KEEP FIGHTING FOR TROY DAVIS AND FOR JUSTICE

HELP END A LAW THAT PUT A MAN TO DEATH WITHOUT JUST CAUSE

This was a email sent to me from the NAACP. I am posting it not because I want to brag but to show everyone our fight is not over. The struggle to abolish the death penalty is now more important than ever and even if we did not save Troy Anthony Davis his wishes were to continue so that we could save another innocent person.

Last week, Elton, you changed the world.

The more than one million petitions, letters and emails that we directly connected to your own efforts to help on behalf of Troy Davis have put his case in the global spotlight.

Together, our collective action spurred pleas for a stay from people like Pope Benedict XVI, President Carter, former FBI Director William Sessions and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as demonstrations from Savannah to Atlanta to Dayton to Hong Kong.

But perhaps most importantly, we broke through the silence about the horror the death penalty represents. Your work brought about conversations in millions of American households, helping to change hearts and minds about capital punishment.

Now, we must achieve the mission Troy gave each of us.

As Troy Davis — a fellow NAACP activist — said so many times, “This movement began before I was born … it must continue and grow stronger … until we abolish the death penalty once and for all.”
Please take a moment to sign the NAACP pledge to fight for the end of the death penalty in the United States.

Please copy and paste the following link to visit and help:
http://action.naacp.org/page/s/troy-davis-pledge?utm_medium=email&utm_source=NAACP&utm_campaign=20110926troydavispledge&source=20110926troydavispledge

September 21, 2011 was a searing moment for all of us. Every fail safe failed.

Current Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm acknowledged that if it were up to him today, he would not try this as a death penalty case. Yet, when he could have acted to stop the execution, he refused to do so.

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, designed specifically to ensure that executions never happen amidst so much doubt, allowed it to happen anyway.

Justices on the Georgia State Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court — men and women who know that our justice system is degraded when we allow someone to be executed even when the former warden of the very prison the inmate is in says there is too much doubt to proceed — cleared the way for the execution to be carried out anyway.

These failures are the result of a system that gives the power of life and death, God-like powers, to humans who are as prone to error and susceptible to bias as any of us.

Human nature won’t change, so the system must. This must never happen again.

I promised Troy that no matter what happened we would keep fighting until the death penalty is abolished. That is the only way we can possibly guarantee our government will never make such a tragic and irrevocable mistake again.

Until that day, we are all Troy Davis. And in the name of Troy Anthony Davis, we must all carry on the fight.

In the past two years, the NAACP and our allies have abolished the death penalty in three states. When we succeed in abolishing it in ten more, we will be in a position to ask the Supreme Court to abolish it entirely. In the meantime, there are effective strategies we can use, in even the most conservative states, to diminish its use greatly.

In the months ahead, we will convene teach-ins around the country and implement an aggressive state-by-state agenda to end capital punishment for good. We will host a national summit in Georgia to launch this next wave of activism.

But we cannot do any of this without your help.
Please take the pledge today, and ask each of your friends to do the same. Help us all carry out Troy Davis’ mission.

Please copy and paste the following link to visit and help:
http://action.naacp.org/page/s/troy-davis-pledge?utm_medium=email&utm_source=NAACP&utm_campaign=20110926troydavispledge&source=20110926troydavispledge

Your work has sparked a movement, Elton. Let’s keep it going until the job is done. Together, we can ensure that Troy’s death was not in vain and this will never happen again.

In solidarity.

Ben

Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP