Tag: Troy Davis

My Experience with Senator-elect Warnock

gautam Leave a comment

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

gautam Leave a comment

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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Naveen and Troy

gautam 3 Comments

Today is the one year anniversary of my father’s sudden and unexpected death. It’s also the birthday of Troy Davis, my friend who was executed on death row in 2011 and whom I wrote Remain Free about. These were the two most influential men in my life, so I thought I’d share a few words on their relationship.

Both my father and I were moderate supporters of the death penalty in 2008, before we met Troy. So when we first heard about Troy’s case, we were both skeptical of this death row inmate’s claim of innocence—for me, it was because I had this naive, childlike faith in our justice system and institutions; for my father, I think there was a certain cynicism that that led him to distrust people by default, and who less trustworthy than a convicted cop killer?

Nonetheless, on September 23, 2008, the day Troy came within 90 minutes of execution, it was my father who was the first to tell me the execution had been stayed. My mother was adamant we accept Troy’s offer to visit him on death row six days later, but my father did not share her enthusiasm. By design, he had built a bubble in the suburbs for his kids—a safe, if a bit dull, life, far enough away from the city to be mostly free from the drugs, gangs, and violence that plagued Atlanta and the neighborhoods in Savannah where Troy grew up. I think he was afraid of us puncturing that bubble to enter the world that he had fought so hard to stay away from.

He came with me the first time I ever went to a Troy Davis rally, a few days before Troy faced another execution date in October 2008, I was transfixed. I was 15 years old, and captivated by these speakers talk about justice and freeing Troy. But he was unimpressed. He grew up in India, a bustling, chaotic democracy that was never bereft of rallies, protests, or the occasional bandh (general strikes and infrastructure shutdowns by political activists). For him, this was just another street corner rally.

I think his mind changed when he finally met Troy. Troy was so genuine and warm and kindthat nobody could meet him and not want to fight for him, to save him. I can’t remember exactly what they spoke about on those visits, but when I left for college, Troy, in his final letter, said, “I know he misses you more than you’d even imagine.” He was right, of course. He usually was about these sorts of things.

After two or three visits, my father stopped coming to see Troy on death row. Not because he didn’t care, but because “it is too depressing seeing Troy in there.” From his voice, I could tell how deeply death row disturbed him. This was not the safe life in the suburbs he had worked so hard to build for us.

But he would still wake up early in the mornings on those Saturdays we visited Troy, make the 90 minute plus drive to Jackson, Georgia, and wait across the street at the Wendy’s while we met with Troy for six hours. He would still drive me to rallies, and drop me off and pick me up at the train station when I interned at Amnesty International but couldn’t drive. Like me, he was no longer a supporter of the death penalty. And on September 21, 2011, the night Troy was executed, only five years and 19 days before his own death, he was there protesting with me outside death row, chanting “I Am Troy Davis” into the setting sun.

—

If you knew my father or would like to honor his memory, please make a donation to an education-related charity of your choice—education was a cause he cared deeply about. If you’re not sure where to donate, two organizations I like are Pratham and DonorsChoose.

If you knew Troy or would like to honor his memory, please make a donation to the Innocence Project, a non-profit that helps free wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and works to prevent wrongful convictions from happening in the first place.

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Five years ago

gautam 2 Comments

Five years ago today, my friend Troy Davis was wrongfully executed. One year ago today, I published Remain Free to share his story.

In that one year:

  • Remain Free beat out a New York Times bestseller written by a US president for the Georgia Author of the Year Award
  • Remain Free has been featured in NRI Pulse, India New England News, Khabar Magazine, and the Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Khabar Magazine, and India New England News
  • I’ve spoken at MIT, Cornell, UGA, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, high schools, Amnesty International groups, and CreativeMornings Boston (with a few more to come!)
  • I’ve met and talked to incredible people from all walks of life who share a passion for reforming our justice system, ranging from the parents of other teenagers who’ve befriended death row inmates to rappers, fashion designers, entrepreneurs, and everything in-between.

 

To mark the one year anniversary of the publication of the physical copy of Remain Free, the one many of you made possible, I just published the Kindle version so people all over the world can read it. As with the physical version, all profits will be donated to the Innocence Project.  And of course, the book can be read in serialized from for free on remainfree.com

In the end, this was to serve the mission of sharing Troy’s story with as many people as possible. A huge thanks to all of you who’ve supported this journey that began around this time eight years ago.

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Remain Free Book Discussion on May 16, in Boston

gautam 3 Comments

I’ll be hosting a Remain Free book discussion and signing at Trident Booksellers (338 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02115) on Monday, May 16, at 7:00 PM! I’ll be reading several excerpts from the book and discussing the events within those excerpts in more detail, as well as the process of writing the book. Trident is Boston’s largest independent bookstore and they’ve got great food as well, so I hope to see you there!

 

Serializing Remain Free

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Serializing Remain Free

Remain Free

I wrote Remain Free with one primary mission in mind: to share Troy Davis’s story with as many people as possible. To that end, I’m serializing Remain Free online (at www.remainfree.com) and making it freely available for anyone to read. You can begin reading it here. I also have plans to serialize an audiobook version of Remain Free in the form of a podcast. In both cases, new sections/episodes will be posted weekly.

If you prefer a physical version, a hardcover copy is available on Amazon. As before, all profits from physical and e-book sales will be donated to the Innocence Project.

Thanks again to the many people who supported this book when I first began writing it as an eighteen-year-old.

Keynote Address at the Cornell International Affairs Conference VI

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Keynote Address at the Cornell International Affairs Conference VI, November 5, 2015

Good evening. Before I begin, I’d like to thank the Cornell International Affairs Society for giving the opportunity to speak to you all tonight, and for organizing this wonderful conference.

Tonight, I want to tell you a story. It begins when I was 15 years old, on September 3, 2008, in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. I received a phone call from a friend. He was an intern for Amnesty International, a human rights organization I had never heard of. He told me about this man on death row in Georgia named Troy Davis. Troy Davis was convicted in 1991 for the 1989 murder of a police officer in Savanah, Georgia. There was no gun, no DNA evidence. Instead, his conviction rested primarily on nine eyewitness testimonies. In the years that followed, seven of the nine eyewitnesses recanted their testimonies. Many of them said the police coerced or intimidated them into testifying against Troy Davis. Despite all this evidence that he may be innocent, Davis was going to be executed in just 20 days.

At the time, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I was a supporter of the death penalty, as most other people in Georgia are. Troy Davis couldn’t possibly be innocent—we had a justice system that protected the innocent and dispensed fair, just punishments to the guilty. If he were innocent, he wouldn’t have lost appeal after appeal.

But there was one small detail that stood out to me, one tiny thing that, in hindsight, changed my life forever. Davis was scheduled to be executed on September 23, while the Supreme Court was due to review his case on September 29. Why? He had been on death row for nearly two decades. Why couldn’t Georgia wait six more days for the highest court in the land to review his case? A fair justice system wouldn’t do that.

On September 23, 90 minutes before the scheduled execution, the US Supreme Court intervened and prevented Troy Davis from being executed. The next day, I sent him a letter. At his invitation, I visited him on death row five days later.

Before I went there, my idea of death row was Alcatraz blended with the gulag. I imagined death row to be dark and dank, filled with angry muscular men, killers and rapists who were destroyers of lives and families. They seemed more beast than human. They were monsters.

Before, everyone in here was just a mugshot and a name written in fine newsprint. But now, as I saw them talking and smiling and laughing and crying, no different than me, it was inescapable that they were . . . human. These were bodies and souls that had known loss and love, cruelty and kindness, pain and joy—beings that had known life. One inmate held his four-year-old daughter up with tears of joy. A boy my age was clad in a shirt with the words “Free My Dad” on the back. Troy told me about the background of many of the other death row inmates—how they had suffered from neglect, child abuse, and drug addiction. He told me about a man who was abandoned as a child. His mother was addicted to drugs, his father was nowhere to be found, and he slept in a dog kennel for shelter. That began the downward spiral that resulted in him on death row.
He told me his own story, about growing up as a quiet kid struggling to fit in, about seeing his hometown get taken over by drugs and gangs in the 1980s. He saw his friends start doing drugs, dealing drugs, or both. He told me his version of what happened the night of the shooting. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn’t shoot the police officer; he didn’t even have a gun that night. But once somebody else said he did it, the police didn’t consider any alternative suspects and the media started a witch hunt and convicted him in the court of public opinion. He turned himself in, because he thought he could tell the police his side of the story and they’d let him go. When he turned himself in, they hurled racial slurs at the black man who had taken one of their own. They tried to poison his food in the county jail when he was awaiting trial.

He told me he no longer celebrates his birthday, or Christmas, or New Year’s. Why bother, he told me, when it’s just another day you can’t be with the people you love? He said every time he sees his family it’s like they instantly age 20 years, because in his dreams and memories he always sees them as they were in 1989, when he was first locked up. In those 20 years, his father had died, his sister had been diagnosed with cancer, and the rest had aged, lost muscle, gained wrinkles. Every time they visited, he relived all of that. He said the first thing he was going to do when he was a free man was go to his mother’s house and sleep at the foot of her bed so that, when she woke up, she’d know this wasn’t a dream and that her son was finally home.

We grew close. The prison only allowed me to visit him every few months, but in between visits we wrote letters and talked on the phone. He began calling me his “adopted nephew” and signed his letters “Uncle Troy.”

While all of this was going on, Troy’s story attracted a lot of international attention, in part because of the growing international trend against capital punishment. The United Nations began angling for restricted use and eventual abolition of the death penalty in the 1960s. This has culminated in a series of successive resolutions since 2007 (the year Troy Davis first faced execution) that have imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, with the long term goal of its abolition. Year after year, the United States stands in the minority of countries voting against those resolutions, along with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has openly stated that the death penalty has no place in the 21st century. The UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights specifically spoke out against Troy Davis’s execution.

The European Union, where the death penalty has been abolished, wrote directly to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to speak out against Troy Davis’s execution. The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for Troy Davis’s sentence to be commuted and for Georgia to grant him a retrial. Two Nobel Peace Prize winners spoke out against his execution. So did the Pope. All of these international institutions and figures didn’t speak out about Troy Davis because this was just a specific case of an innocent man slipping through the cracks. Rather, it was because his case was one of the most egregious examples of a system that was in itself a human rights violation.

That got me thinking, how do these human rights violations occur? What makes them possible? They occur when we successfully dehumanize the victims. And by only presenting mugshots and rap sheets, our society has dehumanized those on death row. I saw whole human beings as nothing more than the worst mistake they had ever made, as mugshots and rap sheets. And it was only by going to death row and building a personal connection with the people there was I able to break through that.

I think I would’ve eventually opposed capital punishment if I hadn’t met Troy Davis. There are plenty of practical reasons to oppose it. But I wouldn’t be here talking to you tonight. I wouldn’t have signed petitions. I wouldn’t have organized meetings. I wouldn’t have joined rallies. I wouldn’t have become a human rights activist. I wouldn’t have written a book. I wouldn’t have built the personal connection with many other people that convinced them to turn against the death penalty. I wouldn’t have a life’s mission like I do today, which is to fulfill Troy’s dream of a nation without any more Troy Davises.

My challenge to you is to find your Troy Davis. Find that personal connection to your work, whatever it is. If you’re a writer, go and talk to the people who read what you write. If you’re a programmer, meet the people who use your code. If you’re a teacher, truly understand your students. If you’re a fashion designer, meet those who wear your clothes. Find the people who are directly impacted by what you do.

Having proximity to your work changes you. It makes you believe that what you’re doing truly makes a difference, because you’ve seen it with your own eyes. It makes you understand that what you do actually has a real impact on other people. It’s so easy for us to get caught in the ivory tower, to write memos and join committees and make resolutions, without actually doing the hands-on work needed to see the actual, on-the-ground impact of our work. It’s like having a super power, because when you have that inspiration, when you have that motivation, you will always be better and more effective than the people who don’t.

In the end, by a margin of one vote, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles let Troy Davis be executed. But he wasn’t afraid to die. I talked to him, and he said, “God hasn’t failed me. He just isn’t ready for me to come home yet. Look at all the people I’ve inspired, people like you. Millions of people around the world know my name, and know I’m not the only one. If I die, I don’t want my supporters to fade away in sorrow. I want them to get angry and fight for other Troy Davises out there, and fight for human rights all round the world.”

Go out and find your Troy Davis. Gain your superpower. It may not be easy, but in such cases I always remember what Troy told me whenever I doubted myself: The only person who can stop you from doing something is you.

Thank you.

(Photo courtesy of the Cornell International Affairs Society)

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Remain Free: A Memoir

gautam 4 Comments

Remain Free: A Memoir

2015-09-21 10.07.53

On this day, four years ago, Georgia executed my friend, my mentor, my uncle, Troy Davis. I believe he was innocent. Today I’m officially releasing Remain Free, so the world doesn’t forget who he was or the truth of what really happened.

I wish you all could’ve met him. My greatest hope with Remain Free is that, through the hundreds of recorded conversations, letters, and in-person visits that make up this book, Troy’s voice shines through and you get a sense of who he really was.

Today I visited Troy’s grave. I had decided ahead of time that, instead of a party or some kind of flashy event, Remain Free’s “launch” would be me leaving him a copy on his grave in Savannah. My mother was concerned–what’ll happen to the book? Would it get damaged by the rain? What if someone with bad intentions got a hold of it? I was firm that I wanted to leave the book there, and let whatever would happen, happen. It was my way of showing Troy that I didn’t forget about him, and that his struggle was important enough to bring thousands of people together to bring this very object left on his grave into existence.

She then said, “I hope this book falls into the hands of the right person, someone who is destined to read this book.”

A few minutes later, a man approached us as we stood at the grave. He was in his fifties or sixties, black, several inches shorter than me. He wore a blue hat to protect his face from the harsh Savannah sun that had emerged from the rain clouds. His name was Leonard and he worked for the cemetery. We told him why we were there. His eyes widened. “You knew Troy Davis?” he asked incredulously. He was a Savannah native and familiar with the case, but was eager to learn more about Troy, about how he changed our lives.

My mother continued to talk to him while I opened the copy of Remain Free I brought with me and started writing a message to Troy. When I finished, the man said, “I’ll leave you two alone to meditate on Troy’s grave. But please, let me give you my email address. I want to follow this story. I want to learn more about Troy.” He walked away, and I realized that he was exactly what my mother had asked for, just minutes earlier. I picked up the book, and the I Am Troy Davis wristband, and walked toward the cemetery office and handed both objects to him. There was a mixture of gratitude and excitement in his voice when I gave it to him. He never told us why he walked across the entire cemetery to talk to us…just that he was glad he did. Maybe he was destined to be the one who read Troy’s copy.

I wasn’t planning on sharing the note I wrote for Troy in that book, but I realized that, in a sense, we’ve all taken this journey together. You all put your faith in me when I was a teenager with a dream and an overambitious timeline. The least I could do is return that trust by sharing what I wrote to Troy in the front cover of the book:

Troy,

It’s hard to believe four years have passed. I wish you were still here to see what kind of man I’ve become. I’ve been a bit lost since you’ve been gone. I haven’t lived up to my full potential. I could’ve used your guidance during these years. I hope that, despite my failures, you’d still be proud of me. I wrote the book, just like you said I should. This book brought hundreds of people together to make it possible—people who’ve never met you, many of whom have never met me. They all came together because they believed this story—our story—was something worth telling, something worth sharing.

I promise that as long as I’m alive, people won’t forget your story. I promise I won’t stop fighting until the death penalty is ended in the United States. I promise I’ll fight to live up to my full potential, to make the world a better place and to save the other Troy Davises out there. It’s been four years since I’ve written a letter. Here is my longest letter to you, for you.

Your adopted nephew,

Gautam Narula

The last time I was here I was filled with sadness, but today I’m filled with gratitude. Thanks for making Remain Free possible.

 

Remain Free Preview II: Death Row

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Death Row

This is a preview from Remain Free, which will be released on September 21, 2015.

 

The most direct route was to go down 400 and onto 75, slicing through the heart of Atlanta from top to bottom and following the interstate straight to Jackson. We instead took 285, circling the city and enveloping ourselves in the sprawling suburbs that ringed downtown until we merged back onto 75. It was about forty miles of monotony from there—stifled yawns, graffiti-covered buildings, and the occasional patch of pine trees until Exit 201. There wasn’t much to see in Jackson, population five thousand and county seat of the unfortunately named Butts County. The main road was deserted—just a trucker gas station and some empty parking lots. We drove until we saw a sign on the left: GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC PRISON.

The road onto the prison campus was narrow but smooth. Tall pines lined the shoulders, which gave way to woods. A squat cottage—the warden’s, we were later told—nestled in a clearing against the woods amid lush, manicured grass. The cottage sat astride an idyllic lake where geese floated lazily by a wooden dock. Birds chirped, and I could feel the simple yet elegant beauty of it all.

But something felt off. Why was this here? This was an odd place to hold rapists and murderers. It was an even odder place to kill them.

The road ended in a two level parking lot. Behind it, a fence draped in barbed wire formed a rectangle that extended to the horizon, interrupted only by the emotionless vigilance of carefully placed watchtowers. Everything was white: the buildings, the prison vans, the watchtowers, even the helipad attached to the parking lot by a thin strip of concrete. Pranavi shuddered. My mother just stared ahead.

When I walk outside the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, I am free. When I go in, I am a criminal. My pockets are searched and emptied before I walk through a metal detector. Wallets, ID cards, and keys are confiscated, and our clothes are thoroughly checked to ensure minimal skin exposure. My hand is stamped so they know when I come and when I go. I am shepherded through a series of cramped cages where the door behind me closes before the one in front opens.

As I walk I feel the gaze of dozens of electronic and human eyes. Inspirational posters crowd the walls, ignored by those who work here and unseen by those who live here. I bound past an elevator for the handicapped, which hasn’t worked in months, and walk up a flight of stairs where a bulletin board lists my rights as a visitor.

The visitor’s lobby: On the left are two microwaves and a few vending machines, which will rapidly deplete the eighty quarters we bring in to replace Troy’s missed meal. On the right are two bathrooms. In the center is the main visitor area, where non-death row inmates sit with their visitors without the restrictions of bars or handcuffs. Their white jumpsuits read “Georgia Dept. of Corrections” on the back.

One inmate runs to his four-year-old daughter and picks her up with tears of joy. A boy my age is clad in a shirt with the words “Free My Dad” on the front. Beyond a glass wall and yellow bars, prisoners trundle along, occasionally followed by guards.

Welcome to Troy Davis’s home.

Troy Davis, inmate 657378, walks in now, bound in handcuffs. Two guards escort him to the visitation cell, a long, narrow room with concrete walls on three sides and reinforced glass and metal mesh on the fourth. We follow them in, and once Troy is inside they remove his handcuffs and walk out, locking the door behind them. He hugs each of us before we sit down. Then he begins his story.