Present Tensed

Howard Zinn, Dave Zirin, & Campaign to End the Death Penalty @ UCHICAGO (Nov 2009)

The Cam­paign to End the Death Penal­ity’s Annual Con­ven­tion was this week­end at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago. I attended the keynote con­ver­sa­tion between Howard Zinn and Dave Zirin at a jam-packed Man­del Hall.

Over­all, the event was an inspir­ing call to action, as exon­er­ated death row pris­on­ers and activists reminded us that there is much work to be done in order to reform the Amer­i­can crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

Zinn & Zirin’s con­ver­sa­tion turned to much larger top­ics about his­tory & gov­ern­ment, but returned time and time again to the theme that the peo­ple have to take the respon­si­bil­ity for what is done in our name, and that we have a respon­si­bil­ity to use our power to change these actions to things that we can be proud of.

Some quick notes:

• I haven’t yet read “A People’s His­tory…”, but did watch the doc­u­men­tary “You Can’t be Neu­tral on a Mov­ing Train”.  Zinn is fas­ci­nat­ing.  He also has sharp sense of humor that is unex­pected con­sid­er­ing the weighty nature of the ideas being dis­cussed.  I think he’s the grand­fa­ther that all of the young­sters in the room wish they had.
• I didn’t know any­thing about Dave Zirin before this.  I’m going to check one of his books out from the library and take a look at his web­site.
• It’s irri­tat­ing how every­one on the left who vis­its the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago feels com­pelled to (at least briefly) trash the place.  As if they go into a blind rage and can only remem­ber Mil­ton Fried­man, while con­ve­niently for­get­ting that it is the very same uni­ver­sity of chicago that’s also host­ing their event.  It’s a shame that we can’t be under­stood as a com­pli­cated place with a diver­sity of interests.
• There was (sur­pris­ingly) no men­tion of the North­west­ern Inno­cence Project or for­mer IL Gov­er­nor George Ryan at this event.  Hope­fully both were men­tioned dur­ing the rest of the convention
• For­mer CPD Com­man­der John Burge is still the focal point of many of the local efforts to reform the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and abol­ish the death penalty.  Let’s not delude our­selves though, the prob­lems run much deeper than “one rogue cop”.   Bring­ing Burge to jus­tice is only one step.
• Troy Davis’s Sis­ter (Mar­tina Cor­reia) was an impres­sive speaker.  Her brother’s case is emblem­atic of al the prob­lems herein.
• Poor Pres­i­dent Obama.  He’s sav­aged from the both the left and the right.  The right thinks he’s a dan­ger­ous rev­o­lu­tion­ary, while the left thinks he’s an incre­men­tal­ist at best.   Clearly, nei­ther side par­tic­u­larly likes/trusts the government.

Also: I twit­tered my run­ning notes of the event from Man­del Hall, which have been col­lected here thanks to the Twit­ter Live­Blog Word­Press plugin.

7:08:36 PM: #cedp = Cam­paign to End Death Penalty

7:11:26 PM: #uchicago Man­del Hall is pretty packed and it looks like I’m the only observ­ing the no food or drink rule

7:14:43 PM: 3 cheers for the Word­Press Twit­ter Live blog plu­gin that’ll col­lect these tweets into a post as I go

7:14:50 PM: Blogged — Howard Zinn @ uchicago: 7:08:36 PM: #cedp — Cam­paign to End Death Penalty:  http://bit.ly/23apV3

7:17:16 PM: And we’re off! #cedp keynote. Quotes are quotes, every­thing else is an obser­va­tion of mine.

7:21:49 PM: #cedp a nice list of city­wide orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing uchicago ones, are spon­sors. The his­tory chan­nel will debut a doc­u­men­tary version

7:23:42 PM: #cedp of the people’s his­tory. 1996: Zinn attended the open­ing of the cam­paign to end the death penalty

7:26:44 PM: #cedp John Burge tor­ture vic­tim on stage, free after 20+ years of wrong­ful impris­on­ment. Let’s not think that Burge is the only such cop.

7:31:02 PM: “it wasn’t the big peo­ple who helped me, it was the small peo­ple, all of you” exon­er­ated death row inmate

7:32:00 PM: “there’s alot of John Burge’s” out there” exon­er­ated death row prisoner

7:34:07 PM: #cedp Troy Davis’s sis­ter on stage, his case is a trav­esty of justice

7:36:17 PM: Anti ter­ror­ism bills pro­hibit some new evi­dence from being intro­duced, it’s con­sti­tu­tional to exe­cute inno­cents in this country

7:38:09 PM: #cedp we are all Troy Davis. One step away from being rail­roaded to death row because of our reli­gion, our skin color, or our circumstance

7:39:08 PM: #cedp “there is no flag big enough to cover the shame of killing innocents”

7:48:48 PM: #cedp exon­er­ated pris­on­ers and their fam­i­lies are being acknowledged

7:52:08 PM: #cedp David Zirin and Howard Zinn, “like frost-Nixon, except I’m not British and he’s not evil”

7:54:07 PM: Zinn “I don’t trust the sys­tem, the gov­ern­ment, the dis­trict attor­neys, etcetera and cer­tainly not with the death penalty”

7:55:03 PM: Two #uchicago jabs in the first 10 min­utes, thank you Mil­ton Friedman…

7:56:22 PM: Zinn “who do they tar­get? The poor, those of color, the polit­i­cally unconnected…”

7:58:18 PM: Zinn spoke at naperville high school ear­lier today, vis­ited grave of Emma Goldman

8:01:05 PM: Zinn is hilar­i­ous. Great sense of humor. The grand­fa­ther every­one wishes they had…

8:01:35 PM: #cedp “war is a class phenomena”

8:03:32 PM: What is a people’s history?

8:05:19 PM: “any­time a pres­i­dent promises no war, you know what’s going to hap­pen” #cedp

8:07:25 PM: “Is there such a thing as a human­i­tar­ian war? If ww2 fails the test of a good war, then all wars fail.… War poi­sons all.”

8:09:15 PM: “in war the good guys and the bad guys end up doing very sim­i­lar things. All war tar­gets children”

8:11:16 PM: Zirin “ft. Hood story exam­ple of war poi­son­ing all”

8:12:43 PM: “Amer­i­can crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is like a magic fish­ing net that catches min­nows while let­ting all the sharks go free” Eugene Debs #cedp

8:15:30 PM: Zirin “the coun­try wastes such great human poten­tial In the crim­i­nal jus­tice system”

8:19:45 PM: Zinn “Lieber­man — Lam­ont, when Obama cam­paigned for Lieber­man that was when I knew he was just a politician”

8:24:25 PM: See­ing the left trash Obama for not going far enough, while the right trashes him for tear­ing down the sta­tus quo makes you feel for him

8:26:10 PM: Zinn “the USSR gave social­ism a bad name. There was social­ism long before the ussr”

8:28:54 PM: “there are so many signs of sick­ness in our soci­ety, we need health­care for our society”

8:31:36 PM: Zinn “peo­ple don’t want war, they don’t want peo­ple to be poor or homeless…”

8:33:45 PM: Zinn “if you get involved in a social move­ment your life will be better”

8:45:43 PM: #cedp Mamie Till’s hero­ism is men­tioned in the clos­ing state­ments. John Burge — it’s taken 25 years to get an indictment,

8:46:53 PM: #cedp … We have to get all the tor­tur­ers, all the John burges…

8:48:57 PM: The book sign­ing is going to be crazy, look­ing around, this room is packed side aisles are full

8:50:23 PM: #cedp death row? Hell no!

Some Pho­tos:

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