the United States overthrew that democracy. And it is so simply provable. The smallest investigation would prove what the United States has done in this case.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Randall Robinson on An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. When we come back, we’ll talk about what the US continues to do in Haiti. We’ll also talk about France’s role. And we’ll talk about Randall Robinson not living anymore in this country, as he put it in a previous book, “quitting America.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour, Randall Robinson, just up from St. Kitts, where he has been living for the last six years. He has just published a new book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.
Let’s talk history for a minute, something the US press doesn’t give us very much of. To understand the US role today in Haiti, can you go back in time to how Haiti was founded in 1804?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Haiti was the largest piece of France's global empire. It was its great profit center, that slave colony with 465,000 enslaved Africans working there, many of whom had been soldiers in African armies before they were brought to Haiti. And in August of 1789 -- or 1791, rather, 40,000 of those slaves revolted and started a war that lasted twelve-and-a-half years under the leadership of an ex-slave and a military genius named Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. And this army of ex-slaves defeated two French armies, first the French army before the completion of their revolution and then another army dispatched by Napoleon under the leadership of his brother-in-law, and then the armies of England and Spain. 150,000 blacks died in that twelve-and-a-half-year war. And in January of 19 -- 1804, rather, they declared Haiti the first free republic in the Americas, because the United States was then a country that held slaves.
During the revolution, Thomas Jefferson said he would like to reduce Toussaint to starvation. George Washington lamented and vilified that revolution. The US imposed an embargo, recognized a new French government, but did not recognize the new Haitian free government and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Haiti until the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, France imposed reparations on Haiti in 1825, and the interest that Haiti had to pay in loans that were American and French loans to service this debt to France, absorbed virtually 80% of Haiti's available budget 111 years after the completion of their revolution until 1915. It was only in 1947 that Haiti was able to pay off its debt.
AMY GOODMAN: The debt that was incurred as a result of France not having access to the enslaved people of Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The Haitians had to pay France for no longer having the privilege of owning Haitian slaves. That revolution provoked the end of slavery in the Americas. And so, that’s why it is so important that all African people, people generally in the Americas, because Haiti funded and fought in South American revolutions. That’s why Haiti is so honored in places like Venezuela by people like Simon Bolivar. Haiti was central to all of this. And we’re in Haiti’s debt. But it is for that --
AMY GOODMAN: Simon Bolivar came to Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Haiti, and was given arms and was given men, was given a printing press, because the Haitians believed that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long. It’s as if the anger of it never abated. I mean, you can hear Frederick Douglass talking about it in the late 1800s, about this thing in the American craw.
AMY GOODMAN: The US government didn’t recognize Haiti for decades, the Congress, going back to Thomas Jefferson, afraid that the slave uprising would inspire US slaves.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Would inspire US slaves to revolt against him in Virginia, and George Washington, and on and on and on. And so, they opposed everything that was being done in Haiti that won their freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: The US government invaded Haiti in 1915 under Wilson.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915. And when a Haitian, Peralte, Charlemagne Peralte, organized the Cacos soldiers, these farmers, to fight against this American occupation, the Americans killed him and nailed him to a cross, crucifixion-style, and stood him up, his corpse, in a public place in Haiti to demonstrate to Haitians what would be the price of any defense against the American invasion. The US has played a terrible role in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: So even as the US and France were at loggerheads after the US invasion of Iraq, because France opposed the invasion -- that was 2003 -- in 2004, they were working together --
RANDALL ROBINSON: Working very much together.
AMY GOODMAN: -- in pushing out, forcing out Aristide and bringing him to the Central African Republic.
RANDALL ROBINSON: As a matter of fact, in 2003, late 2003, Aristide organized a reparations conference, and the result of which was a request to France that it repair Haiti by repaying Haiti the $21 billion in current money that Haiti had paid in reparations unjustly to France. Dominique de Villepin responded by sending his sister.
AMY GOODMAN: The foreign minister of France.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The foreign minister of France sending his sister to Haiti to tell Aristide that it was time for him to leave. And that’s how we have -- the Western world, France and particularly the United States -- have meddled in Haitian affairs. After the abduction of the president, Bush spoke with Chirac on the phone, congratulating each other about how smoothly the abduction of the president had been carried off by both countries.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Randall Robinson. Let’s talk about today. Rene Preval was elected president after the US installed the Gerard Latortue after Aristide was forced out. What about today in Haiti? We see this protest of thousands last week on Aristide’s fifty-fourth birthday, calling for the exiled president to return. He’s in South Africa. What’s happening today?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, many of the people who were trained by the United States to pretend over the president are still very much in place. They have not been apprehended. The business class that contributed money to the rebels, to the first coup they contributed money to people who would shoot into any crowd of demonstrators. This time around, they contributed money, we’re now hearing from Guy Philippe, to him, to do what he did. And so, you have this collaboration between white, mulatto, wealthy elites in Haiti with the United States and Western Europe to repress the large black majority. That continues. Some 4,000 people have been killed by the international forces in Haiti since then. The supreme court has been replaced, in large part, by the interim government that was installed by the United States. So Preval’s government has no control over the judiciary. We don’t have an authentic democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall, you talked about how when President Aristide was president, before he was forced out, he was supposed to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, I think it was, for health issues.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The loan had been fully approved. It was for $146 million. It was for health issues, for literacy, for things associated with social programs, roads and some infrastructure projects. The United States blocked that loan. And so, on the one hand, it starved the economy of Haiti. On the other hand, it trained the opposition. On another hand, it armed the paramilitaries. And in the last analysis, American forces invaded and abducted the president.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, apparently last week, there was an attempt to arrest Guy Philippe, Guy Philippe, who was the US-supported -- in fact, you said in your book that he was trained in Ecuador.
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was, plucked by the CIA for special training by the United States when he was a police captain in the Del Mar district of Port-au-Prince.
AMY GOODMAN: So one of the coup leaders, along with Jodel Chamblain, the number two man in FRAP --
RANDALL ROBINSON: One of the coup leaders.
AMY GOODMAN: -- paramilitary death squad.
RANDALL ROBINSON: -- is now running from the DEA, apparently. He says, through his deputy, that that’s the case, because he is prepared to use information about how the elites in Haiti gave him money to destabilize the government.
AMY GOODMAN: But he wasn’t arrested, Guy Philippe.
RANDALL ROBINSON: No, he hasn’t been arrested yet, so far as we know.
AMY GOODMAN: They didn’t get him.
RANDALL ROBINSON: No.
AMY GOODMAN: The US role, how well known is it in Haiti by Haitians?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Oh, I think it’s very well known in Haiti by Haitians. If it were so well known by Americans, our democracy would work better. The problem is with our democracy. It wasn’t ever with theirs. The problem is what our undemocratic or the behavior, undemocratic behavior, of our government means for struggling democracies across the world. We feel that we, by divine right, can go in and overthrow governments willy-nilly, when they are living under leadership of their own clear choice. It’s a shameful chapter for Americans and particularly for this administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, you “quit” America, as you put it, wrote the book Quitting America. You live in St. Kitts right now in the Caribbean. What is it like to look at the United States from that perspective? You lived here for years, headed TransAfrica for a quarter of a century, spearheaded the movement to stop the support of Apartheid South Africa. You fasted almost to death, twenty-seven days, to protest President Clinton’s handling of the Haitian refugees in the first coup against Aristide.
RANDALL ROBINSON: I can give you an illustrative example. When Vieques was in the news and the American use of that area as a bombing range, and the people then becoming very upset because of high cancer rates and that sort of thing, a member of the American Congress spoke to the prime minister of St. Kitts about -- with a straight face -- about the possibility of using -- the Americans making use -- of the island nation of St. Kitts as a bombing range. This is the thing -- one of the kinds of things that we do, and how we see the rest of the world. And I think it, in large part, is why we have come to be as a nation loathed so much. And so, when Americans look at themselves, they see an America that is very different from what the rest of the world gets to see.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you be returning to the United States to live?
RANDALL ROBINSON: I don’t think so.
AMY GOODMAN: Why not?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I love St. Kitts. I wanted to live -- I’m sixty-six years old. I wanted to live some of my life out from under the weight of racism, the weight of a sort of cauterized public empathy, or the lack thereof. I’m not sure anymore that entire cultures cannot be sociopathic, where they refuse to see what they do to other people in other places. It wore me out. I wanted to see a different place, and we wanted our daughter to have her adolescence and her high school in a different place. And it is the country of my wife, and so we are quite at home. It is a small, intimate, wonderful democracy and very pretty to look at.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, I want to thank you very much for joining us today. Randall Robinson is the founder and former president of TransAfrica, moved to St. Kitts in the Caribbean six years ago, has written a number of books, including The Debt, The Reckoning, Quitting America, Defending the Spirit. His latest is An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.
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ANNETTE AUGUSTE: [translated] It is a nice way to say happy birthday to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is in exile in South Africa today. There are people watching the final between Brazil and Argentina. Still, it is good to see so many of the population who took to the streets for a good cause. I always say that since December of 1991. nothing has changed for the population.
LOUIS GERARD GILLES: [translated] Today’s rally shows that the majority of the Haitian people are asking for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. If there is a state of right existing in Haiti today, it is just for the government of President Rene Preval to do the right thing. It is unjust to have this politician in exile.
DEMONSTRATOR: [translated] President Aristide will come back, and when he does, we will all cry for victory, because the real hope is with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, not with Preval.
AMY GOODMAN: On February 29th, 2004, three years ago, the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was removed from office by the United States and flown to the Central African Republic. Two weeks later, in defiance of the United States, a delegation led by California Congressmember Maxine Waters and TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson chartered a plane and headed off to the Central African Republic themselves to bring President Aristide and his wife Mildred back to the Caribbean. I accompanied them on that trip. After hours of negotiating with the dictator in the capital Bangui, they freed the Aristides. As we flew back over the Atlantic President Aristide said he had been kidnapped in a US-backed coup d'etat.
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I will not go into details, maybe next time. But as I said, they used force. When you have militaries coming from abroad, surrounding your house, taking control of the airport, surrounding the national palace, being in the streets, and taking you from your house to put you in a plane where you have to spend twenty hours without knowing where they were going to go with you, without talking about details, which I already did somehow on other occasions, it was using force to take an elected president out of his country.
AMY GOODMAN: And was that US military that took you out?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: There were US military, and I suspect it could be also completed with the presence of other militaries from other countries.
AMY GOODMAN: When they came to your house, in the early morning of February 29th, was it US military that came?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: There were diplomats. There were US military. There were US people.
AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration said that when you -- after you got on the plane, when you were leaving, you spoke with CARICOM leaders. Is this true?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They lied. I never had any opportunity from February 28 at night, when they started, to the minute I arrived in car, I never had any conversation with anyone from CARICOM within that frame of time.
AMY GOODMAN: How many US military were on the plane with you?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: I cannot know how many were there, but I know it’s the plane with fifty-five seats. Among them we had nineteen American agents […] The rest, they were American militaries.
AMY GOODMAN: Were they dressed in military uniform?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They were not only dressed in -- with their uniform, it was like if they were going to war. For the first period of time on the ground, when we went to the plane, after the plane took off, that's the way they were. Then they changed, moving from the uniform to other kind of clothes.
AMY GOODMAN: Civilian clothing?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And did they go with you all the way to the Central African Republic?
JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: They did, without telling me where they were taking me, without telling me how long it would take us to be there.
AMY GOODMAN: Exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a plane heading back to the Caribbean. Then it was to Jamaica. It’s now more than three years later. The Aristides remain in exile in South Africa. And Randall Robinson has just written a book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. He flew in from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts last night and joins us in our firehouse studio today. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Randall Robinson.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, it’s been three years since you and Congressmember Maxine Waters, Sharon Hay-Webster, the member of parliament from Jamaica, led that delegation on this small plane to the Central African Republic, actually won the release of the Aristides and brought them to Jamaica. Talk about that, as you watched President Aristide three years ago in the plane that you were in, as well, what you have learned since?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, we talked to -- I talked to a number of witnesses, eyewitnesses to the abduction itself, witnesses in Antigua who saw the plane on the ground, airport officials, and, of course, witnesses to the whole operation and things that have gone on in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you flesh out that entire experience that President Aristide was just talking about, as you understand it today? What happened February 29, 2004?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Franz Gabriel was the president’s helicopter pilot. Franz Gabriel was a sergeant in the US military and a Haitian citizen who had gone home to serve in the government and to helicopter the president around. At about 3:00 on the morning of the 29th, he was called by one of the Haitian security people at the president's home in Tabar and told that something wrong was developing in the president's house.
I had placed a call to the president earlier that evening on the 28th, and a voice that didn’t belong to the house answered the phone. It was an American voice, a male American voice. And I said, “May I speak to President Aristide?” “He’s not here.” “May I speak to Madame Aristide?” His American-born wife, Mildred Trouillot Aristide. And, “She’s not here.” “When will they be?” And I’m cut off. I became concerned. I had never heard a strange voice answer their private phones before.
We had -- my wife Hazel had worked to arrange a visit of Tavis Smiley to Haiti on the 29th. He was to interview the president downtown in central Port-au-Prince at the palace about this turmoil that was unfolding in the north of the country. The rebels, armed by the United States, had entered the country early in February, moved north and away from the capital and never showed, never demonstrated any inclination to attack Port-au-Prince. And so, we were concerned in the United States, because most of us didn’t know that they posed no threat to the democratic government, and so Tavis was going there to interview the president, and George Stephanopoulos was to interview him, as well.
And so, after I was unable to reach the president, Tavis Smiley called me, or called my wife, because my wife was the one who was organizing his visit. He said, “The visit’s off.” And my wife said, “Oh, no! Has something happened to them?” And Tavis said, “No. I just got a call from Secretary of State Colin Powell. And Secretary of State Powell said to me that” --
AMY GOODMAN: This is Tavis?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Tavis, no -- well, yes, no. Tavis said that he got a call from Ron Dellums. And Ron Dellums also worked with my wife on the Haiti team. And Ron Dellums reported to Tavis that he had just gotten a call from Secretary of State Colin Powell and that the secretary said that Guy Philippe, the leader of the paramilitaries, the American-armed and -trained paramilitaries, was coming to Port-au-Prince on Sunday to kill the president. “And I want you, Ron Dellums, to let the president know that this is going to happen, and let him know that the United States will do nothing to protect him.” And so, Tavis said, of course, the trip is off.
And then my wife called Ron Dellums, and Ron said, “Yes, I’ve just heard from the secretary, and Guy Philippe is in Port-au-Prince and will kill Aristide tomorrow, according to Secretary of State Powell,” who had to have known that Guy Philippe was nowhere near Port-au-Prince. President Aristide, of course, knew, because he had gotten reports from Franz Gabriel. The idea was to frighten Aristide into abdicating his office and fleeing the country on a plane provided by the United States. And Aristide refused.
Later that morning, about thirty American Special Forces troops in full combat gear, in twelve or thirteen white Chevy Suburbans of the American embassy, surrounded the Aristide home, took positions on the wall around the home. And you could see the red tracer pattern crisscrossing, crosshatching in the yard of the home. And into the yard came one Chevy Suburban with one of the Special Forces people fully armed, who was attending Luis Moreno of the American embassy, who walked into the house and told the president, “I was here when you came back in ’94, and I’m here tonight to tell you it’s time for you to leave.”
They removed the president -- Moreno and the American Special Forces -- from his home, took them to the airport -- the president, Mrs. Aristide and Franz Gabriel -- took them from their home, boarded them on this large wide-bodied aircraft with no markings, no tail number, only the sort of large flag, American flag, on the vertical tail assembly, and flew off, making their first refueling stop in the eastern Caribbean in Antigua.
Friends of ours at the airport in Antigua, airport officials, were not allowed to board the plane, as is the custom for customs purposes. All of the windows were drawn. The plane sat on the tarmac for five hours or so. Secretary Rumsfeld said that when President Aristide was in Antigua, he had met with members of the Caribbean leadership community. President Aristide, as he said on the tapes -- quite right, and this is borne out by witnesses in Antigua -- couldn’t have known where he was. He was not allowed to see out of the plane, and no one on the outside was allowed access to anyone who was on the plane.
And as I’ve published in the book -- I’ve published copies of the American customs declarations -- and one of the declarations has been altered from fifty present on the plane to no people on the plane by the Americans who submitted the customs declarations to the Antiguan authorities.
And then they flew off to the Ascension Island. And only when they were approaching the Central African Republic were the Aristides told where they were. And after they landed, no American official deplaned, no soldiers, no one else. The Aristides were simply put off the plane, as if they were parcels, along with Franz Gabriel. They weren’t even told or treated or given any medication for the sometimes lethal malaria strand that affects the Central African Republic and were kept there in a small room for two weeks until our delegation arrived to try and negotiate their release.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll find out what happened after. This is Randall Robinson. He’s just written a book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Randall Robinson. He has just flown up from St. Kitts in the Caribbean where he has lived for the past six years. He has written a new book. It’s called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Randall Robinson is founder and past president of TransAfrica, also author of The Debt, The Reckoning, and Defending the Spirit. Randall Robinson, you just described that day, February 29, into March 1, as the Aristides were taken by the US military and security from their home in Haiti to the Central African Republic. Why CAR, the Central African Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Any number of Caribbean countries would have welcomed the Aristides, but the United States wanted to get him out of the hemisphere, as far away from Haiti as they possibly could. And they wanted to send him to a country over which either the United States or France had great sway.
The Central African Republic is de facto still a colony of France. And it was under military dictatorship at the time that President Aristide was taken there. And so, when we arrived, we saw cheek-by-jaw to the airport was a French military establishment. It was no common civilian-use airport. There were no planes. It was a very frightening affair. Troops were all about. Obviously, the president was very nervous about threats to his one-year-old military coup. And so, that’s how he was sent there, and that’s how the country was chosen.
And President Bozize made plain to us that he had done this at the request of the United States. Prime Minister Patterson of Jamaica demonstrated enormous courage in giving to his parliamentarian Sharon Hay-Webster, who went with us, a letter saying that he would welcome to -- providing temporary refuge, asylum to President Aristide in Jamaica. And it was with the presentation of that letter that we were able to prevail, but not before President Bozize had to call France and the United States to seek permission to release the Aristides to us. It was clear that the United States was in control and that President Bozize was doing this at the request of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: We were reporting back to Pacifica and to Reuters, following these hours of negotiations. As you negotiated with the president, went to the presidential palace, the decision was being made, are the Aristides going to be released. But the US had an unusual situation here. They said that the Aristides had chosen to go there, were free to leave. And yet, here you were negotiating, not with them, but with the dictator for their release.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Oh, it was absolutely clear that they weren’t free to go anywhere. And Bozize made that clear. The Aristides had never been to that country before, knew no one in that country and certainly wouldn’t have gone to a country that was a virtual colony of France, because France was implicated in the coup with the United States. I think Secretary Powell confesses much of his role in a recent statement that he made. He said on April the 18th, says -- “If there are people who don’t want American troops there, should they be there?” was the question. “It depends. They’re there because they serve our interest, American troops, and they also hopefully serve the interest of the country. In the case of Haiti, Haiti is an example where we were not invited in, but there was a civil war.” There was no civil war, and the secretary knew that.
AMY GOODMAN: On March 1, 2004, Democracy Now! broke the story, because you, Randall Robinson, and Congressmember Maxine Waters called us right after President Aristide called you, saying he was trapped in the Central African Republic. We broke the story that Aristide was directly accusing the United States of overthrowing him in a coup, kidnapping him and taking him and his wife Mildred by force to the Central African Republic. So that day, after we broadcast your and the Congressmember Maxine Waters’s descriptions of that scratchy phone call that the President Aristide had made to you from the CAR, our transcripts went online. Reporters took those transcripts and questioned US officials both at the Pentagon and the White House about Aristide’s accusations. Then Secretaries of Defense and State Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell responded.
DONALD RUMSFELD: The idea that someone was abducted is just totally inconsistent with everything I heard or saw or am aware of. So I think that, that -- I do not believe he is saying what you say -- are saying he is saying.
COLIN POWELL: He was not kidnapped. We did not force him onto the airplane. He went onto the airplane willingly. And that’s the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: “And thats the truth,” says then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. Your response, Randall Robinson?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, several things. Number one, a cursory investigation would demonstrate the factual accuracy of what I have described here. The Caribbean countries asked for an investigation, and they were told by the United States that were they to press for an investigation at the UN Security Council level, that either France or the United States, or both, would veto such a resolution. And so, the US was prepared to block any investigation into what they had done that night.
Of course, the president didn’t go on the plane voluntarily. All of the previous coups that have occurred in Haiti of dictators that were there with the support of the United States, when they were chased out of the country, all of the cameras were there to record that. Then they were taken to nearby places like Panama to live comfortably, the US even renting the house of Cedras in Haiti, taking care of these American client dictators. When Aristide left the country, there was no camera, not one, not one reporter at the airport. And I -- you did what no other American journalist, save Eisner of the Washington Post, was willing to do. The New York Times suggested in their description that President Aristide left Haiti and went to South Africa, never even reported that they were taken to the Central African Republic.
AMY GOODMAN: You also point out in An Unbroken Agony the video clips that the media was showing after Aristide left. I mean, here you had -- they were not at the airport, yet they did show video of President Aristide shaking hands with dignitaries, I think, at the airport.
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was making his way along a long line of government ministers in daytime clips, making his way along a line, leaving the country. And that was represented to the American public to be film of his departure from the country. He left the country at 4:00 a.m., boarding a plane at the airport with absolutely nobody there.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, I interviewed Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, on Haiti, about Haiti, November 2005. He defended the US role in the removal of President Aristide from power.
AMY GOODMAN: He said it was the US that pressed him to leave, that pushed him out, that put him onto this plane with US military and security. He had no idea where he was going until he was dumped in the Central African Republic.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can’t imagine a man like Aristide, whose will to power is excessive, even obsessive, saying anything differently. Colin Powell, as you said, did know the situation in Haiti, probably as well as anyone in America. Colin Powell made the decision based on our ambassador in Haiti's very clear presentation of the circumstances, and the President made the decision ultimately, and it was a good decision, and I would stand by that decision.
Haiti is a situation that picks at all our hearts all the time. Haiti is right next to being a failed state. And because of its proximity to the United States, we know what that failure means. And Haiti is not apparently capable of coming out of that situation. It's a situation that, as I said, drags at all our hearts, but in this particular instance, I think a good decision was made, a decision that prevented further bloodshed that would have been widespread had it not been made.
AMY GOODMAN: Why say that the president, Aristide, had an obsession with power? This was a man who was the democratically elected president of Haiti, certainly got a higher percentage of the vote than President Bush got in this country.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Please, don't refer to the percentage of vote as equatable to democracy, as equatable to the kinds of institutions we have reflecting democracy in America. Hitler was elected by popular vote.
AMY GOODMAN: I spoke to the head of the Steele Foundation. That was the American foundation that provided the security for the people around President Aristide, who was not allowed to send in reinforcements. Again, since we're talking about such a small group of people who are moving in on the capital, the Steele Foundation felt he could be secured, but the US government stopped Aristide's own security from being able to come in.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Aristide felt like he couldn't be secured. That's the only -- I was privy to the cables that came in from our ambassador. I was privy to some of the information that the secretary let me know about what was happening down there in terms of telephone calls and so forth. Aristide made the decision deep into the night that his life was in danger and that the bloodshed that would occur would probably fall at his feet, and so Aristide made a mutual decision with our ambassador to leave the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Why would --
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Despite what he says now, that's what the record reflects.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of the former secretary of state, Colin Powell. Randall Robinson?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, here are the facts. No one disputes that the United States provided weapons, uniforms, steel pots, recoil-less rifles, rocket-powered grenades, all of that, to some 200 paramilitary forces that were trained in the Dominican Republic. The US armed and trained them. No one disputes that they crossed the border, went north, away from the capital, and stopped at Gonaive, at least a hundred kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, which was where they were spotted, verifiably, on the evening of the 28th and the morning of the 29th. They never came near Port-au-Prince. No one in Haiti would dispute that they ever posed a threat to the government. No 200 armed men could overrun a city of a million people that were hostile to them and supportive of the president.
The president won two elections, the last with 90% of the vote. If he were in Haiti today and he ran again, he would win overwhelmingly again. The United States provided money through the International Republican Institute to form a false opposition to Aristide in the country. The rich and the elites, who were threatened because he raised the minimum wage from $1 to $2 a day, threatened because he had proposed to banish the use of the word “peasants” on the birth certificate of poor black Haitians, threatened by a man who was loved by his people because he wanted to protect the interests of the poorest among them. And the United States overthrew that democracy. And it is so simply provable. The smallest investigation would prove what the United States has done in this case.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Randall Robinson on An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. When we come back, we’ll talk about what the US continues to do in Haiti. We’ll also talk about France’s role. And we’ll talk about Randall Robinson not living anymore in this country, as he put it in a previous book, “quitting America.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour, Randall Robinson, just up from St. Kitts, where he has been living for the last six years. He has just published a new book called An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.
Let’s talk history for a minute, something the US press doesn’t give us very much of. To understand the US role today in Haiti, can you go back in time to how Haiti was founded in 1804?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Haiti was the largest piece of France's global empire. It was its great profit center, that slave colony with 465,000 enslaved Africans working there, many of whom had been soldiers in African armies before they were brought to Haiti. And in August of 1789 -- or 1791, rather, 40,000 of those slaves revolted and started a war that lasted twelve-and-a-half years under the leadership of an ex-slave and a military genius named Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. And this army of ex-slaves defeated two French armies, first the French army before the completion of their revolution and then another army dispatched by Napoleon under the leadership of his brother-in-law, and then the armies of England and Spain. 150,000 blacks died in that twelve-and-a-half-year war. And in January of 19 -- 1804, rather, they declared Haiti the first free republic in the Americas, because the United States was then a country that held slaves.
During the revolution, Thomas Jefferson said he would like to reduce Toussaint to starvation. George Washington lamented and vilified that revolution. The US imposed an embargo, recognized a new French government, but did not recognize the new Haitian free government and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Haiti until the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, France imposed reparations on Haiti in 1825, and the interest that Haiti had to pay in loans that were American and French loans to service this debt to France, absorbed virtually 80% of Haiti's available budget 111 years after the completion of their revolution until 1915. It was only in 1947 that Haiti was able to pay off its debt.
AMY GOODMAN: The debt that was incurred as a result of France not having access to the enslaved people of Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The Haitians had to pay France for no longer having the privilege of owning Haitian slaves. That revolution provoked the end of slavery in the Americas. And so, that’s why it is so important that all African people, people generally in the Americas, because Haiti funded and fought in South American revolutions. That’s why Haiti is so honored in places like Venezuela by people like Simon Bolivar. Haiti was central to all of this. And we’re in Haiti’s debt. But it is for that --
AMY GOODMAN: Simon Bolivar came to Haiti.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Haiti, and was given arms and was given men, was given a printing press, because the Haitians believed that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long. It’s as if the anger of it never abated. I mean, you can hear Frederick Douglass talking about it in the late 1800s, about this thing in the American craw.
AMY GOODMAN: The US government didn’t recognize Haiti for decades, the Congress, going back to Thomas Jefferson, afraid that the slave uprising would inspire US slaves.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Would inspire US slaves to revolt against him in Virginia, and George Washington, and on and on and on. And so, they opposed everything that was being done in Haiti that won their freedom.
AMY GOODMAN: The US government invaded Haiti in 1915 under Wilson.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915. And when a Haitian, Peralte, Charlemagne Peralte, organized the Cacos soldiers, these farmers, to fight against this American occupation, the Americans killed him and nailed him to a cross, crucifixion-style, and stood him up, his corpse, in a public place in Haiti to demonstrate to Haitians what would be the price of any defense against the American invasion. The US has played a terrible role in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: So even as the US and France were at loggerheads after the US invasion of Iraq, because France opposed the invasion -- that was 2003 -- in 2004, they were working together --
RANDALL ROBINSON: Working very much together.
AMY GOODMAN: -- in pushing out, forcing out Aristide and bringing him to the Central African Republic.
RANDALL ROBINSON: As a matter of fact, in 2003, late 2003, Aristide organized a reparations conference, and the result of which was a request to France that it repair Haiti by repaying Haiti the $21 billion in current money that Haiti had paid in reparations unjustly to France. Dominique de Villepin responded by sending his sister.
AMY GOODMAN: The foreign minister of France.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The foreign minister of France sending his sister to Haiti to tell Aristide that it was time for him to leave. And that’s how we have -- the Western world, France and particularly the United States -- have meddled in Haitian affairs. After the abduction of the president, Bush spoke with Chirac on the phone, congratulating each other about how smoothly the abduction of the president had been carried off by both countries.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Randall Robinson. Let’s talk about today. Rene Preval was elected president after the US installed the Gerard Latortue after Aristide was forced out. What about today in Haiti? We see this protest of thousands last week on Aristide’s fifty-fourth birthday, calling for the exiled president to return. He’s in South Africa. What’s happening today?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, many of the people who were trained by the United States to pretend over the president are still very much in place. They have not been apprehended. The business class that contributed money to the rebels, to the first coup they contributed money to people who would shoot into any crowd of demonstrators. This time around, they contributed money, we’re now hearing from Guy Philippe, to him, to do what he did. And so, you have this collaboration between white, mulatto, wealthy elites in Haiti with the United States and Western Europe to repress the large black majority. That continues. Some 4,000 people have been killed by the international forces in Haiti since then. The supreme court has been replaced, in large part, by the interim government that was installed by the United States. So Preval’s government has no control over the judiciary. We don’t have an authentic democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall, you talked about how when President Aristide was president, before he was forced out, he was supposed to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, I think it was, for health issues.
RANDALL ROBINSON: The loan had been fully approved. It was for $146 million. It was for health issues, for literacy, for things associated with social programs, roads and some infrastructure projects. The United States blocked that loan. And so, on the one hand, it starved the economy of Haiti. On the other hand, it trained the opposition. On another hand, it armed the paramilitaries. And in the last analysis, American forces invaded and abducted the president.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, apparently last week, there was an attempt to arrest Guy Philippe, Guy Philippe, who was the US-supported -- in fact, you said in your book that he was trained in Ecuador.
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was, plucked by the CIA for special training by the United States when he was a police captain in the Del Mar district of Port-au-Prince.
AMY GOODMAN: So one of the coup leaders, along with Jodel Chamblain, the number two man in FRAP --
RANDALL ROBINSON: One of the coup leaders.
AMY GOODMAN: -- paramilitary death squad.
RANDALL ROBINSON: -- is now running from the DEA, apparently. He says, through his deputy, that that’s the case, because he is prepared to use information about how the elites in Haiti gave him money to destabilize the government.
AMY GOODMAN: But he wasn’t arrested, Guy Philippe.
RANDALL ROBINSON: No, he hasn’t been arrested yet, so far as we know.
AMY GOODMAN: They didn’t get him.
RANDALL ROBINSON: No.
AMY GOODMAN: The US role, how well known is it in Haiti by Haitians?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Oh, I think it’s very well known in Haiti by Haitians. If it were so well known by Americans, our democracy would work better. The problem is with our democracy. It wasn’t ever with theirs. The problem is what our undemocratic or the behavior, undemocratic behavior, of our government means for struggling democracies across the world. We feel that we, by divine right, can go in and overthrow governments willy-nilly, when they are living under leadership of their own clear choice. It’s a shameful chapter for Americans and particularly for this administration.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, you “quit” America, as you put it, wrote the book Quitting America. You live in St. Kitts right now in the Caribbean. What is it like to look at the United States from that perspective? You lived here for years, headed TransAfrica for a quarter of a century, spearheaded the movement to stop the support of Apartheid South Africa. You fasted almost to death, twenty-seven days, to protest President Clinton’s handling of the Haitian refugees in the first coup against Aristide.
RANDALL ROBINSON: I can give you an illustrative example. When Vieques was in the news and the American use of that area as a bombing range, and the people then becoming very upset because of high cancer rates and that sort of thing, a member of the American Congress spoke to the prime minister of St. Kitts about -- with a straight face -- about the possibility of using -- the Americans making use -- of the island nation of St. Kitts as a bombing range. This is the thing -- one of the kinds of things that we do, and how we see the rest of the world. And I think it, in large part, is why we have come to be as a nation loathed so much. And so, when Americans look at themselves, they see an America that is very different from what the rest of the world gets to see.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you be returning to the United States to live?
RANDALL ROBINSON: I don’t think so.
AMY GOODMAN: Why not?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, I love St. Kitts. I wanted to live -- I’m sixty-six years old. I wanted to live some of my life out from under the weight of racism, the weight of a sort of cauterized public empathy, or the lack thereof. I’m not sure anymore that entire cultures cannot be sociopathic, where they refuse to see what they do to other people in other places. It wore me out. I wanted to see a different place, and we wanted our daughter to have her adolescence and her high school in a different place. And it is the country of my wife, and so we are quite at home. It is a small, intimate, wonderful democracy and very pretty to look at.
AMY GOODMAN: Randall Robinson, I want to thank you very much for joining us today. Randall Robinson is the founder and former president of TransAfrica, moved to St. Kitts in the Caribbean six years ago, has written a number of books, including The Debt, The Reckoning, Quitting America, Defending the Spirit. His latest is An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.
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We Need Community Oversight of Police Precincts
We need and must have and people everywhere should demand community oversight of police precincts across the country.
Call the Governor of Alabama and Tell Him To Stay the Execution of Darrell Grayson
PHONE 334 242 7100
FAX: 334 242 0937
Website: http://www.governor.state.al.us
Email form: http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact.htm
FAX: 334 242 0937
Website: http://www.governor.state.al.us
Email form: http://www.governor.state.al.us/contact.htm
Monday, July 23, 2007
Free Darrell Grayson--Stop His Execution
« Kneeling In the GardenThe Importance of My Previous Post »My Plea For Darrell Grayson’s Life
Darrell B. Grayson
The Honorable Governor Bob Riley
State Capitol N 104
11 S. Union Street #600
Montgomery, AL 36130 2751
Dear Governor Riley:
I am writing to ask you to spare the life of Darrel B. Grayson, whose execution is scheduled for July 26 at Holman Prison. As a poor, 19-year-old black man with no prior criminal record but a difficult home life, Grayson was convicted of the murder and rape of an 86-year-old white woman, a crime to which Grayson confessed, and was given the death penalty by an all-white jury. Also convicted of the same crime was Victor Kennedy, who was executed in 1999. Just before Kennedy’s execution, he asked Grayson to “forgive him” but would not elaborate as to why he needed forgiveness. It is at this point where the questions begin.
Grayson began to question his own guilt in the crime. He has no memory of committing it. As an educated man, you know that not all people who confess to crimes are guilty. In Darrell Grayson’s case, he was represented by a court appointed divorce lawyer. Could an attorney with more knowledge and experience in criminal law have bought this trial to a different conclusion? We will never know.
You will notice from my address that I do not live in Alabama. If I recall my history correctly, Alabama is the state where Martin Luther King Jr. began his leadership of the great civil rights movement of the 60s, yet even today, the odds of being given the death penalty are doubled, if the defendant is young and black: Race is still an issue. Why? And in 2007, Alabama is refusing to make public its lethal injection protocol, although other states have done so. What is being hidden? These are troubling questions. I don’t understand why anything less than justice and equality for everyone is the goal.
It seems from Grayson’s statement that he truly cannot recall the events of the night of the murder and, therefore, cannot state with all honesty that he is innocent. His family and friends think he is innocent. But even with his memory loss, Grayson’s case offered enough questions to gain the attention of the Innocence Project. I understand evidence exists that could prove guilt or innocence, if DNA testing were allowed. But such testing has been denied, seemingly on the grounds that Grayson has not declared that beyond the shadow of a doubt, he is innocent. How can he proclaim innocence, if he cannot recall the events of the night of the murder? Isn’t the purpose of DNA testing to find the truth and bring about justice?
During his 25 years on Death Row, Grayson has earned a associate degree, published three chapbooks of poems, and served as the chairman for Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty. In other words, he has lived decently and cared about other people . He has done everything that he could to make his life matter, while he lived in a cell. He has made friends both in and out of prison. But Grayson’s time has run out, unless you act.
I am asking you now to use your power as governor to stay the execution and spare the life of Darrell Grayson, a man who possibly did not commit the rape and murder for which he was convicted.
Sincerely,
Helen Losse
***
WORK AND PRAY
Darrell Grayson’s execution is set for July 26. Please write to Governor Riley now. Permission is granted to copy and use any part of this letter. For other information concerning Grayson, see earlier post.
Pray for a stay of execution to spare Grayson’s life
Darrell B. Grayson
The Honorable Governor Bob Riley
State Capitol N 104
11 S. Union Street #600
Montgomery, AL 36130 2751
Dear Governor Riley:
I am writing to ask you to spare the life of Darrel B. Grayson, whose execution is scheduled for July 26 at Holman Prison. As a poor, 19-year-old black man with no prior criminal record but a difficult home life, Grayson was convicted of the murder and rape of an 86-year-old white woman, a crime to which Grayson confessed, and was given the death penalty by an all-white jury. Also convicted of the same crime was Victor Kennedy, who was executed in 1999. Just before Kennedy’s execution, he asked Grayson to “forgive him” but would not elaborate as to why he needed forgiveness. It is at this point where the questions begin.
Grayson began to question his own guilt in the crime. He has no memory of committing it. As an educated man, you know that not all people who confess to crimes are guilty. In Darrell Grayson’s case, he was represented by a court appointed divorce lawyer. Could an attorney with more knowledge and experience in criminal law have bought this trial to a different conclusion? We will never know.
You will notice from my address that I do not live in Alabama. If I recall my history correctly, Alabama is the state where Martin Luther King Jr. began his leadership of the great civil rights movement of the 60s, yet even today, the odds of being given the death penalty are doubled, if the defendant is young and black: Race is still an issue. Why? And in 2007, Alabama is refusing to make public its lethal injection protocol, although other states have done so. What is being hidden? These are troubling questions. I don’t understand why anything less than justice and equality for everyone is the goal.
It seems from Grayson’s statement that he truly cannot recall the events of the night of the murder and, therefore, cannot state with all honesty that he is innocent. His family and friends think he is innocent. But even with his memory loss, Grayson’s case offered enough questions to gain the attention of the Innocence Project. I understand evidence exists that could prove guilt or innocence, if DNA testing were allowed. But such testing has been denied, seemingly on the grounds that Grayson has not declared that beyond the shadow of a doubt, he is innocent. How can he proclaim innocence, if he cannot recall the events of the night of the murder? Isn’t the purpose of DNA testing to find the truth and bring about justice?
During his 25 years on Death Row, Grayson has earned a associate degree, published three chapbooks of poems, and served as the chairman for Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty. In other words, he has lived decently and cared about other people . He has done everything that he could to make his life matter, while he lived in a cell. He has made friends both in and out of prison. But Grayson’s time has run out, unless you act.
I am asking you now to use your power as governor to stay the execution and spare the life of Darrell Grayson, a man who possibly did not commit the rape and murder for which he was convicted.
Sincerely,
Helen Losse
***
WORK AND PRAY
Darrell Grayson’s execution is set for July 26. Please write to Governor Riley now. Permission is granted to copy and use any part of this letter. For other information concerning Grayson, see earlier post.
Pray for a stay of execution to spare Grayson’s life
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
My Grandmother Sand the Craziest Song
I was born in a free boarding house
there they fed me on cold potato pie
I thought to my soul I would die trying to choke down that cold potato pie
potato pie potato pie
trying to choke down that cold potato pie
I thought to my soul I would die
trying to choke down that cold potato pie
there they fed me on cold potato pie
I thought to my soul I would die trying to choke down that cold potato pie
potato pie potato pie
trying to choke down that cold potato pie
I thought to my soul I would die
trying to choke down that cold potato pie
Democracy Now Last Night
I listened to those tapes of the botched executions last night and absolutely could not sleep. The death penalty is utterly revolting and the whole world that practices it is utterly barbaric.
Free Troy Anthony Davis; End the Death Penalty
There is encouraging news in a case that I am just learning about. A Black man, Troy Anthony Davis, was wrongfully convicted of a murder in Georgia and has been sentenced to death. He has just been given a ninety day stay in which his case will be reviewed and he will hopefully be released. Everyone should contact the Governor's office in the state of Georgia in support of Troy Anthony Davis.
Monday, July 16, 2007
A couple of weekends ago I read The Diary of Anne Frank, which I hadnt read since high school. One of the things that stuck out to me, Anne spoke of the injured and wounded German soldiers and their families and how they took pride in meeting the Furher, even though their loved ones had died or they had been maimed. She spoke of how absurd that was. What an interesting parallel to today with the U.S. Lots of interesting parallels.
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