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As Study Finds 4,000 Lynchings in Jim Crow South, Will U.S. Address Legacy of Racial Terrorism?
A new report has uncovered shocking details about the history of lynchings in the United States and their legacy today. After five years of exhaustive research and interviews with local historians and descendants of lynching victims, the Equal Justice Initiative found white Southerners lynched nearly 4,000 black men, women and children between 1877 and 1950 — a total far higher than previously known. The report details a 1916 attack in which a mob lynched Jeff Brown for accidentally bumping into a white girl as he ran to catch a train. In an example from 1940, a crowd lynched Jesse Thornton for not addressing a white police officer as "mister." In many cases, the lynchings were attended by the entire white community in an area. We speak with attorney and Equal Justice Initiative founder and director Bryan Stevenson, whose group’s report is "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." The EJI is calling for the placement of historical markers at sites where lynchings occurred.
Image Credit: eji.org
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with a new report on the history of lynchings in the United States and their legacy today. After five years of exhaustive research and interviews with local historians and descendants of lynching victims, the Equal Justice Initiative found white Southerners lynched nearly 4,000 black men and women and children between 1877 and 1950. Nearly 700 of those lynchings were previously unaccounted for.
The report details a 1916 attack in which a mob lynched Jeff Brown for accidentally bumping into a white girl as he ran to catch a train. In an example from 1940, a crowd lynched Jesse Thornton for not addressing a white police officer as "mister." In many cases the lynchings were attended by the entire white community in an area.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Alabama, one of the 12 Southern states profiled in the study, where we’re joined by Bryan Stevenson, attorney who has worked on death penalty cases in the Deep South since 1985, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The report, published Tuesday, is titled "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." They’re now calling for the placement of historical markers at sites where lynchings occurred. Bryan Stevenson joins us from Montgomery, Alabama.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bryan. There’s a whole discussion again about states’ rights. In a moment, we’re going to talk to one of the first couples who just got married in Alabama. How does that relate to this horrific study that has been done, or a study about the horrific history of lynching?
BRYAN STEVENSON: Well, it relates very directly. I mean, you’re absolutely right that this rhetoric of states’ rights was precisely what local states asserted when the federal government began asking questions about why these lynchings were being tolerated. And in many ways, it is that dynamic that set up this era of terrorism. I mean, at the end of the Civil War, you had people who were reclaiming power from freed black people. It’s really at the beginning of the end of Reconstruction that we see violence and threats and intimidation beginning to assert itself to sustain racial hierarchy. White supremacy wouldn’t succeed if it wasn’t enforced with violence and threat and terror. And at the very beginning, African Americans were asking the federal government to intervene. They didn’t. And the states’ rights mindset really took shape during this era when thousands of African Americans were being lynched and menaced and threatened and terrorized, with no protection and with tolerance from both state and federal officials.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Bryan Stevenson, your report also indicates a considerable difference in terms of the intensity of lynching from—not only from state to state, but from particular counties. Could you talk about that, as well?
BRYAN STEVENSON: Sure. I mean, lynching became a really social phenomenon. It became quite intoxicating. When people got this power to just abduct folks and to torture them and engage in this carnival-like atmosphere, they became, for want of a better word, bloodthirsty. And you see some of these counties where you have a lynching, and then that’s followed by two or three more in a very short period of time. And what was so traumatizing to people of color is that all people of color were the intended targets and victims of these lynchings. This was not an act assigned to someone for committing a crime. As you’ve described, oftentimes people were being lynched for no criminal accusation at all. You know, in Blakely, Georgia, an African-American man, William Little, came home from World War I wearing his uniform, and people were offended, annoyed that he had on this American uniform, and he was lynched because he refused to take it off. A black man, running to catch a train, bumps into a white girl. He’s lynched for that incident. This violence, this terror, was really aimed at sustaining racial hierarchy, keeping black people in their place. And in many ways, it was quite intoxicating. You could see whole communities getting involved in these acts of violence and really being quite grotesque about the way they carried them out.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the terror lynchings, terrorism. I want to turn to President Obama speaking at the annual National Prayer Breakfast last week. After he condemned the Islamic State as a "death cult," he made this comment.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. This is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama speaking at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. He has very much caused a great deal of controversy with these comments. Bryan Stevenson, if you could respond?
BRYAN STEVENSON: Well, I think the president is quite right to acknowledge this history. I mean, we have never really talked about all of this destructive violence. I mean, these public spectacle lynchings that we document in our report are horrific. Ten thousand people showed up in Paris, Texas, in a carnival-like atmosphere to watch a man be tortured. Some of these executions—we have one in Dyersburg, Tennessee, where the man had his eyes gouged out. He was burned. He was mutilated. And thousands of people witnessed this. And it does speak to a very dark era in our history, and we make a mistake in this country when we don’t talk honestly and soberly about these experiences.
I mean, the whole North and West is populated with African Americans who fled to Detroit and Chicago and Cleveland and Los Angeles, not as people looking for opportunities, but as refugees from terror. And this narrative of racial difference, which was born in this era, that has created a presumption of guilt and dangerousness that too many young people of color are burdened with, is something that we haven’t adequately addressed, because we haven’t talked about these issues.
And so, I think the president is quite right to remind us of this history. We didn’t have truth and reconciliation in this country, and because of it, I think we remain haunted, even contaminated, by the disarray, the disruption, that these acts of violence have created in our national psyche, but also in our relations with one another. So I think it’s absolutely appropriate to be talking about these eras.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bryan Stevenson, while your report concentrated on the Southern states, and obviously lynching was most intensely practiced against the African-American community, it was also widely practiced against—in the old Mexican territories that were the United States, like Texas and New Mexico, Arizona. I’ve seen one report where as many as 600 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 in 1928 in the old—in the Southwest. I’m wondering if, particularly in Texas, which you studied, you came across many of those incidents, as well.
BRYAN STEVENSON: Yes, we absolutely did, and you’re absolutely right. In our full report, we actually talk about the lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. And they had many of the features that are evident in the lynchings of African Americans. They weren’t being lynched for accusations of crime necessarily. There were Mexicans that were lynched for speaking Spanish in settings where people didn’t want to hear Spanish. People were lynched for celebrating Mexican holidays. And you’re absolutely right. In the border states, in particular, this phenomenon of lynching directed at Mexicans and Mexican Americans was a very real threat.
And so, this idea that racial difference can make you a target of violence and terrorism is something that we’ve been dealing with for a very long time, and I think we just haven’t really talked about it. And one of the things we want to do by erecting these markers and monuments is to get communities to begin to reflect more soberly on what this history represents. You go to Germany now, and you are forced to deal with the legacy of the Holocaust, because there are markers and monuments everywhere. We do the opposite in this country. We celebrate the things, in my judgment, that we probably shouldn’t be celebrating. In all of these states, you find Confederate memorials and monuments everywhere, dedicated to the people who were defending slavery, trying to preserve slavery, and yet nothing about the pain and anguish and suffering and injustice that those institutions created.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the story, Bryan Stevenson, of Jesse Thornton and Thomas Miles and others.
BRYAN STEVENSON: Yeah, Jesse Thornton was an African-American man in Luverne, Alabama. And in 1940, which is really toward the end of the lynching era, he addressed a police officer by his name. He didn’t use the term, the title, "mister." And that was considered such a violation of the racial norms and values, that the officer organized a mob, and they lynched him.
There were people who were lynched for going up to the front door. A man in Aberdeen, Mississippi, knocked on someone’s door in the front, and then he was chased and ultimately lynched because he didn’t go to the back of the door, which is where people of color were expected to go. And about 20 percent of these 4,000 lynchings were lynchings for basically social transgressions. Many African-American men were lynched because they had notes or letters to young white women. And oftentimes people would be lynched for accusations of rape or murder, when, two or three days later, the alleged murder victim would show up in town saying, "No, I was just gone for two or three days," or the rape victim would say, "I was never the victim of a sexual assault."
And this hysteria was deeply, deeply disruptive to people of color. One of the things that we discovered that I was particularly moved by were people who told us that they sent thousands of people away—their relatives, their friends—because they’d have an encounter with somebody in town, and they thought the encounter might have been misinterpreted, and they feared the mob might show up, and so they would send their dad or their child or their sister or their sibling to the North, because they feared what they called a "near lynching." And this trauma was deeply injurious. And you see evidence of that when you go into some of these communities, particularly where nobody talks about this racial history, but they celebrate the, quote, "good old days" of the early 20th century.
AMY GOODMAN: Bryan Stevenson, we’re just about to introduce the first couple in Montgomery, the first lesbian couple, to get married this week. What do you have to say to them and to Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama, who’s trying to put a stop to all of this?
BRYAN STEVENSON: Well, ultimately, we have got to learn to respect the rights of people who are minorities. You know, Alabama is an interesting state. There was never a time when you could get the majority of people in the state to vote to end racial segregation. In fact, our state Constitution, which is being invoked by so many people here in reference to the marriage-equality issue, still prohibits black and white children from going to school together. To change the state Constitution, you have to have a statewide referendum. We’ve tried twice now to remove this apartheid segregation language. And each time, the majority of the people in the state have voted to take that language out.
And so, what I would say to these young women is that this is a state where you sometimes have to stand when other people are sitting. It’s a place where you have to speak when other people are quiet. Courage, and courage alone, is necessary in confronting sometimes the abuse and the oppression that comes when people don’t favor you, when people don’t respect you. It’s the history of America for justice. It’s the history of the state for justice. And I embrace and applaud all who take that stand and show that courage. And I think this is a state that’s going to continually have to confront its resistance to complying with the Constitution and respecting the dignity and aspirations of all people.
AMY GOODMAN: Bryan Stevenson, thanks so much for being with us, attorney who has worked on death penalty cases in the Deep South since 1985, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. The new report of EJI, "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the first gay couple to get married in Montgomery. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Free Nelson Mandela" by The Special AKA. It was 25 years ago today, February 11, 1990, that anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison after nearly 27 years. Mandela would go on to become South Africa’s first black president. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Exchanging Vows, Alabama Same-Sex Couples Make History in a State Where Discrimination Runs Deep
Alabama has become the 37th state to allow same-sex marriage after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s bid to block the unions. Same-sex couples lined up to marry in parts of the state, including Huntsville, Birmingham and Montgomery. But on Tuesday, 44 of Alabama’s 67 counties reportedly continued to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses after Sunday’s conflicting order from an Alabama Supreme Court justice. Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered judges and officials not to issue or recognize the licenses, arguing the local courts are not beholden to a federal court ruling that struck down the ban. Now, a federal judge has set a hearing that could determine whether resistant local probate judges must grant the licenses. While marriage-equality advocates have welcomed recent developments in the historically conservative state, they warn that much work remains to be done. Alabama is one of the 30 states where it is still legal for an employer to fire LGBT employees. We are joined by Tori and Shanté Wolfe-Sisson, who made history Monday by becoming the first same-sex couple to marry in Montgomery.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Alabama has become the 37th state to allow same-sex marriage, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s bid to block the unions. Same-sex couples lined up to marry in parts of the state, including Huntsville, Birmingham and Montgomery. But on Tuesday, about 44 of Alabama’s 67 counties reportedly continued to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses after Sunday’s conflicting order from an Alabama Supreme Court justice. Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered judges and officials not to issue or recognize the licenses, arguing the local courts are not beholden to a federal court ruling that struck down the ban. Moore is the same judge who refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from in front of a judicial building in the early 2000s, a showdown he eventually lost. Now, a federal judge has set a hearing that could determine whether resistant local probate judges must grant the licenses.
The group Human Rights Campaign has issued a statement saying, quote, "We urge Alabama’s political leadership not to stand on the wrong side of history. It’s time for all LGBT Alabamians to have the opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to marry the person they love." The group also released this video.
REP. PATRICIA TODD: I’ve seen the needle move since I’ve been here, but it’s hard work. You’re going to get beat up upon. You’re going to be in the minority. But we can make true progress.
GIO GIBBONS: Do I see it in the future happening? Yes, I could.
FERGUS TUOHY: There is a vibrant gay community in the state of Alabama, and there’s a lot of really, really good people. It’s a "family values" state. And when I say "family values," I don’t mean what it used to mean—you know, anti-gay. I mean that people love their families.
AMY GOODMAN: That was part of a video released by Human Rights Campaign Alabama. While marriage-equality advocates have welcomed recent developments in the historically conservative state, they warn much work remains to be done. Alabama is one of the 30 states where it’s still legal for an employer to fire LGBT employees.
For more, we go to Montgomery, Alabama, where we’re joined by Tori and Shanté Wolfe-Sisson. On Monday, they made history by becoming the first same-sex couple to marry in Montgomery. Tori is field organizer for Human Rights Campaign Alabama. This is part of the vows she read during her wedding to Shanté.
TORI SISSON: The beat of your heart enumerates reasons for being, while the strength of your soul waters our seeds. You are tangible, serpentine, fire, goddess, queen, bearer of peace, the last face I hope to see before I depart from this realm. And the touch I know will awake my slumber, may it be yours. I do promise to be committed and true. And all that you need from me, I will be for always and forever yours.
AMY GOODMAN: Tori and Shanté Wolfe-Sisson join us now in Montgomery. Congratulations on your wedding. Welcome to Democracy Now! How does it feel to make history?
TORI WOLFE-SISSON: It feels like we need a nap.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about your decision to get married, when you did, where you did.
SHANTÉ WOLFE-SISSON: Actually, this same month a year ago, we eloped and had a spiritual ceremony, and we said that we wouldn’t go anywhere else, because we work here, we pay our taxes here, and we’re not going to go to another state just to come back and our union not be recognized. We’ve had several people tell us, "Well, just go to New York, or just go somewhere else." But no, we had faith that Alabama would move in a positive direction. And it has.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tori, the controversial decision by Judge Moore, basically creating a showdown now between the federal courts and the Alabama courts?
TORI WOLFE-SISSON: Well, it’s not a decision. He made a statement. And what he’s asking of people, it sounds like it’s illegal, so...
AMY GOODMAN: What do you say to the judges? Since he made his statement about not performing these ceremonies, what are your feelings, Tori? You also happen to be the field organizer for the Human Rights Campaign in Alabama.
TORI WOLFE-SISSON: I do. It’s really hard to say anything about his statements, aside from that it sounds like he’s standing in the way of justice and progress in Alabama. And we need—we need to stop that legacy of officials doing that in this state.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how you met and how you came to decide to be married, even before it was legal in Alabama?
SHANTÉ WOLFE-SISSON: Actually, we met on the floor of our apartment. I came to Tuskegee to visit my sister. My sister went to her alma mater. And actually, we’ve been following each other in circles for seven years, but we never actually formerly met. So, when I came down here, I thought she was cute, but I didn’t think I was going to see her again, so I asked her a million and one questions, and she took my number down. She was supposed to email me some information that she never got to me about. So, ironically, a month later, I came back down for homecoming, and she said, "I’m so sorry I didn’t email you about all the things that I was supposed to talk to you about." And I didn’t know who she was, because she never contacted me, and she was dressed like she was going to a funeral. So I was just like, "Well, OK, that’s fine." So, we ended up talking, and we hit it off. And once again I left her. And the next morning, that Sunday morning, she sent me a text message, finally, and she was like, "I hope you’re in Georgia, Tuskegee Homecoming 2013." And I was like, "Who is this?" And she got upset with me, and she was like, "This is Tori." And she asked me if she could kidnap me, which really meant could she take me on a date. And she was late to our first date. But obviously she made up for it, because we’re here talking to you guys now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tori, could you talk about the long battle to achieve marriage equality in Alabama, what some of the steps have been over the last few years of those seeking to gain equality?
TORI WOLFE-SISSON: Yeah, there have been quite a few organizations that have been working to achieve equality, in addition to the Human Rights Campaign. And some of the methods have been providing visibility, being—like we’re regular people, so when more numbers of the LGBTQ community come out to community events, volunteering, it lets the general population really see us. And once you can attribute a person to these few—this alphabet soup of letters that people oftentimes don’t understand, it’s harder to discriminate against. So one of the biggest methods in fighting the discrimination and the injustice that’s going on in the state in terms of the LGBT community has been to provide visibility.
AMY GOODMAN: Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore has been one of the state’s most outspoken critics of same-sex marriage. In a 2002 ruling in a child custody case, he called homosexuality a, quote, "inherent evil." And on the campaign trail in 2012, he said same-sex marriage would be the, quote, "ultimate destruction" of the country. Earlier this month, Justice Moore appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROY MOORE: Do they stop with one man and one man, or one woman and one woman, or do they go to multiple marriages? Or do they go with marriages between men and their daughters, or women and their sons?
AMY GOODMAN: Moore also recently told the Associated Press, quote, "Eighty-one percent of the voters adopted the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment in the Alabama Constitution. I think they want leaders that will stand up against an unlawful intrusion of their sovereignty, and that’s what we’re seeing," he said. Tori Wolfe-Sisson, if you could respond?
TORI WOLFE-SISSON: Well, that data comes from an election quite some time ago, so we’re using outdated data, for starters. Also, what’s confusing about and problematic about his statements are that relationships happen regardless of their legitimacy. And the problems come when—right now, I’ve sprained my ankle, and so my right driving foot is in a boot. The person that drives me around is my now wife. When—if she needs to go to the hospital, or if I need to go, aside from this little piece of paper that says that we are legally married, in a lot of places I would not be able to visit her in the hospital, because the nondiscrimination policies do not extend to the LGBT community, our gender identity, sexual orientation, and that’s a problem. So, we’re not—I don’t really understand where some of his statements are coming from, what he’s grasping from in the midst of the air. But it’s confusing and problematic that there are people who are in love and operating as families, maybe not in the traditional sense that he’s accustomed to, but they are families that love each other and care for each other. And their rights, protections, responsibilities and duties that are—that are deserved by families that are operating as families, it’s not possible to have them without that piece of paper, so...
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to turn to Alabama’s first openly gay state legislator, Democratic State Representative Patricia Todd of Birmingham. She has threatened politicians who claim same-sex marriage is against family values by saying she plans to out those politicians’ extramarital affairs. This is Todd speaking late last month.
REP. PATRICIA TODD: We have families that will now be legitimized overnight, children who will be affected and be able to call both parents mom or dad. And I am touched by the love that I’ve seen in these families who have children that would go to any length to protect their kids. And that’s what it’s all—that’s a true family value. Many of you all know that I have thrown the gauntlet down to my elected peers that should they decide to go and spout that family value, that I’m going to call them out. And I’m willing to jeopardize my political campaign to do it. This is the fight of our life. This is why I ran for office. I’m not a politician; I’m an activist.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was state Representative Patricia Todd of Birmingham. Shanté, your reaction to her in-your-face advocacy?
SHANTÉ WOLFE-SISSON: I think it’s very selfless of her to be willing to put her reputation on the line for equality. I think it’s—it’s something about this that brings out the best and the worst about others. And I don’t understand why people feel like, in the terms of religion, one sin is better than the other, or we can’t talk about things that you’re doing, but—it just doesn’t make sense. And I totally understand where she’s coming from. I don’t blame her for saying anything that she said. And I stand in solidarity for her, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Tori and Shanté Wolfe-Sisson. They made history Monday when they became the first same-sex couple to marry in Montgomery, Alabama. Tori is the field organizer for Human Rights Campaign Alabama. Congratulations, once again.
After Months of Protest, NYPD Officer Charged for Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Black Man Akai Gurley
After months of demonstrations calling for justice, a New York City Police Department officer has been indicted for the fatal shooting of unarmed African American Akai Gurley last November. A grand jury elected to charge Officer Peter Liang with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault and official misconduct. Liang was reportedly carrying his gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right when he opened the door to a dimly lit stairwell he was patrolling in a Brooklyn housing project. His gun went off, hitting Gurley as he walked down the stairs. Police Commissioner William Bratton has described the shooting as an "unfortunate accident" and said Gurley was "totally innocent." Liang did not respond to police radio contact for more than six minutes and texted his union representative for advice. A neighbor ended up calling for the ambulance that rushed Gurley to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. We get reaction to the indictment from Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back from break, we’ll be speaking to the college roommate of Kayla Mueller. But first, we’re turning to this news here in New York. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, after months of protests calling for justice, a New York City police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man last November has been indicted by a grand jury. Officer Peter Liang faces charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, assault and official misconduct. Liang was reportedly carrying his gun in his left hand and a flashlight in his right hand when he opened the door to a stairwell he was patrolling in a Brooklyn housing project. His gun went off, and the bullet hit Akai Gurley, who was walking down the stairs. Police Commissioner William Bratton has described the shooting as an "unfortunate accident" and said Gurley was, quote, "totally innocent."
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Daily News reported Liang did not respond to police radio contact for more than six minutes after the shooting. Instead, he texted his union representative for advice. A neighbor ended up calling for an ambulance that rushed Akai to the hospital, where he was declared dead. All of this comes after a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the officer who put Eric Garner into a fatal chokehold and as a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, chose not to indict the officer who shot and killed Mike Brown.
For more, we’re joined by Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Were you surprised by—you know, we’re always having you on: "Were you surprised by the non-indictment? Were you surprised by the non-indictment?" Well, now this officer has been indicted. Were you surprised by this?
VINCENT WARREN: No, nothing surprises me when it comes to indictments of police officers. This was a case that should have and could have been indicted. There’s no question about it. As Juan was talking about earlier, this is where the police are saying this was an accidental shooting. And the real question is: Can the prosecutor show probable cause in the grand jury, under manslaughter, to say that there was a risk, that he knew, Peter Liang knew, what the risk was and disregarded it; or, in criminally negligent homicide, did he not know that there was a risk, but should have? And anybody, you know, with any sense would say, if you’ve got a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand, and you’re trying to open a door, that terrible things can happen. There’s a risk there. So this was relatively easy to indict, from my perspective. But what I think it shows is what happens when you have a prosecutor that really is willing to take those political risks of putting these cases to grand juries, unlike what happened in Staten Island or what happened in Ferguson, where the prosecutors really just punted on the whole thing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Vince, I wanted to ask you specifically about the issue of the prosecutors, because, obviously, the old adage is a district attorney can indict a ham sandwich, and if they choose not to, they generally don’t. But in Brooklyn, there’s a new district attorney, Ken Thompson, an African American, who has not only become the district attorney, but has also begun to re-examine scores of cases from the past of people who were arrested and convicted on false testimony, false evidence, and now is basically overturning a lot of those cases. So, it’s not a surprise that this kind of district attorney would take a much more active stand on an issue like this.
VINCENT WARREN: No, I think that’s right. This is the type of district attorney that you want to have, particularly in places like New York, particularly with the police department acting the way that it does. This is a district attorney that is actually thinking about the entire community and what the community needs and about fairness and justice. Now, I don’t generally side with prosecutors. I have a criminal defense background. But, you know, you have to call it like you see it. A lot of prosecutors, particularly the other prosecutor in Staten Island, would not have approached this case or those other issues in the same way. And so, we don’t want to pretend that the system is fixed because they have one indictment, you know, that a broken clock even works twice a day. But this is a step in the right direction.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the young man who filmed the police encounter with Eric Garner in Staten Island has been arrested again. Ramsey Orta filmed the police placing Garner in a chokehold and pinning him down while Garner kept on saying, "I can’t breathe." It was a film from his cellphone. After Orta’s video went viral, he and his wife were both arrested on separate charges and said they face harassment by police. On Tuesday, Orta was arraigned, along with his mother and his brother, after police say they caught him on video selling drugs to an undercover officer. A police source told the New York Daily News, quote, "He took the video. Now we took the video."
VINCENT WARREN: Deeply troubling for a number of reasons. It is almost unimpeachable to say that the police department is completely targeting this man because he got the goods on the police with respect to Eric Garner. There’s no question about that. It is easy to fabricate information, which the police may have done. It is also easy—if you follow somebody long enough, you will be able to find out that they did something wrong. The point—the question really is: Are our police resources best set forth by having the police trying to target one person that made them look bad, or are there other crimes that they should be out there trying to solve and doing it in an accountable way? This is problematic for me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vince, I just wanted to ask you quickly about the relationship between the officer and the police union here, where he was actually, rather than running to see the injuries to the man he had shot, he spent six minutes—
AMY GOODMAN: Or calling the ambulance.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —or calling the ambulance—he goes to text his—the police union, the PBA, to get an idea, counsel, on what he should be doing.
VINCENT WARREN: Yeah, if you believe the police narrative that this was an accident, that’s the most problematic piece, because what actually—you know, from the reports, after the gun went off, he went back up to the roof, started texting his union reps, didn’t call an ambulance. Mr. Gurley and his girlfriend went downstairs, where Mr. Gurley collapsed, and somebody else had to call the ambulance. This is a huge problem. And it doesn’t make sense to me that someone who accidentally shot someone would decide their first course of action would be "Let me get my union rep on the phone before I actually do my duty to figure out did I hit somebody, did I hurt somebody, how can I make that better."
AMY GOODMAN: Vince Warren, thanks so much for being with us, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. And of course we’ll continue to follow this story.
When we come back, we’re going to Portland, Oregon, where we’ll be joined by the college roommate of Kayla Mueller, who just died in Syria. Stay with us.
U.S. Hostage Kayla Mueller Remembered for Humanitarian Work from Syria to Occupied Territories
One day after her family confirmed her death in Syria, we remember the life of 26-year-old U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller. Mueller’s captors, the Islamic State, say she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike last week. On Tuesday, the family said it had received proof she had died, but it remains unclear how. Mueller moved to the Turkish-Syrian border in late 2012 to work with Syrian refugees. She had previously worked with refugees overseas including Tibetans in India, Africans in Israel, and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Mueller disappeared in August 2013 after she was abducted while leaving a northern Syria hospital. In a letter written during her captivity, Mueller told her family: "I have been shown in darkness, light, and have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it." We are joined by two guests: Emily Schick, Mueller’s college roommate at Northern Arizona University and a fellow volunteer at the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank; and Mauri Saalakhan of The Peace and Justice Foundation, who campaigned for Mueller’s release.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show remembering Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old U.S. aid worker who has died while being held captive in Syria. Last week, her captors, militants from the Islamic State, said Mueller had died in a Jordanian airstrike on the city of Raqqa. Mueller’s family and the White House confirmed her death on Tuesday. Kayla Mueller disappeared in August 2013 after she was abducted while leaving a hospital in northern Syria. On Tuesday, her family released a letter she had written while in captivity. She wrote, quote, "I have been shown in darkness, light and have learned that even in prison, one can be free. I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it."
AMY GOODMAN: Kayla Mueller moved to the Turkish-Syrian border in late 2012 to work with Syrian refugees. Prior to her trip, she posted a message on YouTube expressing her support for the Syrian protests.
KAYLA MUELLER: I am in solidarity with the Syrian people. I reject the brutality and killing that the Syrian authorities are committing against the Syrian people. Because silence is participation in this crime, I declare my participation in the Syrian sit-in on YouTube.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Kayla had previously worked with refugees overseas, including Tibetan refugees in India, African refugees in Israel, and Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Territories. While in the West Bank, she worked with the International Solidarity Movement. On Tuesday, Mueller’s relatives and friends spoke outside the county courthouse in her hometown of Prescott, Arizona. This is her aunt, Lori Lyon.
LORI LYON: She has done more in her incredible 26 years than many people can ever imagine doing in their lifetime. My daughter said to me, "Things that were important to Kayla are finally getting the attention that they deserve." Kayla has touched the heart of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Joining us now from Portland, Oregon, is Emily Schick. She was Kayla Mueller’s college roommate at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She volunteered at the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank, as well, where Kayla would later briefly work.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Emily. Our condolences to you, to all of Kayla’s friends, to her family. Can you talk about who Kayla was?
EMILY SCHICK: Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s an honor to be able to speak about Kayla today. Kayla was a remarkable individual. She brought a profound connection full of love to all of her relationships, whether it was to her family members, her closest friends, or refugees halfway across the world who she had never met, whose causes she worked for from Arizona. One thing that I feel is really important to know about Kayla is that she had a tremendous clarity of purpose. She saw her role in the world as to serve anyone in need who she could be useful to. And those convictions have guided her since quite a young age.
AMY GOODMAN: How did she end up in the West Bank, Emily? You went there first?
EMILY SCHICK: That’s correct, yes. I volunteered with ISM for the first half of 2010, and Kayla came later that year. She had been traveling around the world, working for various organizations that year, including multiple locations in India and in Israel, as you mentioned, with the African Refugee Development Center. I had been in correspondence with her while I was in the West Bank, and we had been telling stories back and forth about our travels and what we were witnessing. And she chose to go to the West Bank and join us after she finished her time working with African refugees in Israel.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you talked with her, what did she share with you about why she felt compelled to go to these far-off places to help others?
EMILY SCHICK: Kayla felt connected to pretty much everybody, whether it was, you know, for instance, me, her college roommate, from the very first day I lived with her, to someone she would meet on the street, to something she would hear about in the news or learn about in one of her classes in college. She felt a very, very humble sense of connection and humanity to everybody she learned about. And if she saw a way to be useful or in service to those people, then she would do that.
AMY GOODMAN: Emily, we also know that Kayla was a Democracy Now! listener and viewer. She wrote to us several times over the last few years, urging us to cover the war in Syria. In 2010, she wrote, quote, "I rely on DN! for reliable, well-researched, honest news as I feel DN! is one of the few remaining news outlets that is not 'owned' or simply fulfilling an agenda. After recently returning from one year abroad and working in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), among other non-profits across the globe, I have witnessed first-hand and have been disheartened by the dishonesty in this countries 'news' agencies." How did she get this level of awareness? I mean, she traveled to more countries than most people do in an entire lifetime. Where did that desire to help people around the world come from, and her—not only her activism, but her, you know, really interesting media analysis, understanding how people get information about the issues she was involved with?
EMILY SCHICK: Sure, yeah. As I said earlier, Kayla seems to have felt these convictions very strongly from a young age. And as she grew older, through her activism, through her work with different causes, through the classes she took at Northern Arizona University, through her travels, she had this amazing, curious mind. She wanted to learn as much as possible about how these systems—economic systems, political systems—work, how they affect people, and where the points of intervention were. That was something that was tremendously important to her. Kayla, I think it’s really important to understand that, for her, people came first, and policy came after that. You know, I think people are trying to understand now whether she was particularly politically engaged, and I think it’s important to see that she was primarily a humanitarian activist. Human needs were her goal, and she engaged in politics when she saw the utility of that in benefiting the people that she was advocating for.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Were you aware that she was being held? Because the United States government tries to keep as much of information about these captors—captives away from the public.
EMILY SCHICK: I did learn—I did learn during her time being held hostage, mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring into the conversation Mauri Saalakhan, director of operations for Washington, D.C.-based Peace and Justice Foundation. Last year, Kayla’s family reached out to him for help in trying to secure her freedom. Mauri heads up the U.S. campaign to free the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui. Last July, militants from the Islamic State told Kayla’s family she would be executed in 30 days if Siddiqui was not released from U.S. custody or the American’s family did not pay a multimillion-dollar ransom. In 2010, Aafia Siddiqui was convicted of attempted murder for shooting at U.S. soldiers and FBI agents while being questioned in Afghanistan in 2008. Prior to this incident, Siddiqui said she was held and tortured in secret U.S. prisons over a five-year period. Mauri Saalakhan wrote an open letter to Kayla’s captives. In his letter, he compared Kayla Mueller to Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza March 16, 2003.
Mauri Saalakhan, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about how the story of Kayla gets intertwined with this story and how her family reached out to you?
MAURI SAALAKHAN: I received a call one night in August of last year from the pastor, Reverend Kathleen Day, of Kayla and her family. And she walked me through the nightmare that the family had been going through for about a year at that time. And she said that they were kind of in a countdown mode, because they were in the last 48 or 72 hours of the ultimatum, and they were feeling desperate. And they reached out to see if there was anything that we might be able to do to help. And, of course, I immediately expressed my empathy for what the family and the close network of friends were going through as a result of this nightmare, and my response was, the best I could do was to pray and to reach out to Aafia’s family and ask them if they would consider writing a letter, a statement, addressed to Kayla’s captors, calling for her release unconditionally, and that I would do the same. And subsequent to the conversation, that’s what we did.
You know, I want to say something about this—the wonderful spirit of this young woman. You know, her friend, when she was just talking about her clarity of purpose, it reminded me of the revolutionary psychiatrist of Martinique, Frantz Fanon, in his Wretched of the Earth, and a very profound observation he made in that book when he said, "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." What makes Kayla, as it did Rachel Corrie, as it does also Aafia Siddiqui, as a young enterprising student so unique was this fire, this passion of having recognized what their mission in life should be, and going after it and infusing that spirit in the consciousness of others. She was a very unique and blessed soul.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And once you issued that letter on behalf of the family, what happened subsequently?
MAURI SAALAKHAN: Well, the date of threatened execution came and went. And, you know, God only knows what factored into the change of mind or heart of Kayla’s captors, but she wasn’t executed on that date. And the family of Aafia, both in Pakistan and her brother here in the United States, and Aafia’s network of supporters, we’ve been in sync with praying for and hoping for something positive to happen around this issue surrounding Kayla Mueller. You know, I’ve been in contact, a constant stream of contact, with the pastor. In fact, we just spoke, I think the last time, the day before yesterday by telephone. And I did speak, as well, at one point to the family, to Kayla’s mother and her father, a couple of months back, and just letting them know that they have a lot of people that were praying for Kayla and her family, outside of their own network.
AMY GOODMAN: Ultimately, it’s believed that ISIS did not execute Kayla. They say that it was the Jordanian airstrike that killed her. Is that your understanding, Mauri?
MAURI SAALAKHAN: That is my understanding. And there is this debate going on right now as to whether she did in fact die as a result of an airstrike, or did she not. And, of course, the U.S. and its allies are emphasizing the point that even if she did, still Isis is to blame because they held her captive.
AMY GOODMAN: Mauri Saalakhan and Emily Schick, we want to thank you for being with us. That does it for the show. I’ll be speaking with Cecile Richards tonight at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
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