The Expectation Effect: Using Mindset to Improve Your Life

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I recently read The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life by David Robson. This is a summary of the most useful, actionable takeaways.

The book’s central thesis: our brains are “prediction machines” that create expectations to help us sort through the vast amounts of information and stimuli in our day-to-day world. These expectations have self-fulfilling physiological and psychological effects – the very act of expecting something changes the outcome to match what you (or your brain) expect. In some sense, this “Expectation Effect” embodies the modern zeitgeist of “manifesting” what you want in your life but offers a scientific mechanism rather than a cosmic or religious one.

The Pitfalls of Pop Science Books

We should be skeptical of pop science books. Scientists rarely write them. Publishers don’t have peer review and may not incorporate rigorous fact-checking. Claims are reinterpreted and exaggerated by editorial and marketing departments. A writer’s love for narrative can lead to cherry-picked evidence and overreliance on anecdote, generalizing findings far beyond their original scope.

Fortunately, The Expectation Effect has roughly 40-50 citations per chapter, most from respectable-sounding journals. I found the author’s claims about health and fitness to be in line with the studies and expert interviews I’ve independently read. While reassuring, I didn’t dig through any of the studies or experts cited in the book. The following notes take the author’s claims at face value.

Actionable Insights and Implementations

Here are the most impactful takeaways from The Expectation Effect, along with concrete examples taken from the book.

1. Rethinking Abilities Through Mindset and Priming

    • Insight: We self-impose limits and underestimate our capabilities when there is no way to verify we can’t improve further. Our mood and expectations can bias our view of events, often leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    • Example: Strength athletes thinking they were on performance-enhancing drugs (actually sugar pills) gained strength significantly faster than those told they were taking a placebo.
    • Takeaway: Before a performance or a challenging task, visualize success and affirm your ability to excel by reminding yourself of past successes and positive traits, even if unrelated to the task at hand. Challenge any conscious or unconscious limits you’ve set on yourself. Embrace performance crutches like specific rituals, routines, and superstitions (e.g. using your “lucky pen” on a test, listening to a specific song before a workout, etc.). Affirm the positive aspects and potential benefits of any situation to prime your expectations toward a positive outcome.
    • Reflection: What limits do you impose on yourself? What language or framing do you subconsciously use to set an implicit expectation? What are times you’ve surpassed your own expectations?

2. Transforming Perceptions of Health and Pain

    • Insight: Negative expectations can exacerbate health issues, while a positive outlook can mitigate them.
    • Example: Chronic worriers experience higher levels of inflammation and pain. People who think they’re likely to die, get sick, or experience side effects become more likely to experience all those things.
    • Takeaway: Reframe health-related anxieties with positive affirmations. Notice when you’re ruminating on pain and catastrophizing symptoms so you can break the cycle. Tell yourself “the pain is temporary.” For medicines, reframe “5% of patients have side effect X” as “95% were free of side effect X” and see side effects as evidence of the healing effect of the medicine on your body.
    • Reflection: How do you typically react to illness or pain? Do you assume the worst?

3. Exercise and Framing

    • Insight: Negative thoughts about exercise can impede our fitness goals, but viewing exertion positively can enhance our performance.
    • Example: Viewing physical exertion as a sign of your body getting stronger can improve workout results. Visualizing exercises while injured can significantly reduce muscle atrophy1. Framing incidental activity (cleaning, walking to your car, etc.) as exercise enhances the health benefits and induces more exercise.
    • Takeaway: Before exercising, set positive performance goals and visualize achieving them. Between sets, visualize yourself doing the exercise2. Embrace any physical discomfort as evidence of your progress, rather than a sign of being unfit. Avoid frequent “upward comparisons” i.e. comparing yourself to fitness influencers or even past, more fit versions of yourself.
    • Reflection: How do you mentally approach physical activity? As a chore that drains you, or an activity that energizes you?

4. Eating Habits and Sensory Enhancement

    • Insight: The way we perceive food can influence our eating habits and even how we absorb nutrients.  The stronger the (positive) sensory connection, the more satisfying the meal is.
    • Example: Thinking of food as “healthy” rather than “satiating” leads to more hunger. Reminding yourself of what you ate previously reduces snacking.
      • Takeaway: When preparing or choosing meals, focus on the sensory and nutritional benefits. Describe your food positively to enhance the eating experience. Associate unhealthy food with indulgence rather than guilt so you’ll feel fuller and eat less. Experience food more by being present and visualizing what you ate after the meal to feel fuller and eat less.
    • Reflection: Are you distracted when you eat? What foods in your diet can be reframed as “satiating” and “indulgent” rather than “healthy” and “unhealthy”?

5. Sleep, Happiness, and the Role of Effort

    • Insight: Striving too hard for happiness or sleep can paradoxically make them more elusive.
    • Example: Anxiety about not being able to fall asleep makes it harder to fall asleep. Conversely, roughly 50% of sleeping pills’ efficacy is placebo.
    • Takeaway: Practice mindfulness and acceptance, especially in moments of restlessness or unhappiness. Recognize these feelings and passively observe them without judgment. Gently guide your focus back to positive expectations. Accept and relabel anxious and stressful feelings for more energy and sharpened focus.
    • Reflection: Are there areas in your life where you’re trying too hard and your own efforts are counterproductive?

6. Willpower: Expectedly Abundant or Finite

    • Insight: Viewing willpower as a finite resource can lead to its faster depletion, whereas believing in its abundance improves it.
    • Example: People who see challenging tasks as energizing maintain their willpower better than those who view them as draining.
    • Takeaways: Cultivate a sense of autonomy by establishing personal routines. Regularly engage in activities that reinforce your control and autonomy, like using a lucky charm or personal ritual. Expect that you’ll have the willpower to accomplish all you need to today. Find internalized negative expectations, and test them by finding new challenges that push you out of your comfort zone.
    • Reflection: How do you usually perceive your willpower during demanding tasks?

7. Intelligence: Influenced by Belief and Expectation

    • Insight: Intelligence can be enhanced – or diminished – by the belief in its malleability and the power of internal and external expectations.
    • Example: Being told something can increase creativity, recall, or general knowledge (e.g. whiffing cinnamon before a test improves test scores) leads to better results. Doubting someone’s abilities (consciously or unconsciously) makes them do worse.
    • Takeaways: Practice self-affirmation and remind yourself of past successes (even in areas unrelated to the task at hand) to boost confidence. Surround yourself with people who have high expectations of you and minimize contact with those who doubt your abilities3. Be aware that your expectations of others can influence their abilities too. Do not wallow in feelings of inadequacy or something being “not my thing”. Looks (and voice) can have an effect on people’s expectations of you which in turn affects outcomes, so it is logical to invest in your appearance.
    • Reflection: What expectations do those around you hold for you?

8. Aging: A State of Mind Influenced by Expectation

    • Insight: A youthful mindset and positive attitudes toward aging can lead to a healthier, longer life.
    • Example: Older adults who view aging positively engage more in physical activities and report fewer health issues.
    • Takeaways: Challenge age-related stereotypes by seeking inspiration from individuals who have achieved great things later in life. Embrace the benefits of aging, such as wisdom and experience, and avoid attributing every health issue to age. Beware of media that reinforces negative stereotypes about aging
    • Reflection: What are your beliefs about aging? What positive effects of your own aging have you overlooked?

Implementing the Expectation Effect

The book doesn’t claim that Expectation Effects take away the realities of the physical universe or society, but does make a case that they can meaningfully make our lives better. It suggests the following:

1. Embrace a Growth Mindset

Understand that your mind is ever-evolving, with neuroplasticity at the core of your ability to change and adapt.

  • Set Small Goals: Establish incremental, achievable objectives that demonstrate your capacity for change.
  • Learn from Failures: Instead of viewing setbacks as defeats, treat them as opportunities for learning and growth.
  • Celebrate Progress: Take time to recognize and celebrate each step forward, no matter how small.

2. Adopt an External Perspective

Sometimes, gaining clarity means stepping outside yourself and viewing situations from a different angle.

  • Reframe Challenges: See challenges as opportunities for healing and growth rather than obstacles. You don’t have to ignore negative feelings, but you can reinterpret their consequences (e.g. physical symptoms are a sign of body healing; anxiety can be energizing and exciting).
  • Practice Self-Distancing: Project yourself into the future and look back at current challenges, or advise yourself as you would a friend facing a similar situation4.

3. Practice Self-Compassion

Being kind to yourself is crucial for overcoming difficulties and fostering change5.

  • Acknowledge Struggles: Recognize the complexities of your challenges and understand you’re not alone in facing them.
  • Foster Safety: Create a mental environment where it’s safe to experiment with new habits without fear of judgment or failure.
  • Believe in Change: Maintain a supportive and encouraging attitude toward yourself, affirming your ability to grow and change.

4. Employ Affirmations

Throughout the book, Robson cites studies where participants were primed with various affirmations and then measured on relevant outcomes alongside a control group. My friend, Josh Chang, has extracted various affirmations referenced in these studies, which I’ve listed below. You can write them on index cards and cycle through them daily, or use an app that displays a daily affirmation on your phone.

  • I don’t worry about my moment-to-moment happiness
  • My life is fulfilling regardless of my moment-to-moment happiness
  • When I’m nervous, I’m more excited and energetic
  • When I’m stressed, I’m more focused and productive
  • When I resist a strong temptation, I feel stronger and can withstand new temptations
  • When I work and put in effort, I gain mental energy and willpower
  • After moderate sleep loss, I still perform well and recover quickly
  • Each year, I feel younger and more: energetic
  • Things keep getting better as I get older
  • As I get older, l become wiser, more capable, and more useful
  • I control my own aging. I am always in my prime
  • When I approach new people, I have much more confidence than most
  • Negative thoughts and feelings are external to me; I simply observe and accept them
  • I’m already amazing as I am
  • My mania fuels itself in a positive feedback loop
  • I’m an extrovert. I do things an introvert wouldn’t do
  • I’m a morning person, so I naturally wake up full of energy
  • I love being active. Exercise gives me energy
  • I prefer the taste of lighter, healthier foods
  • People like me a lot. They enjoy spending time with me
  • I’m blessed. I love my life
  • I’m a grateful person. I can always find the positive in things
  • I’m clever, quick, and witty. Many people have told me this

Ultimately, utilizing the Expectation Effect is less about suppressing or eliminating negative feelings and more about reframing them.

If you view your physical and emotional pain as proof of your resilience and part of your path to healing, if you believe yourself to be motivated and invigorated by challenge, if you trust that every problem you face is tractable in light of your own formidable and growing capabilities, you may just make it so.

Epilogue: What about WOOP?

WOOP is a framework for achieving goals. Oregon State defines it as:

  • W – wish
  • O – (best) outcome
  • O – (main inner) obstacle
  • P – plan

The WOOP website cites various studies (although they go under different names in the literature, such as “self-regulation intervention” and “mental contrasting with implementation intentions”, and the implementation may not have been consistent across them) showing benefits in similar areas such as health and fitness, academic and intellectual activities, and interpersonal relationships.

The “outcome” step involves visualization, and we may find a synergy between the Expectation Effect – a phenomenon of framing/visualizing events and circumstances in a positive and empowering way to improve outcomes – and WOOP – a concrete method to actualize goals and ambitions.

Thanks to Josh Chang, Nishita Morris, and various AIs for reviewing drafts of this post. 

Notes:

  1. In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin mentions a similar anecdote while preparing for a martial arts championship with a broken arm: “There was also an intriguing physical component of my recovery. I wanted to compete in the Nationals, so bizarre though it may sound I resolved not to atrophy. At this point in my life I was very involved in the subtle internal dynamics of the body through Tai Chi meditation. I had an idea that I might be able to keep my right side strong by intense visualization practice. My method was as follows: I did a daily resistance workout routine on my left side, and after every set I visualized the workout passing to the muscles on the right. My arm was in a cast, so there was no actual motion possible—but I could feel the energy flowing into the unused muscles. I admit it was a shot in the dark, but it worked. My whole body felt strong, and when the doctor finally took off my cast he was stunned. Four days before the Nationals an X-ray showed that my bone was fully healed, and I had hardly atrophied at all.
  2. Arnold Schwarzenegger emphasizes visualizing the mind-muscle connection as part of a physical training regimen in Arnold: The Education of a Body Builder.
  3. The first time I ever used this positive affirmation technique, aided by my friend and chess mentor Hartley Chiang, I defeated one of the top chess players in the US in a rated/ranked tournament game.
  4. LLM chatbots can be helpful as a self-distancing tool. I’m working on one that I can talk to (either via text or via AI voice and phone call) to help me with this.
  5. Self-flagellation has been difficult for me to unlearn. I hold myself to a very high standard even when I don’t perform to a very high standard. My natural inclination has been that I shouldn’t be “rewarded” for this failure with compassion, as it only encourages future laziness and laxity. But in my experience, self-talk doesn’t lead to better performance, only demoralization and a greater chance of giving up entirely. I would never treat someone I cared about like this when they struggled with a goal or a vice; I’ve somehow only insisted upon this cruelty to myself.

My Blitz Game Against MVL, the Reigning Blitz Chess Champion

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A few months ago I got to play a blitz game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the reigning World Blitz Chess Champion, as a prize for being the last one standing in a 35 board simultaneous exhibition (where I missed a forced draw, agh!). I never thought I’d get to play a world champion, and am grateful to MVL and the Marshall Chess Club for making this possible.

Below is the video of game with a live 2D board; pgn and analysis will be added to this post sometime between now and the inevitable heat death of the universe.

Gautam's Nitro Cold Brew

Gautam’s Cold Brew Recipe

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My cold brew setup

As I have studied the art and craft of making good coffee (seven different brewing devices and counting!), I found cold brew to paradoxically be the most difficult one to nail down. In terms of technique, cold brew is by far the easiest to make — just throw some coffee grounds in water, put it in the fridge, and then after some time take it out and filter out the grounds. No fancy barista skills needed! But unlike other brew methods, which usually had a relatively narrow range of recommendations and a general brewing consensus, cold brew recipes online are all over the place in the following dimensions:

  • Ratio of coffee to water
  • Brew time (this was the most frustrating, because individual recipes would sometimes say “12-24 hours” which is a huge range that makes a significant impact on the final result)
  • Dilution ratio of concentrate to water/creamer
  • How to avoid coffee filters getting clogged

During the 2020 lockdowns I invested a lot of time experimenting in these dimensions and finally settled on a recipe I liked. I foolishly didn’t back it up, and after my phone got run over by a truck earlier this summer I was afraid I’d have to recreate the arduous months of experimentation.

Fortunately, I texted friends and family experiment-by-experiment updates and was able to reconstruct the recipe through those messages, so for once my habit of spamming people with minutiae they have limited interest in finally paid off! I recently made the first batch of 2021 with this recipe and upon my first sip I immediately thought “wow, this cold brew slaps!” (when did I become the person who says things “slap”? A mystery for another time…).

Nobody publishing cold brew recipes online knows what they’re doing anyway, so I’m adding mine to the mix. If you’re going to trust the recipe of some random person online, here’s one that at least has some experimentation behind it. It also serves as a convenient way of backing up my recipe in case another truck runs over my phone.

So without further ado, I present Gautam’s Cold Brew Recipe:

Ingredients and Equipment

Brewer: OXO Good Grips 32 Oz Cold Brew Coffee Maker (with the additional paper filters)

Coffee Beans: There doesn’t appear to be any consensus on a roast specifically for cold brew, so use whichever you prefer. My preference in general is lighter or medium-light roasts. Whatever you get, make sure the beans are good quality (I have liked coffee subscriptions from Atlas, Corvus, Sey, and 1000 Faces) and haven’t been sitting around too long. I use Fellow Atmos vacuum-sealed containers to maximize freshness.

Grind: A coarse grind. To get more specific, I use a 35 grind size setting on the Baratza Encore burr grinder.

Ratio: 1:9.6 coffee grounds to water (by weight). In my brewer I use 40 oz of water (~1189g of water) which translates to ~124g of grounds.

Water: Good cold brew water reminds me of the British people I met when I traveled to the UK as a college student: Cold (fridge temperature) and filtered (e.g. Brita jug). The filtered part is especially important, because the chlorine used to treat water in many municipal water systems has a noticeable impact on the taste. Your coffee is almost entirely water, so use tasty H20!

Adjust the above grounds and water based on how much cold brew you plan to make/the capacity of your brewer, making sure to maintain the 1:9.6 ratio.

Instructions

1. Load the brewer with your mesh filter and then a paper filter (the paper filter should be the second layer of filtration after the mesh filter). This setup ensures the final cold brew isn’t silty, and also filter out more of the oils and microfines. The result is a brighter, sweeter cup of coffee (and apparently may reduce the potentially negative effects of coffee on cholesterol, but I haven’t really looked into this much).

2. Add 2/5 of your water to the brew chamber.

3. Add half of your grounds to the water.

4. Add another 2/5 of your water. If you’re using the OXO Cold Brewer like I am, put the lid back over the brew chamber and then pour the water on top of the “rainmaker” in concentric circles to evenly saturate the grounds.

5. Add the other half of the grounds.

6. Add the remainder of the water as you did in step 4. If any grounds don’t look saturated, take a spoon and gently immerse them. Don’t stir too vigorously though! We want to avoid any microfines settling to the bottom and clogging the filter, which is why we layered in the grounds and water rather than dumping them all in at once.

7. Store in the fridge for 16-18 hours. This was the time I found to be optimal; remember that longer brew times will result in stronger, more heavily caffeinated coffee, and shorter brew times in weaker, less heavily caffeinated coffee. Too short a brew time could underextract, leaving the taste too sour; too long a brew time can overextract and leave the taste too bitter.

8. Filter and drain the brew into a carafe through whatever mechanism your brewer has for this. In the OXO brewer this typically takes ~20-30 minutes, but before I learned the layering technique it sometimes would take hours due to the microfines clogging the filter.

9. Your carafe now contains cold brew concentrate, which should be good for a week in the fridge. When serving, serve over ice and dilute it in a 1:1 ratio of concentrate to water or creamer. If it’s still a bit too strong for your liking, you can up the dilution ratio to 2:3 concentrate to water/creamer. Conversely, you can dilute with a 3:2 concentrate to water/creamer ratio if it’s not strong enough.

10. You can be extra like I am and add this cold brew to a nitro keg to make homemade nitro cold brew! This is the keg I have used, along with nitrogen cartridges — I find 2-3 cartridges per batch keeps every cup nice and foamy. (Use the real thing, N2, rather than the many N20 cartridges offered in their place).

Gautam's Nitro Cold Brew
My homemade nitro cold brew

 

 

 

Time Trouble Misery

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When I was a teenager, I was notorious at the Atlanta Chess Club for getting into time trouble. I’d play a game with 30 minutes per side and struggle to not lose on time, eventually forced to blitz out a flurry of moves without thinking as the final minutes and seconds slipped away on my clock. This same problem persisted at longer time controls too: 45 minutes per side, 60 minutes per side, 90 minutes per side, even three hours per side—I’d still run short on time!

I was paralyzed by indecision. In many games I’d end up in a difficult position where there were several reasonable moves to make, but I couldn’t foresee exactly what would happen if I chose one.  Oftentimes I felt something better would come along if I waited and analyzed the board a bit longer. I’d tell myself that I was doing the right thing by patiently investigating the position more deeply, but more often than not I would spin my wheels retreading the exact same analysis I’d already done. After a certain point, there were rarely any new insights.

In retrospect, I realized this was just a way to defer making a decision since I didn’t have confidence in my ability to make one. As long as I don’t move, I haven’t made the wrong move. As long as I don’t move, I can still find the perfect one.

In the end, I’d burn a bunch of time, panic, and finally throw out a move that was no better in quality than the move I would’ve made if I had spent two minutes thinking instead of twenty. But now I had less time remaining for the rest of the game. In some cases, overthinking led to even worse decisions after I’d start seeing phantom threats and miss obvious ideas due to tunnel vision1.

I only resolved this problem many years after I quit serious competitive chess. Other life circumstances forced me to become comfortable with ambiguity and realizing that:

a) human beings are well designed to adapt to new circumstances and solve new problems and;

b) there’s actually a fun and joy in the unpredictability of the tree of decisions.

Since I can’t avoid the unknown, I’ll instead choose to relish the excitement of what’s out there — it could be bad, it could be good, but either way it’ll be different and an opportunity to solve new problems2.

I’ve also worked on letting go of past states. For example, if I was winning a game and then made a terrible move that brought the position back to equal, I’d get tilted and inevitably make more bad moves and lose. But if I had just been dropped into that position with no prior context of previously being in a winning position, I would’ve been fine; it’s an even game. Nowadays I’ve cultivated an indifference to abrupt changes in game state. If the flow of the game changes, I don’t get upset or thrown off balance. I reorient myself to the current situation: it doesn’t matter where we were, we’re here now and our job is to find the best move.

If you make a decision and commit, don’t you risk the sunk cost fallacy of charging ahead even when the facts and environment change? One subtle and underappreciated characteristic of strong chess players is their ability to adapt. They’ll make moves that improve their positions and proceed with their plans, while maintaining maximal flexibility to pivot to another plan if circumstances on the board suddenly shift.

Similarly, you can optimize for flexibility by creating the maximum number of offramps for each decision. At each offramp, assess the situation as if you were just dropped off at that point with no prior effort or context on what it took to get there; you want to avoid the inertia of automatically continuing down your path.

Right here, right now, does it make sense to take the offramp or stay on the road?

You won’t be able to foresee the consequences of every decision, so enjoy the fun of the unknown instead of haranguing yourself with what-ifs. Whatever you choose will inevitably pose challenges (and good surprises too!), so roll up your sleeves and make the best moves you can instead of mentally teleporting to the counterfactual universe of another choice you could’ve made. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking you can just stand there and endlessly ponder the options. Indecision is still a decision, and all it leads to is time trouble misery.

 

Footnotes

  1. Chess players have an aphorism for this: Thing long, think wrong.
  2. I just returned to serious competitive chess after over a decade away. And while I’m not (yet) as good a player as I used to be, this appreciation for the unknown has already drastically changed the nature of my play — my games are far more creative, dynamic, and exciting than my old games.

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My Experience with Senator-elect Warnock

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I waited until today to post this because I believe democracy was on the ballot in the Georgia Senate runoff races. I wanted Senator-elect Warnock (and Jon Ossoff) to win. Now that he has, I want to share my experience with Senator-elect Warnock from nearly a decade ago.

In 2015, I wrote Remain Free about my friendship with death row inmate Troy Davis. The book covers the events that took place from 2008 – 2012, including Troy’s controversial execution in 2011 despite serious doubts about this guilt. Senator-elect (then, just Reverend Doctor) Raphael Warnock was the eulogist at Troy’s funeral.

Here is the relevant excerpt (for those with the hardcover copy, it’s from pages 269-272 and page 282):

 

         Now it was time for the eulogist, Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The whole church stood as he walked to the pulpit. His shaved head glowed as he smiled, and then he began speaking.

         “I’ve had to preach after many people, but I have never had to preach after the Reverend Doctor Dick Gregory.” The crowd laughed and cheered, and a few waves of applause rolled through the sanctuary.

         “I must acknowledge my mother. I haven’t seen her, but I heard she’s here. Mama, where are you? Where is my mother? Oh, she’s over there! There’s my mother. You come and sit right here.” He motioned to a seat in the front, and a suited man ushered her to the seat. After using his position in the pulpit to secure prime seating for his mother, he began a winding Bible story about the apostles and the death of Jesus. Virginia Davis’s untimely death was because she knew, four months later, her son would be “liberated by death,” and like a good mother she “rushed home to welcome her son.”

[Troy] transformed a prison cell into a pulpit. I don’t have to preach long today, because he’s already preached a sermon, turned death row into a sanctuary, and showed all of us what faith and hope and love look like. And from one of the darkest and murkiest places of human existence, he allowed his light to shine…The difference between us and Troy is that Troy knew it and some of us don’t know it yet. We all live on death row.

Warnock began yelling into the microphone.

We have been dealing with the death of Jesus and the betrayal of Judas. And there are those among us who are the sons and daughters of slaves, who should’ve known better than to turn on Troy! And there are those among us who knew what Billy Holliday meant when she said southern trees bear strange fruit and blood on the leaves, blood on the truth! Betrayed! Sold him out! Those among us who should’ve known better!

My heart beat frantically, the crowd was entranced, and Warnock knew he had us. His bellowing reached a peak as he preached, no, screamed of the Pentacost and how Jesus’ death could have spelled the end of the church.

We are on the brink of a new era…It all could have died right there! But I’m so glad that in those days Peter stood up! That’s what we need! We need in these days for somebody to stand up in this very moment in this very hour in this very city! We need people to stand up for justice! Stand up for truth! Stand up for human dignity! Stand up for human decency! Stand up for our children and for our future! Everybody outta stand up! Peter said loss is but a chapter, it’s not the whole book! Hold on for the whole book!

 

         His yelling blurred and time slowed as if we were in a scene from an Ellison novel. Ras the Exhorter bellowed into the microphone, at this event organized by the Brotherhood, and Troy was the Invisible Man, only he was invisible not because of his race but because his visibility was inconvenient for these ambitious men. Every bellow into the microphone was a destruction of Troy the human and the construction of Troy the saint, Troy the prophet, Troy the ethereal icon who provided the necessary firewood for overzealous pastors and corner speakers.

         And whenever I thought it was over, the Exhorter screamed some more, each platitude whipping the crowd into an even greater frenzy. The men and women in the pews, brought in by the Brotherhood, none of whom ever knew Troy, were at a ceremony that brought them no closer to knowing him, and cheered and applauded and screamed as this preacher erased him with words so loud that the mic distorted them.

What Judas did is characteristic of evil! Evil always goes too far! And because it always goes too far, it contains within itself the seed of its own destruction!…What happened last Wednesday night was a classic move of evil to go too far!…It’s just like evil to press pause just long enough to feel the anguish and the torture!…Evil always goes too far! One Friday evening evil went too far! They nailed him on a cross! They pierced him on the side! They hung him high! They stretched him wide! But they didn’t know that he had said, “if I’ll be lifted up, I’ll draw all men onto me!” Evil always goes toooo farrrrrr!

 

         The crowd stood and cheered. The sanctuary echoed with their thunderous applause. Eventually, after more than half an hour on the pulpit, Ras the Exhorter reverted back to the Reverend Doctor Raphael Gamaliel Warnock.

They ended the funeral with a recording of Troy, as if his voice echoing through the sanctuary was enough to redeem this orgy of blustering preachers and clueless celebrities, all of whom, like the crowd assembled, had joined in on a popular cause to obtain the moral righteousness that came along with the activist label. All desperately hoped Troy’s coattails would be long enough to ride all the way to the top.

         “One group of people I don’t have any respect for are the ministers and pastors who run these mega-churches,” Troy had once said. “They’re preaching about faith and God, but how can they preach that when they’ve got bodyguards, bulletproof vests, and thousand-dollar suits? They don’t have faith in God. They have faith in money.”

         After the closing remarks, pallbearers carried the casket out of the church, and the pews emptied row by row. My small role in the funeral afforded me a front-row seat, so I followed the casket outside before the crowds had assembled. As I walked past Martina, gaunt and wheelchair-bound, I touched her shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry,” knowing amid the din of the crowd that she couldn’t hear me.

         Outside, Warnock talked to Martina while a photographer, possibly part of Warnock’s entourage, eagerly snapped away. As the casket was loaded into a hearse and the family into another car, I overheard two of the photographers.

         “Man, I’m so sick of being told over and over to take photos of a certain pastor.”

         “They asked you that?”

         “It’s not his funeral. Why should I take so many pictures of him?”

         For most people, that was the end. The crowds dispersed, some of them joining in the protests outside, others going home, and the majority heading to the local longshoremen’s union house for the reception, which promised food for the hungry masses.

         How could Martina have agreed to this? Did she agree to this? Why didn’t she, Troy’s closest confidant and fiercest advocate, speak? Why was Larry the only person from Amnesty International who spoke? 

         In all the flash and opulence, the four speakers who actually knew Troy were overshadowed. They were subdued. Their voices faltered. They spoke of the true Troy Davis. The Troy who spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him from just a few feet away. The Troy who kept a calendar of his nephew’s tests and friends’ birthdays. The Troy who was more worried about the effect of his impending execution on his family than about dying. The Troy who was more excited about my SAT score than my own family was. The Troy who pulled me aside on death row and told me to be a more supportive brother to my younger sister.

         The funeral wasn’t a remembrance of Troy Davis or the mission he hoped would outlive him, but a tool for a slew of opportunists to bask in the spotlight Troy had created for them, scattered with a few memories from those who actually knew him and a seemingly impromptu speech from just one family member to hint at a fragment of legitimacy. The event was loud, flashy, bombastic, and lacking in substance—in every way, the antithesis of Troy himself. They’d made Troy a caricature, and rather than celebrating his life as the glossy two-dozen page program claimed it would, the funeral merely celebrated his celebrity.

         Georgia executed Troy Davis, the man. And now I had just witnessed Raphael Warnock and the NAACP execute Troy Davis, the human. 

…

After the funeral, I looked up Raphael Warnock. My search took me to the Ebenezer Baptist Church website, where Warnock’s shaved head and smiling face stared down on me on every single webpage. The website has since been updated, replacing the omnipresent Warnock head with a “Warnock Gallery,” featuring the Reverend Doctor in various photos all conveniently available for download along with a Warnock press kit. I also found a Wikipedia user named “revdocta,” created a few days before the 2010 Savannah hearing. The user had no contributions listed, other than creating a glowing biography page for the Reverend Raphael Gamaliel Warnock, Ph.D.

In my eyes, Senator-elect Warnock excised the memory of my friend – my brilliant, thoughtful, soft-spoken, wrongfully executed friend – in a gyre of bluster and bombast. In my eyes, his eulogy that began with him using the bully pulpit to secure better seating for his family represented his own ambition and the devil’s bargain Troy, I, and others had made – to accept the help from those who hoped to ride Troy’s fame to the very top. We needed every signature on those petitions. I knew, as Troy did, that sometimes you take what you can get.

Maybe this glimpse of Senator-elect Warnock isn’t fully representative of him. Maybe he’s changed since then. But I hope when he goes to the Senate and represents my home state of Georgia, he won’t erase the millions who voted for him the way he erased Troy.

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The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement

gautam 3 Comments

Last updated: August 30, 2021

The Queen’s Gambit has given rise to a new generation of chess enthusiasts. How to Get Good at Chess, Fast’s traffic quadrupled between October and November 2020, and Lichess traffic jumped 10% in that same span. To all the new and reengaged chess players, welcome!

As part of this surge of interest, many new players have sent me questions and comments on openings. What opening do I choose? Is the reason I lose because I don’t want to memorize as many openings as my opponents? What do you think about [insert opening here]?

Here’s my thesis:

The best opening for rapid chess improvement is the one that gets you to a comfortable middlegame position with as little work as possible1.

With that in mind, this article lays out specific, concrete openings that I’ve selected for you. They require minimal study, work against a variety of responses from your opponent, and naturally flow to comfortable middlegame positions. These are well-established, sound openings that my students have seen success with, and there are multiple openings you can choose from to suit your own chess preferences and tastes. 

The only prerequisite is that you understand the basic opening principles of developing your pieces, controlling the center, getting your king safe (usually via castling), and connecting the rooks. Chess.com’s interactive primer looks good if you’re not familiar with them or need a refresher. It’s also helpful to be familiar with algebraic chess notation. 

While this post is designed to help you improve without a coach, I’m taking on a few students to coach within this structure to help accelerate their improvement. If that’s something you’re interested in, feel free to reach out to me at gautam[at]gautamnarula.com

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, meaning I’ll get a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you click the link and end up buying something. Thanks for supporting my work!

Openings for White

In How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, I quickly recommended The London System and moved on without elaborating much further. I’m going to go a little more in-depth about the London here, as well as offer other options (including a 1.e4 option!) for players who don’t enjoy the types of positions that emerge from the London.

Opening for 1. d4 players: The London System or the Colle-Zukertort

The London System features the moves 1. d4, 2. Nf3, 3. Bf4, 4. e3, followed by c3, Bd3, Nbd2 and O-O in the appropriate order depending on the opponent’s moves (Diagram 1). It has been deployed by none other than World Champion Magnus Carlsen! It’s so difficult for Black to stop you from achieving this basic setup that it’s not necessary to write out sample lines like I do for the e4 opening below.

Diagram 1: The ideal London System setup.

A cousin of the London system is the Colle, where the pawn is pushed to e3 before the c1 bishop has moved, blocking it in. The Colle-Zukertort is an improvement on the Colle where that bishop is fianchettoed on the queenside, and can lead to some more interesting positions than the London in my experience (Diagram 2).

Diagram 2: The ideal Colle-Zukertort setup. Notice that compared to the London System, the f4 bishop is now on b2 and the c3 pawn push has been replaced with the b3 pawn push.

One example Colle-Zukertort line:

Some ideas for White here: placing a rook on c1 and pushing for central expansion with c2-c4, or placing a knight on e5 followed by a f2-f4 push and a potential kingside attack.

Opening for 1. e4 players: The King’s Indian Attack

1. e4 openings are inherently more difficult to play than d4 openings3, so we’ll have to spend a little more time learning my pick, the King’s Indian Attack (KIA). The KIA has a storied history, with many stunning victories coming from a young Bobby Fischer in the mid-20th century. It’s basically the King’s Indian Defense (which is, more or less, my recommendation as Black) with colors reversed, and the extra tempo from playing as White gives you the flexibility to play it against just about anything.

The KIA setup involves the moves e4, d3, Nd2, Ngf3, g3, Bg2, and 0-0, typically resulting in the structure in Diagram 3.

Diagram 3: Standard KIA setup.

White’s king is castled and safe, and White exerts control of the center with the two pawns and knights. White’s main plan is a well-timed e4-e5 pawn push, accompanied with gaining space and potentially aiming for a kingside attack (those acquainted with the Closed Sicilian will find these kinds of positions familiar). The main challenge is to figure out how to develop the c1 bishop efficiently.

Below are a few sample lines of what you might face:

1…e5 (King’s Pawn Game)

1…c5 (Sicilian Defense)

1…e6 (French Defense)

1…c6 (Caro-Kann Defense)

1…d5 (Scandinavian Defense)

The Scandinavian used to be a great surprise opening and rare enough that in years past I wouldn’t have included it here, but thanks to the valiant efforts of IM John Bartholomew and #teamscandi it’s become pretty popular at the amateur level (and I’ve been recommending a Scandi variant to my students for over a decade as well, so naturally my massive influence has popularized it and shifted the frontiers of chess at both the amateur and professional levels). Unfortunately, you can’t go into a standard KIA structure (1. e4 d5 2. d3 dxe4 3.dxe4 Qxe1+ 4. Kxe1 and clearly this is a very different kind of game).

So instead, my suggestion is to exchange the pawns and bring the knight to c3 followed by the KIA style fianchetto.

You can do the same against 3…Qd6, which I recommend for Black below. White has a flexible and comfortable position and aim to exert more central control with Rf1-e1 and potentially maneuvering one of the knights to e4. 

Opening for 1. c4 Players: Read a Book

I said it in How to Get Good at Chess, Fast and I’ll say it again: you’re on your own. Being a hipster has its costs. Truth hurts! I’ve heard good things about Starting Out: The English.

Openings for Black

In How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, for Black I originally recommended a kingside fianchetto setup involving the moves Nf6, g6, d6, Bg7, and O-O (Diagram 4). I have since recanted that recommendation after finding students and friends struggling not to get overrun in the center — conceptually it may be a bit too difficult to play for lower rated players. I offer an alternative option, the Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian against e4 + the …g6 Slav, for those who prefer to contest for central control right away rather than let White immediately build up a center.

The g6 Slav + Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian

Some of my student’s have seen great results with kingside fianchetto structures, but I’ll admit these structures can result in games that are a bit intense. This is a quieter alternative that’s still easy to learn and leads to interesting positions.

Against d4, my recommendation is the g6 Slav (my engine tells me this is called the Schlechter Variation), which almost always will go 1…d5 2…c6 3….Nf7 4…g6, typically with …Bg7 and …O-O to follow (Diagram 5)

Diagram 5:  Black’s standard …g6 Slav setup.

One typical variation could go:

Another is to exchange the pawns on d5:

A variant of this plan is for White is to pressure d5 with Qb3 and Bg5 to force Black to play e6 and lock in the c8 bishop:

Black gets a flexible position and, by not committing a pawn to e6 early like in other similar openings (the Semi-Slav, or the French), leaves the possibility open in non-Qb3 variations for developing the c8 bishop to a good square and only then playing e6 to support the d5 focal point in the center. 

Against e4, my recommendation is the Qd6 Scandinavian, which begins with 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd6 (Diagram 6).

Diagram 6: The starting position of the Qd6 Scandinavian

The Qd6 Scandinavian can look a bit… odd if you’ve never seen it before. Black explicitly violates the common opening adage of not developing the queen too early, and the Queen is now perched on this peculiar d6 square. Practice has shown it a flexible and sound opening, and I personally have achieved some pretty incredible results with it, scoring draws or even wins against players rated a few hundred points higher than me in tournament games. It’s easy for White to get too ambitious and overextend themselves trying to push too hard for an attack against this very solid structure.

The plan is simple – if possible, fianchetto on the queenside, develop the pieces, and castle. If left to their own devices, Black’s aims to set up the ideal position in Diagram 7.

Diagram 7: Black’s ideal Qd6 Scandinavian position

Black’s plan is to push for central control with …c5

Here’s an example line:

and Black is ready to castle kingside after …Be7 and prepare the …c5 push.

White’s most effective idea against this opening is using a kingside fianchetto to neutralize the b7  bishop. In that case, Black aims for this kind of setup, possibly castling queenside to maximize pressure on White’s d4 pawn (Diagram 8).

Diagram 8: Black’s Qd6 Scandinavian setup if White fianchettoes kingside

Here’s a typical line:

With 6…Bg4, 7…Nc6, and 8… O-O-O, Black is increasing the pressure on d4. A good bet for Black is to trade pieces where possible and aim to play e7-e5.

That’s pretty much all you need to know – those two structures and following the opening principles should serve you well in the Qd6 Scandinavian.

One other option is the Qd8 Scandinavian, which at first glance looks even more bizarre: 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Nc3 Qd8!? (Diagram 9).

rnbqkbnr/ppp1pppp/8/8/8/2N5/PPPP1PPP/R1BQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
Diagram 9: The starting position of the Qd8 Scandinavian

At first glance this violates multiple opening principles: we allow our queen to come out, get attacked with tempo, and then immediately return to the starting position. The logic here is that the Queen can be vulnerable to attack on d6 or a5 (the two more common Scandi queen squares) and thus, in a way this is tempo neutral compared to those other lines since white won’t develop with further tempo on the queen. White will get a lead in development, but black challenges that with solid play white won’t be able to take advantage of that in time for black to catch up.

Once again, it’s easy for White to get too ambitious and overextend themselves trying to push too hard for an attack against this very solid structure and I find this personally a bit easier to play than the Qd6 Scandi, although a bit less counterattacking in nature as well.

The main setup we’re going for is pawns on c6 and e6 after developing the light squared bishop to g4 (which we’ll trade for a knight on f3 when provoked, weakening the d4 pawn’s protection), and a bishop on d6 if white castles kingside and b4 if white castles queenside.

Here’s an example of the setup (diagram 10).

r2q1rk1/pp1n1ppp/2pbpn2/8/6b1/8/8/8 w - - 0 1
Diagram 10: the baseline Qd8 Scandi setup (the dark squared bishop goes to b4 if white castles queenside)

Here’s a typical line:

Notice how we only commit our dark squared bishop after white decides which way to castle. Similar to the Qd6 Scandi, black is increasing the pressure on d4 and aiming to trade pieces when possible and gain queenside space with moves like …a5 and possibly central counterplay with …c5 or …e5.

So now you’ve got a variety of opening options: the London/Colle-Zuckertort or the King’s Indian Attack as White, and the g6 Slav + Qd6/Qd8 Scandinavian as Black.

Once you’ve picked your openings, play a few slower (G/10 or above, which is “slow” by online standards!) online games to get familiar with the middlegame positions that flow from these openings. Once you’ve got a basic comfort with them, you’re done!

From here on, you can use the incremental opening study approach I recommend in How to Get Good at Chess, Fast: when you analyze your games, quickly determine where you deviated from the book move, figure out what that next book move is and why it’s played, and then continue analyzing the rest of the game. Overtime, your incremental knowledge will accumulate into substantial understanding of that opening without a large upfront time investment.

FAQ

1. Does using opening “systems” hurt chess development in the long run?

This is a criticism I sometimes see online: opening systems, such as the London System, narrow the range of possible middlegames so much that they stunt chess players’ development by not exposing them to a richer set of positional and tactical themes. I think this fear is overblown; I personally know a player who became a master (2200+ USCF) by playing the …g6 Scandinavian as Black and the London System as White by focusing almost exclusively on tactics and very fast calculation. I think the bigger worry is instead the potential boredom that comes from playing a system.

2. Do you play these openings?

I do sometimes play the King’s Indian Attack and the Qd6 Scandinavian, and a somewhat more complicated “system” version of the Slav. When I was rated around 1300 USCF I started studying repertoire books and ended up investing enough time in learning those openings over the years that now it doesn’t really make sense to switch. In hindsight though, yes, I would’ve instead played these and focused more on other parts of the game.

3. How do I pick an opening when I’m ready to “graduate” from these systems?

These openings can carry you a long way – as I mention above, I know people who’ve reached 2000+ USCF playing these openings or similar ones. Nonetheless, if you feel you’re ready for a bit more sophisticated opening study (which I really don’t recommend below 1600 USCF at the very earliest), you’ve got two options:

Study a repertoire book (the easy way)

Repertoire books blend a set of related openings together so that the knowledge you learn from middlegames of one opening transfers to the middlegames of other openings in the repertoire. The openings aren’t necessarily bleeding edge theory, but what you exchange in theoretical optimality you get back many times over in ease of learning.

Repertoire book recommendations:

White:

D4 players: Starting Out 1. d4

E4 players: Attacking with 1. e4

Black:

Chess Openings for Black, Explained

Check the table of contents of a repertoire book before buying to make sure you like the openings it suggests. If you don’t like playing the Sicilian Accelerated Dragon against e4 (which is what one of the books above suggests), then you won’t get much value from the book.

Individually pick and choose openings (the hard, but maybe more fun, way)

So you love openings and are willing to spend lots of time learning them for their own sake, even if it doesn’t increase your rating. What do you do now?

First, you’ll need to research which openings you want to play. When I was a kid, I found Winning Chess Openings to be a good survey of all the opening options out there so I could figure out what I wanted to learn more about.

Then, you need to figure out the best books or courses on that opening to study (if you’re new to the opening entirely, the Starting Out series is a great primer). There are also many good courses on platforms like Chessable, though you’ll need to be a bit discerning here: some are marketed with a lot of hype (the “dynamic” 1. Nc3, really?), while others are at a ridiculously high level (e.g, created by current or former top 10 players and explained at a level that only very strong players can grasp).

Finally, you’ll need to learn how to use a chess database to analyze openings when you inevitably run into a line not covered by your book, or want to learn how games have continued after the line ends in your book. Learning how to use a chess database is far beyond the scope of this article, but to summarize it briefly: you input a position from the opening, filter by games above a certain rating threshold (I recommend 2400), and play through the games (sometimes with an engine) and study the outcomes. You could also filter by game length to find quick wins and losses in the opening to know what traps and mistakes to look out for.

Chessbase 16 is the latest iteration of the database software professional chess players use. You can also use SCID, the open source chess database, if you’re more technically inclined and are willing to invest the time to figure it out (you’ll need to import the actual corpus of games separately). An intermediate option in both price and complexity is to use the database that comes along with chess training software/engines like Fritz 17, which should consist of millions of games. Back in the day, I found the database included with Fritz 10 to be sufficient for my needs.

Footnotes

  1. At higher levels this changes to, “The best opening is the one that suits your playing style and fights for an advantage as White and fights for equality as Black.” But for anyone under at least 2000 USCF (if not higher), this definition isn’t the right one.
  2. This is the main difference between the KID and KIA – Black can’t really build up a massive center against the KIA because White has the extra tempo.
  3. I started out as a 1. e4 player, switched to 1. d4 around the time I hit 1300 USCF, and then experimented with 1. e4 when I reached 1900 USCF while still remaining primarily a 1. d4 player. In my experience, 1. d4 openings are much easier to play because the positions tend to be closed and slower moving, meaning an individual slip up in an opening line doesn’t carry the same consequences as it does in the more tactical and open 1. e4 openings.

For more on chess improvement

How to Get Good at Chess, Fast, Using Data to Improve Your Chess, and The Best Openings for Rapid Chess Improvement are the first in a forthcoming series of articles with a hyperfocus on extracting maximal chess improvement from minimal training effort. In order to keep this personal website from being overrun by chess content (I write about other things too), I’m creating a new website: rapidchessimprovement.com!

Head over there or enter your email below to join the rapid chess improvement email list if you’d like to be notified whenever the next post in this series is available. 

Thanks to William Horton and Aditya Rao for reviewing drafts of this article. 

Major General R.N. Chibber

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My grandfather passed away last night, at the age of 86. I only met him three times — the summer of 1998, when I spent my fifth birthday at his house in Jammu; a week or two in 2006, when I was 13; and last in 2018, when his illness had progressed to the point where we could no longer have conversations.

So I instead knew him mostly through stories. Stories of him growing up as a British colonial subject in what is now Pakistan, and as a 13-year-old being forced to flee to the Indian side of the Partition and leave everything behind; stories of the loyalty he earned from the soldiers under his command when he stood up to corruption in the Indian army that hurt them, even at the expense of his own career; stories of how, as a man with white skin, hazel eyes, and orange hair, taxi drivers mistook him for a foreigner and tried to overcharge him until he calmly told them in Punjabi he’d have them arrested if they did so; stories of his radical feminism by mid-20th century Indian standards, quashing all attempts to “marry off” my mother and my aunt as teenagers (as was common, even among his own family) and insisting they go to college and build careers of their own; stories of his poetry translations among the four languages he spoke.

The memories I do have are conversations about politics, world affairs, and the violence and instability that rocked his adopted home state of Jammu & Kashmir; visits to the mango grove in his backyard, where we picked them off the trees together; hearing his deep voice flit effortlessly between English, Hindi, and Punjabi; the sight of him standing outside the house waiting for me to arrive on my second visit, with “WELCOME GAUTAM” written in chalk on the driveway; the stacks and stacks of books in his personal library, from which, at his insistence, I took as many books as I wanted back with me to America.

His legacy lives on in my middle name and in the faintest of orange highlights that can be seen in my hair under just the right light; the stories will live on as an aspiration to meet his example of integrity, dignity, and quiet but firm resistance against any who would mistreat those under his care, be they his soldiers or his daughters. Rest in peace, Nana.

What a Death Row Inmate Taught Me in the Days before Black Lives Matter

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It’s not just the police. The entire justice system is broken.

I was 15 years old when I met Troy Davis, a Black death row inmate, in 2008. Troy was convicted of the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, a white off-duty police officer, in Savannah, Georgia. In the decades after his conviction, seven of the nine trial eyewitnesses—all of them Black—recanted their testimony. Their sworn affidavits painted a chilling picture of police coercion, harassment, and intimidation. In Savannah, which was once a purgatory for kidnapped Africans before they were sold into slavery, the case deepened simmering racial tensions. As Troy put it, “The police were rounding up Black men in Savannah, threatening them and demanding information on me.”

One trial witness, Darrell Collins, was only 16 years old when he was picked up by the police and interrogated with neither a lawyer nor his parents present. Collins initially denied seeing Troy as the shooter, but in his affidavit affirms, “After a couple of hours of the detectives yelling at me and threatening me, I finally broke down and told them what they wanted to hear…I am not proud for lying at Troy’s trial, but the police had me so messed up that I felt that’s all I could do or else I would go to jail”.

At a later hearing, Collins testified that the police threatened to charge him as an accessory to murder if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear.

Another witness, Jeffrey Sapp, claimed the police harassed him and “made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone is if I told them what they wanted to hear… I didn’t want to have any more problems with the cops, so I testified against Troy.”

A third eyewitness, Dorothy Farrell, claimed the police “gave me the impression that I should say that Troy Davis was the one who shot the officer… I felt like I was just following the rest of the witnesses. I also felt like I had to cooperate with the officer because of my being on parole.”

We’ve learned that eyewitness testimony can be tampered with and mishandled like any other evidence, and the police investigation tainted the evidence in Troy’s case by violating multiple protocols used to keep eyewitness testimony reliable. The investigation did not use double-blind photo lineups, a protocol in which neither the officer administering the lineup nor the eyewitness know which photo is of the suspect. Police gathered all witnesses together to recreate the scene, ensuring their memories would merge. And they never investigated a primary alternative suspect who had a gun that night, nor did they ever even interview Troy himself. It became clear that once the police had a viable suspect, facts, witnesses and testimonials could be manipulated to arouse suspicion and railroad a target—often a young Black man—whose peers could easily be coerced with threats.

During our in-person visits on death row, Troy shared his own harrowing initial interactions with police. While he awaited trial, officers would come by his cell, yelling, “N—-r, if I had caught you in the street, I’d have blown your brains out!” If they saw him smile, they’d scream, “Why you smiling, n—-r boy?” Their hatred toward a man still presumed innocent ran so deep that, according to Troy, he had to be moved out of solitary confinement after there were multiple attempts by the police to poison his food. They regularly engaged in small actions of cruelty to make his life more miserable. He was frequently strip-searched and forced awake after midnight to shower.

No police officer involved in the Troy Davis case ever faced any consequences.

The ACLU calls the prosecutor the most powerful person in the courtroom. Spencer Lawton, the prosecutor in Troy’s case, has a checkered history of misconduct when it comes to high-profile cases. The Georgia Supreme Court overturned his conviction of Jim Williams, famously featured in the bestselling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, after it found Lawton had suppressed evidence from the defense. At Troy’s 2010 evidentiary hearing ordered by the Supreme Court, I watched with disgust as Lawton feigned forgetfulness over basic details of the case, accusations that he had instructed witnesses to “stick to their testimony” after they told him their police statements were inaccurate. Most bizarrely, he even claimed to not recall the op-ed he had written about the case just 20 months before the hearing.

Lawton’s most egregious behavior includes another conviction overturned when DNA testing exonerated the defendant, Douglas Echols, of a rape and kidnapping conviction. When Georgia’s legislature considered a bill to compensate Echols for the years he unjustly spent behind bars, Lawton wrote a defamatory letter to the legislators, falsely claiming Echols was still under indictment for rape and kidnapping. The letter ultimately killed the bill. The 11th Circuit condemned Lawton’s action as libel but opined that the doctrine of “qualified immunity” – the same that protects police officers who murder unarmed civilians—inoculates Lawton against any consequences. African-Americans, such as Echols and Davis, are more likely to be wrongfully convicted, and 15 states, including Georgia, do not have laws requiring compensation for the wrongfully convicted.

After his conviction in 1991, Troy told me, the judge declared “Mr. Davis, you will be executed by 20,000 volts of electricity until you are dead, dead, dead!” When I visited Troy on death row, he had two decades of stories to tell me—stories of guards shoving disabled prisoners against the wall and viciously beating them, making sure to wrap them in towels first so bruises don’t appear; others of guards leaving cells unlocked so inmates could attack others in their sleep, forcing inmates to take hallucinogenic drugs under the guise of mental illness and then raping them.  It was the most terrifying manifestation of what permeated throughout the American criminal justice system: no matter how much psychological or physical violence they inflicted, no matter the severity of scars or the destructive wake of their cruelty, oppressors were unconditionally shielded from the consequences of their actions.

It was only with the pro bono assistance of a white-shoe law firm—a luxury few death row inmates will ever have—that Troy had any meaningful representation in the appeals process. After several appeals, his fate rested with the five-person Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. In a 3-2 vote, the Board voted against granting clemency. But the composition of the board raises questions.

Three of the five Board members included a District Attorney and officials from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Georgia Department of Corrections. The Board had no representation of public defenders, legal scholars, civil rights activists, or former judges—those who had witnessed and fought against courtroom injustices stemming from bias, discrimination, and corruption. Instead, a case highlighting wrongdoing by law enforcement would be decided by those who had climbed to the top of the law enforcement hierarchy.

In the end, despite jurors from the original trial openly doubting their guilty verdicts and despite calls for clemency from governmental bodies, Nobel Prize winners, a President, and over half a million petitioners, Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011. When I witnessed police dogpile and tase an unarmed black protester outside death row that night, it felt like we had come full circle. The chants then were the same as now—“No Justice, No Peace”. The signs from that night—“Not in My Name”, “Stop the Execution”, “Don’t Let the Blood Be on Your Hands”– could be recycled for today’s protests. Then, as now, the administration of justice protected those with power at the expense of the innocent.

Since Troy’s execution, 27 death row inmates – over half of them Black – have been exonerated – although exoneration and irrefutable evidence of innocence has not always been enough to clear their names. Five months and five days after Troy Davis was executed, Trayvon Martin was gunned down. The acquittal of his shooter sparked a movement and a refrain that is on the signs and lips of protesters all over the country today: Black Lives Matter. Troy spoke for them when he declared, shortly before his execution: “I’m not afraid of death—just more injustice in a broken system.”

If you’d like to learn more about my friendship with Troy Davis and the story of his case, see my book Remain Free. Thanks to Mitch Rice, Nishita Morris, Ajit Acharya, and Kavita Chhibber for reviewing drafts of this piece.

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New York in the Time of Coronavirus

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NYC in the Time of Coronavirus

Both the city and the state of New York had their first confirmed case of coronavirus on March 1. In the following weeks, NYC rapidly transformed into the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States1.

I thought I’d share a few photos of what it’s been like. 

It started with (literal) half-measures, like restaurants being required to operate at no more than 50% capacity on March 12, the same day Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a State of Emergency. 

Four days later, on March 16, all public venues, bars, gyms, restaurants (except for delivery/takeout), etc. were ordered to close, as were NYC schools. 

Four days later, on March 20, all “nonessential” businesses were ordered to keep 100% of their workforce at home.

Sometimes the parks are empty, but they’re often packed. Governor Cuomo has warned they may be closed if New Yorkers fail to social distance within them.

Grocery stores have started closing (March 25) as employees test positive for coronavirus. Ironically, their new limitations on the number of people who can be inside the store at once have led to packed lines outside their doors.

(Photo taken March 21 outside Trader Joe’s, 20 minutes after open and three days before an employee tested positive)

Grocery delivery apps are backed up for days and out of stock of many basic items; sometimes you learn that in the app itself, sometimes a few days later when it shows up with only half of what you ordered.

During my rare outings (I spend roughly one hour per week outside my apartment), I’ve noticed mask usage in my neighborhood climb from 1 in 10 people to about 1 in 3, as of March 28. I’m now among them, albeit with a homemade mask fashioned from a cotton-shirt2. 

It’s quiet during my walk around the neighborhood. The avenues still have light traffic, but the streets are completely barren. They are basically an extension of the sidewalks now, useful for maintaining six feet from others. 

The normally bustling Prince St. is entirely empty save for one single food delivery person. Delivery workers make up the majority of people on the streets now.

Even the famous Prince St. Pizza, normally mobbed with a line out the door even in the wee hours of the morning, is moribund. 

Virtually all of the storefronts and restaurants are boarded up; many of the restaurants have even stopped doing takeout or delivery. It’s unclear if they’ll be back when this is all over.

I’m used to hearing a myriad of languages when I walk outside. I’m used to pushing past crowds of people, impatiently ambling behind slow walkers, and bumping into gawking tourists who’ve stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. But now I don’t hear anyone, the crowds and slow walkers are gone, and the tourists have fled.

Many of my friends and coworkers have fled the city too, for their hometowns where a house, family, and yard can make the difference between a mental break and a mental breakdown. It’s been three weeks since I’ve seen anyone I know in person.  

I’ve personally seen coronavirus end relationships, shutter local businesses, and destroy livelihoods. It’s taken nearly a thousand of us. It’s seized our greatest public space and turned it into an infirmary for its victims. It’s drained the energy from the City That Never Sleeps. 

When it’s all done, when the schools and shops reopen, when the quiet recedes into the cacophony of loud neighbors blasting music and angry horns honking and police sirens blaring,  and when the last of the dead are buried, we’ll remember how quickly the city could die — and how quickly it came back to life again. 

Get well soon, New York. 

Footnotes

  1. A bit of background: Roughly 1 in 4 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States is here in NYC. That’s partly because we test the most (NY state will soon overtake South Korea in tests per capita), but also the unsurprising result of being America’s densest and most internationally visited city. Similarly, New Jersey has the second most confirmed cases in the country. 
  2. Homemade masks, while not as good as a “real” mask (e.g., surgical or N95 mask), are still significantly better than nothing. Stay home and save the real masks for medical professionals. But if you must go out, wear a homemade mask. 

Eight Years Ago

gautam Leave a comment

Eight years ago today, Troy Davis was executed. And four years ago today, Remain Free was published.

I still remember the night of the execution: Wednesday, September 21, 2011. I was a freshman. I had just finished my very first college exam and left Myers Hall to hop in my little red Chevy, which sputtered and struggled to get me down to Death Row in Jackson, Georgia. I remember the thousands of protesters—and the dozens of counter protesters. It was a chaotic scene—laughing, screaming, crying, praying, acrimonious chants battling each other and harmonious chants sung in unison. I remember when the riot police arrived, the prickly sound of their tasers in action, the officers downing a man who crossed the line, the muscular arms hauling him off into the back of the van while helicopters whirred overhead.

I remember the sudden hush over the crowd at 7:00 PM, the moment of execution, the sun setting, the riot police in their gear staring impassively from across the divide.

I remember the jubilation when the news spread that the execution wasn’t happening tonight, that the Supreme Court had issued a one day stay of execution. I hopped in my sputtering red Chevy and drove back to Myers Hall, promising to come back the next day. I remember the horror when I learned that the execution had only been delayed for a few hours, and so all I could do was sit in the Myers lobby and watch Anderson Cooper on CNN countdown and then announce that Troy Davis had been executed. I remember the confusion, the fear, the numbness when the next day I opened Myers mailbox 382A and saw a letter from Troy, the last one I would ever receive.
—
Four years later, on September 21, 2015, Remain Free was published. There was no launch party, no fanfare. Instead, we drove to Savannah and visited Troy’s grave. He’s buried next to his mother and his sister—they all died in 2011. I wrote a note in the front cover of the book and placed it on his grave, along with a replica of the wristband I first got in Wright Square in Savannah in 2010, outside the federal courthouse where Troy’s evidentiary hearing was being held—the first time Troy had been back to his hometown since his conviction in 1991. It’s the same as the wristband I still wear today, blue with white letters illuminating two sentences:

I AM TROY DAVIS. INNOCENCE MATTERS.