The Change; Will you be a part of it?

There are times when I complain about the complacency of the public in a world where the very same public is being exploited openly and carelessly, and then there are times when people, as few as they may be, finally give me a little bit of hope.

On October 5, the official declaration of the occupation of Wall Street was released, and if ever I was proud of American people, it is now. This is a huge moment in history.

Here it is:

"As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.


As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.


We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.


We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.


They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.


They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.


They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.


They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.


They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.


They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.


They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.


They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay.


They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.


They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.


They have sold our privacy as a commodity.


They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.


They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.


They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.


They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.


They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.


They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.


They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.


They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.


They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.


They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.


They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.


They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *


To the people of the world,


We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.


Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.


To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.


Join us and make your voices heard!"

Never forget that it only takes one spark to start a fire. My weapon is my writing. With my pen and paper, from right here on this blog, my voice is being heard. I am doing my part.

What will you do?

Justice? What's That...

Twenty-two years ago an undercover Georgia police officer by the name of Mark MacPhail was shot and killed. Two years later,  Troy Davis was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death row.

The conviction came with no evidence linking Davis to the crime, no murder weapon, and more reasonable doubt than evidence, yet he was sentenced to death based on the testimony of nine "eyewitnesses", seven of which have since admitted they cannot truly tie him to the crime and were coerced by officers to convict him.

Since the conviction, his execution has been postponed three times and all appeals have been denied by the Supreme Court. (Death has been dangled in his face three times; something akin to torture really.)

Davis's first execution date was in 2007. We are now in 2011 and the case is just now receiving rightful publicity. Today was his fourth execution date. He was supposed to die by lethal injection today at 7 p.m., and before this morning no one knew. 

Before seeing it on Twitter we did not care.

I am not sure if this is a fact of which, as a journalist, I should be proud or ashamed. It makes me wonder if I would have a voice in getting cases like these the publicity they deserve. Instead of spending years focusing on Casey Anthony and months focusing on her conviction and after-plans, why was the public not informed of the Troy Davis case? 

It seems the U.S alone has been keeping the details of the case under wraps. Twitter stopped "Troy Davis" and "#toomuchdoubt" from trending for fear of it being "offensive," but that did not stop millions of people from voicing their opinions. It did not stop us from reading up on the case and becoming informed. It did not stop us from being enraged with the so-called justice system.

Supporters in the UK, Peru, Hong Kong, France, Germany and Mali  have been actively involved in demonstrating for the cause. Amnesty International has pleaded for his case. Even Pope Benedict XVI and former President Jimmy Carter signed the petition for the cause, which up until September 17 had more than half a million signatures.

It is now after 10 p.m. and Troy Davis will be put to death in approximately half an hour. He has waited anxiously in the death chamber for more than three hours for the supreme court to consider one last appeal, and once again it has been denied. In half an hour a man is going to be put to death, while his family watches, for reasons that have not been proven. They are going to kill a possibly innocent man to prove to the world that killing is wrong.

There is something wrong with that picture.

How can mankind be the judge of whom should die and whom should live if mankind didn't create each other? How can you justly destroy what you did not create? What kind of message is it sending when you ignore the pleas of a death row inmate who wants nothing more than a fair trial?

This case has corruption written all over it. An officer died so someone else needs to. It is a concept I have never been able to understand and I hope I never do. The fact is, revenge does not bring your loved one back. It never has and it never will.

So why does it make people feel better to see someone else pay for the hurt? For twenty-two years the MacPhail family sought revenge. For twenty-two years they have been trying to kill someone in the name of justice. Twenty-two years? At what point do you just accept that your loved one is gone and try to gain peace from his or her memory? At what point do you stop and say to yourself that murder for murder is not an even option?

Will the MacPhail family really sleep that much better tonight?

Today we witnessed history, as we have so many times in the past decade. The case of Troy Davis will never die. His case will live on in time and hopefully, after this, history will never ever repeat itself.

RIP.

Casey Anthony: Once and For All

Admittedly, I am completely ignorant of the explicit details of this case. Being a journalism student, I should probably be ashamed--but shame does not change the fact.

I was never one to indulge in the excess of the media and their most often insignificant targets. I always found that the things the news glorified, even by demonizing, were never worth the attention. Casey Anthony's case is no different. Sad story? Yes. But worth years of airtime? No way.

Granted, I think we got hit extra hard by being in Orlando, but it was still too much of a story for my liking. And in the end, the verdict only helped to push it further along on the popularity scale--so much so that I already see a movie and possibly even a book coming out of it.

Well, here is my ignorant unbiased opinion: media hype is not supposed to get involved in the facts, or lack thereof, of a judicial case. No matter how many news anchors insinuate that she did it, or how many people interviewed were certain, it does not change the fact that there was little evidence to prove it. Even though many people may feel disgusted and outraged at the fact that she did not report her child missing for 31 days, that is not evidence that she committed the crime.

It is not what you know; it is what you can prove in court.

We can wail and scream and cuss about it from here until next year, but at the end of the day only Casey knows what happened to that little girl. And whether she spends the rest of her life in jail or not, the sad truth is that Caylee is still dead. No amount of demonizing her mother or criticising the judicial system will bring the little girl back. So what difference does it make? Our judgments have no significance in the grand scheme of life. People will always do what they want so long as they can get away with it. Just the same this may be an unfair ruling, I am sure there are dozens of people behind bars who don't deserve to be. People get locked up every day for using drugs, many of them spending years in jail for a decision they took which harms no one else but themself. (I mean if they want to snort the white stuff what does it matter to everyone else, or better yet, how does jail fix it?)

Millions of people are dying across the world from preventable and curable diseases. Little children are dying every day from malnutrition and dehydration by living in inhumane conditions. But these are not the things we wear out on the news. They are not as 'dramatic' and entertaining, I suppose.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?

In the end, the final judge of life, whoever it may be, will deal with Casey Anthony as he/she/it sees fit -- and that is really all we can hope for. In the meantime, we get to watch the monster we created as she uses her newly found fame to gain money from selling her story to writers and movie directors. Welcome to America.