In America...They Kill
Innocent People...Free Julius Jones!
by Zayid Muhammad
In America...
They kill innocent people.
I pen this wincing with worry because a young innocent Black man who has spent
his entire adult life in an Oklahoma prison for a crime he did not commit can
be dead tomorrow.
Julius Jones.
19 years old when he was wrongly convicted of murdering a white Oklahoma
business man in 1999.
Recent days have shown him being approved for Clemency, not once, but
twice!...Not for being a model prisoner, but because of the clear evidence of
innocence in his case!
His case has quietly and in a beautiful testimony to humanity garnered mass
attention...Some 6m petition signatures have called for his release. A noted
number of celebrities and a heartwarming gelling of young AfricanAmerican
clergy and activists in Oklahoma gracefully taking the point...All have made it
clear to the world that Julius Jones is innocent and should not die on November
18th, but who should instead be granted Clemency for all of the
right reasons and released on the basis of the time he has served.
That notwithstanding, Trump Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has not budged on
his case.
Others have been granted clemency before.*
So why not Clemency for Julius?
Perhaps it is this post election post
January 6th white riot backlash driving America’s ‘angry white
men’ that appears to be choosing this young man to be sacrificed to meet the
sadistic needs of racists to ‘prove’ their authority, authority that they
believed should absolutely not be checked by non white people.
For those of u who do not believe that they will do this, some recent history
is in order.
I am planning a longer piece on the Black Panther Party’s dangerous dance with
the death penalty. Of course, when one thinks of the Party and the capital
punishment, we all think of the incredible mobilization of the Party to save
its legendary cofounder Huey P Newton. We also think of the recent effort to
free Mumia Abu Jamal who survived two execution warrants by Republican hitmen
for national white supremacy and who is still being ‘sickened’ in prison and
can still die there if we do not continue to turn it up for him.
Lesser known Panther death penalty survivors are from my neck of the woods.
Safiya Bukhari, whom i had the honor of serving under in her later marching for
freedom, and Lawrence ‘Ghana’ Hayes, both were NY Panthers.
‘Ghana’ survived his ordeal in America’s most
‘liberal’ state. Safiya survived it in Virginia.
But in America, not only do they kill innocent people, they have killed
Panthers.
Many may not know it, but the state of Indiana executed two Panthers...Ajamu
Nasser in 1994 and his codefendant Ziyon Yisrayal in 1996. Ajamu and Ziyon
survived a deadly botched no knock raid in which one of the raiding officers
was killed in what genuinely appears to have been friendly fire...sounds eerily
familiar as in the recently released Move 9 survivors.
So be clear, these ‘angry’ white men are very capable of putting an innocent
man to death.
Not safisfied?
Have we forgotten how 'Dubya'...ie George W Bush...casually killed Shaka
Sankofa back in 2000 on his way to stealing the White House...He did steal
the election thru Florida Voter Suppression, by the way, with the help of
racist CubanAmericans, in case u have forgotten that too.
Perhaps the most chilling of the recent horrific judicial killings was the
killing of Troy Davis in 2011 in the heyday of the Obama Era. By the way,
cordial and efficient servant of the empire that he was, Obama neither lifted
his loaded pen or voice to block that young brother from being killed by the
state of Georgia. It was a haunting moment of racial and class reckoning for a
new generation of activists, like the hundreds of Howard University students
who did a sit in in front of the White House knowing, so they thought, that
they would be heard, and that the first Black president was definitely going to
do something to stop it.
They were wrong. He
didn’t.
He would go on apply the backwards imperialist doctrine of ‘Regime Change’ to
take down Africa’s most generous and most PanAfricanist leader Muammar
Ghadafi as a ‘gimme’ to his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to pave
the road for her to claim the White House behind him. Chickens Came Home
to Roost for her in her loss. They came home to roost for a naïve African world
as Black Libyans are now being butchered, tortured and SOLD in what was just a
few moments ago one of the healthiest and most peaceful places on the
continent!
So sacrificing Black men...knocking off ‘Black pawns’ is not something
exclusive to angry ‘white men’ in America.
The time has come for more good people like the legions who are following those
young clergy and activists in Oklahoma...i see u CeCe Jones-Davis, who screamed
to the world about being ‘invited’ to witness the execution...i see u Tiffany
Crutcher, the accomplished twin sister of Terence Crutcher, Tulsa’s ‘hands up
don’t shoot’ case...New voices in struggle who are pointedly standing on the
shoulders of their Black Wall Street ancestors, i am very proud to follow your
lead!
But be clear...In America, they do kill innocent people.
So please, please, and please is the nicest word i know, make the call!
405 521 2342...Be ready to press 0. They may make u wait to answer. Our
Ancestors waited several hundred years for our freedom...several hundred
years...so wait...with your audacious multitasking selves.
Free Julius Jones!
Death to the Death Penalty!...
CAME OUT FOR JULIUS JONES
*In the first version of this blog, we incorrectly said that Governor Stitt has granted Clemency to others. That was incorrect...
(c)2021
Veteran
activist and poet Zayid Muhammad of NY’s Malcolm X Commemoration
Committee and proud cub of the NY chapter of the Black Panther Party...He can
be reached at babazayid@gmail.com...
