Phillip

Repost this everywhere on the internet! Send a letter!

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Victim of 1974 frame-up in Louisiana
Renewed calls for the freedom of Gary Tyler

By Lawrence Porter

7 March 2007

During the past month, a renewed interest has developed in the case of Gary Tyler, a black man from Louisiana who was arrested as a teenager in 1974 and convicted for a murder he did not commit. Tyler, who is now 48 years old, has spent his entire adult life behind bars in Angola State Penitentiary, the victim of a racially and politically motivated frame-up.

Tyler’s arrest and conviction took place in an atmosphere of racial antagonisms whipped up by the Ku Klux Klan and Democratic and Republican politicians in response to court-ordered school desegregation. Tyler was accused of killing a white youth who was part of a crowd attacking a school bus in which Tyler and other black students were riding about 25 miles west of New Orleans.

The charges against Tyler were totally concocted. The alleged murder weapon—which was not found during initial police searches of the bus—turned out to have been a stolen pistol from a police firing range, which later “disappeared.” Witnesses who gave statements against Tyler recanted them, saying they had been threatened by police.



Tyler was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. One on the youngest people on death row in America at the time, Tyler’s life was only spared when the US Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s death penalty statutes. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment without parole, probation, or suspension of sentence for 20 years.

There is absolutely no legal basis for keeping him in prison. On two separate occasions a federal appeals court ruled that Gary’s trial was fundamentally unfair. The Louisiana Board of Pardons recommended pardons for Tyler on three separate occasions—in 1989, 1991 and 1995—but governors have refused to take action.

After years in which the media maintained a virtual silence, the recent coverage of Gary Tyler’s case is a welcome development. On February 12, Amnesty International (AI), who first listed Tyler as a political prisoner in 1994, issued a new public statement entitled, “Serious miscarriage of justice in Louisiana must be rectified,” calling on Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco to immediately pardon Tyler and order a full investigation into his case. (See http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510262007)</p>

The statement by AI followed the publication of three articles
by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on the case in the paper’s February 1, 5 and 8 issues. On March 1, “Democracy Now” moderator Amy Goodman carried a special program on Gary Tyler that aired on National Public Radio. Present on the program were Bob Herbert, Gary’s sister Bobbie McCray, and his mother Juanita Tyler, who at 74 has never stopped fighting for her son’s freedom.

On “Democracy Now,” Bob Herbert said he spoke with a representative of Louisiana’s current governor, Democrat Kathleen Blanco, who made it clear the state would take no initiative on behalf of Tyler. The spokesperson suggested his lawyers make another request for a pardon, which, the governor’s representative claimed, would be “duly considered.” This refusal to act only reveals that many of the same reactionary forces that were responsible for the frame-up still carry enormous weight in Louisiana politics.

The Workers League—the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party—and its youth movement the Young Socialists first took up the campaign for Gary’s freedom in 1976 when the then 17-year-old youth was facing the electric chair. Our reporters traveled to Louisiana and conducted a full investigation into the circumstances of Gary’s arrest and conviction, which pointed overwhelmingly to a carefully prepared frame-up by the state. The party insisted that this was not simply a case of “Southern justice” and racism but an attack on the whole working class.



A major campaign was organized in the US and internationally
among young people, workers and in the trade union movement demanding Gary's freedom. The Workers League and Young Socialists distributed tens of thousands of copies of a pamphlet entitled The Frameup of Gary Tyler and collected close to 100,000 signatures on petitions calling for Gary's release. After holding several marches throughout the country to popularize his case, a march was held in Harlem, New York on December 4, 1976, which was attended by several hundred youth and trade unionists and addressed by Terry Tyler, Gary's brother.

Background to the frame-up

The events of Gary Tyler’s case were set in the turbulent period of the integration of public schools in Louisiana that had been resisted by racist politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties. On October 7, 1974 Gary, then 16 years old, was on a school bus with other black students following court orders to integrate Destrehan High School in St. Rose Parish outside of New Orleans.

Racial tensions had been running high with several fights taking place between black and white students. Right-wing forces, such as the Ku Klux Klan, and one of its leaders, David Duke, were using the issue of busing to whip up racial tensions in the area. As a result of the tensions the principal closed the school early and ordered all students to go home.

Gary, a sophomore, had been suspended by the principal that morning even though he said he was not involved in any fighting. He was sent home but was picked up as he hitched-hiked home by a deputy sheriff who took him back to the school. There, he caught the bus along with other black students going to their area of town.

A mob of 200 white protesters were threatening the black students as they boarded the buses. As Bus 91 pulled away it was pelted with rocks and bottles by those in the crowd. The sheriffs and deputies on duty at the scene stood by and refused to aid the students on the bus. Someone screamed they saw someone in the crowd with a gun and everyone hit the floor. A white youth in the crowd was shot and later died.

The police ordered all of the students off the bus and began a search of the vehicle. They searched the bus twice but did not find a weapon. During this time the police began to harass Gary’s cousin, Ike Randall, who had a chain on his neck with a bullet attached to it. Gary spoke up for him, telling the police it wasn’t right to harass Ike and that he had a chain just like it. The police grabbed Gary and charged him with “disturbing the peace.”

Afterwards another “search” was conducted and police claimed they found the murder weapon. Tyler was then charged with the shooting death of 13-year-old Timothy Weber.

As Herbert recounted in one of his columns, “Matters moved amazingly fast after the shooting. Racial tension gave way to racial hysteria. A white boy had been killed and some black had to pay. Mr. Tyler, as good as any, was taken to a sheriff’s substation where he was beaten unmercifully and shouted commands that he confess. He would not.”

Herbert went on to explain that the gun supposedly used in the murder, “miraculously” appeared. “Investigators ‘found’ a .45-caliber pistol,” stated Herbert. “Never mind that there were no fingerprints on it and it turned out to have been stolen from a firing range used by the sheriff’s deputies.”

On the “Democracy Now” program, Amy Goodman played a previously tape-recoded interview of Gary Tyler where he recounts the police beating at the substation.

“Then that’s when they came and got me,” Gary said. “That’s when the officer went to writing the report on [inaudible] and myself. And when he asked me how old I was, I told him 16 years old. So he looked at me. He said, ‘You dumb mother-[expletive]! Why didn’t you tell me you was a juvenile?’ I said, ‘You didn’t ask me’...

“That’s when they brought me in the back of the substation and they proceeded to beat on me, OK? So it lasted about a few hours.... If I tell him who fired the gun, you know, that would let me off the hook, you understand? Who did it? And if I did it, tell them that you did it, because—no, excuse me, tell them that I did it, because only thing that would happen to me, I would go to Scotland, you understand? And I would be out for a few years. I told him, ‘For something I didn’t do? No, uh-uh.’ So when he realized he couldn’t get anywhere with me in reference to that, he left.”

Gary’s mother, his cousin Ike, who was also in jail, and his brother all saw or heard the police beating Gary. Juanita said after hearing her son being beaten she told the police she wanted to see him. The policeman who picked up Gary, V.J. St. Pierre, said, “It will be six months before you see your son because my cousin’s brains have been blown out and some mother-[expletive] is going to pay for it.”

Gary was charged with first-degree murder, a capital crime, meaning he would be tried in an adult court rather than in juvenile court.

The trial

The trial, held in November 1975, was a farce. The presiding judge in the case was Judge Ruche Marino, a reported member of the White Citizens Council, a respectable version of the Ku Klux Klan.

The hand-picked jury was all-white even though 25 percent of the population in the area was black. Tyler’s lawyer, Jack Williams, who had never tried a major case, offered no serious defense. According to Herbert, Williams mainly complained to Tyler’s family that he was not being paid enough money. Williams spent a total of an hour with Gary before his trial; did not interview a single witness or present an expert witness, nor did he object to gross errors by the judge.

All of the main witnesses in the case, high school students threatened by the police, later recanted their testimonies after Gary was convicted. Natalie Blanks, the main witness and the only person to testify that she saw Gary shoot the gun, recanted her testimony in a 31-page affidavit in March 1976. She said the police had threatened to charge her as an accessory if she did not testify on their behalf.

Gary’s mother, Juanita, and other family members were not allowed in the court during the trial. Juanita was told she was going to be a witness and should wait outside the court room. “I was told I was supposed to be a witness,” Mrs. Tyler told the Workers League in 1976. “ But I was never called and waited outside until I heard that both sides had rested their case. When the jury came back with a verdict, we were not there at all. We don’t know how long the jury was out. When they began the recess, that’s when the police began loading the hall with guns.”

“Then the lawyer, Jack Williams, walked out and said that Gary was found guilty of first degree murder. I felt terrible. I just didn’t have an idea a judge could order Gary to die.” The trial lasted five days and was decided by the jury within three hours.

Legal rulings

Later that year the US Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s death penalty statutes were unconstitutional. In January 1977, Louisiana’s Supreme Court annulled Gary’s death sentence and determined that his death sentence be commuted to life. In June 1980 the Fifth Court of Appeals determined that Gary was “convicted on the basis of an unconstitutional charge,” and that his trial was “fundamentally unfair.”

The court also found that Gary’s lawyer, John Williams, failed to object to the judge’s erroneous instructions at the time of trial. Marino instructed the jury they could presume Gary to be guilty even before they deliberated. The appeals court vacated Gary’s conviction and stated that his lawyer’s failure to act was so serious that it led to a miscarriage of justice.

The state appealed the decision and on April 27, 1981 the Fifth Court of Appeals reversed its earlier decision. In essence, the appeals court was saying Gary received an unfair trial, but they could not grant him a new trial due to the incompetence of Williams, who said he could not remember why he did not object to the judge's biased rulings.

Gary’s lawyers then appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

The Louisiana Democratic Party, which has long dominated political life in the state, has strong ties to racist elements at every level and has played a key role in keeping Gary Tyler behind bars. On three separate occasions the state’s pardon board recommending a lessening of Tyler’s sentence, which would have allowed him by now to be released. Democratic Governor Roemer rejected the requests on two separate occasions in 1989 and 1991, claiming Gary received a fair trial. Governor Edwin V. Edwards—another Democrat who was later convicted on charges of corruption—never issued a ruling on the pardon board’s appeal.

Gary continued to express his defiance in the interview played on “Democracy Now.” “I don’t think it’s so much an issue of me proving my innocence now,” he said. “I feel enough has been done to exonerate me of that. It’s just that the system is not receptive to that. The system is not receptive to the mistake that they made in my case, just like they made in other cases throughout the country.... But as long as I continue to be here, it will never die.”

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality
Party renew the call for young people, workers and all those who
defend democratic rights to demand the immediate release of Gary
Tyler with full compensation paid to him from the state for the
years stolen from his life.

Click here
to submit a letter of protest to Louisiana's Governor Kathleen
Blanco.

Please
send copies of all messages to the WSWS

A short response to George Reisman

While skimming over youtube for some videos on socialism I came across this ridiculous video of George Reisman, a Libertarian hack, who claims (in the tradition of Von Mises) that "Nazism is Socialism." This is an utterly ridiculous and false assertion. You can view the video that this is a response to here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk9WQaAIbOg

To anyone who is not a complete fool, it will be obvious that libertarianism is a hopeless maze of logical contradictions that shatters to pieces upon critical examination. Libertarianism is a nice word for "nothing", since it explains nothing real and proposes nothing fiesable. Its danger lies in the fact that it obscures what really occurs under capitalism and therefore does a service to the ruling class.

Fascism and hence "Nazism" use socialist rhetoric in order to win over layers of the working class to their very anti-socialist policies - i.e., the crushing of socialist/communist organizations (see Germany in the 30's) and the maintenance of capitalism.

Trotsky noted that Mussolini, the father of fascism, was once a socialist, who fully understood the class struggle and its implications - but used his knowledge to devise a system that would attempt to suppress the contradictions of capitalism by brute force, to ensure that the outcome of the class struggle would be the victory of imperialism. This is evident, too, from reading Mussolini's fascist manifesto. As Trotsky said, a doctor armed with the knowledge of medical science knows not only how to heal a wound, but also how to inflict pain and damage with absolute precision.

Nazism and Fascism are not socialist systems. The economic system of fascism is called corporatism. Mussolini and Hitler were avowed opponents of Marxism, of Bolshevism, of egalitarianism and democracy.

Fascism arises when bourgeois democracy reaches an impasse, the point at which class tensions reach their apogee, at which the mere existence of organized labor or working class political movements can no longer be tolerated. It is a movement by, for and of the big bourgeoisie to repress and wipe out the contradictions of capitalism by force. It relies on mobilizing the pressured and hysterical middle classes, and directing them against the working class where it is organized, and against the most vulnerable layers (such as immigrants) as scapegoats.

Marx tore Proudhon a new one when he wrote "What they all want [the middle class ideologists] is competition without the pernicious consequences of competition. They all want the impossible, i.e. the conditions of bourgeois existence without the necessary consequences of those conditions." Meaning, you want a free market and a free competition, but you don't want to deal with the results of that - the winners acting as winners do, consolidating their power and wealth and using it to make the market "unfree" to their advantage. You can't have it both ways. Private competition leads to private consolidation, unchecked and unaccountable authority over the vast majority of society's resources. Socialism places these resources under social ownership and popular control. There can be no other check on the abuse of power than to ensure that every member of society is powerful, has power over the products of their own creation and a say in how their production is organized.

Libertarianism is, and has been, a bankrupt, discredited, theoretically deficient ideology since Marx trounced Proudhon, Bastiat, and others a century ago.

And further more, anyone who buys into the Austrain school hogwash should read this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1904/criticism/index.htm


**Note**
The majority of my response was taken from other people on the myspace socialism forum.

I enjoyed my new years immensely. I had an exceedingly great time at Chelsey's house.

School has been boring. The only class worth going to is A.P. European history. However, it has been pretty lacking the past few weeks for some reason. I have to work on my Renaissance artist presentation (Jan Van Eyck) for tomorrow. I'm not really caring too much about this. I'm waiting until we start the Enlightenment, which is my favorite time period.

I've been enjoying autumn. I picked some chestnuts and apples a few days ago. I've been lounging around reading The Grapes of Wrath while eating those delicious little treasures and drinking apple cider. Mmmmmm. The weather is nice, but I do have to admit that all of the drab colors of the dying leaves and cloudy skies poisons the mood sometimes; it has a way of making you brood over minute litle details and thus you get a little down. That hasn't happened too much though. I've been busy and happy.

Chelsey and I are going to go to the Sharon library book sale thing tomorrow (I think). I'm pretty pumped for that. They have tons of books for 25 cents. I kind of want to go on a hayride. I better do that homework. Blah.

In a previous post I mentioned setting up a small anti-war protest. I've been thinking about that a little bit again today. Well, the plans for that are slowly solidifying in a different form than previously intended--this is a good thing though. It's not going to be an anti-war protest anymore. I've discussed the issue in depth with some other comrades: we decided that holding a series of public meetings, rather than a demonstration, would be a more efficient means of communicating the message of the Socialist Equality Party.

We've decided to postpone further actions until colleges are back in session.
My feelings are that our target audience should be the discontent college students, the elderly, trade unions, workers, women, and minorities. Our election campaign, while small, is presenting an alternative to the two party system for the broad masses of people. The two party system has caused a cul-de-sac in the American political arena.
Both the Democrats and Republicans serve in the interests of big business, and are pro-war.
The masses of working people are ostracized and alienated under the current political set up.

First, we need a cadre of disciplined, dedicated socialists to form a work group.
We need to get five to ten reliable workers, who are likely to stay past the first few meetings. This will be our core group, which will be expected to know what is going on with the group at all levels. We can continue to work on any number of projects. A small group of disciplined Marxists can accomplish a lot. We need to get 3 or 4 more people, and then start having routine study groups/meetings to discuss tactics?

Attracting potential listeners, Organization, Recruitment

*Find spaces to hold meetings. Cheapest possible price. Ask for donations at door. Space should be able to hold about 75 people?
Public address system.

*Convince people to attend a meeting by one on one contact. If people are asked directly to come to a meeting, then they are more likely to attend than if they simply hear or read about it without being put on the spot for a commitment.

*Having a petition or sign-up sheet will be invaluable for follow up calls and mailings.

*Mail a letter or postcard about a meeting, followed by a phone call reminder.

*Leafleting or setting up literature tables at speaking engagements, concerts, meetings, film showings, shopping centers, demonstrations, and so forth will aid in increasing our attendance rates.

*Registration week on college campuses should be a very critical time for reaching people.

*Placing an ad or announcement for a meeting in a newspaper, on the radio or community billboard, or simply postering key locations with fliers can be useful to draw people, but don't rely on these methods to act as more than a reminder.

The meeting

*Free beverages and snacks

*Write and follow an agenda

*Brief introductions

*issues
-- Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel
--Exploitation
--Attack on living standards
--Democratic rights
--Political backdrop: two major parties and their interests
--Aims of SEP

In wake of London arrests: Another attempt to terrorize the American people
By Bill Van Auken, Socialist Equality Party candidate for US Senate from New York
12 August 2006
www.wsws.org

This article is available as a PDF leaflet to download and distribute

Before all but the sparsest details of the alleged terror plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights have been revealed, the American people are being subjected once again to a campaign of fear-mongering and intimidation directed from the White House.

The aim of this propaganda drive, aided and abetted by the media, is to portray opposition to the war in Iraq and to the policies of the Bush administration in general as tantamount to collusion with or capitulation to terrorism and mass murder.

The administration did not even wait until the arrests were announced, but got a head-start in the form of a loathsome statement issued by Vice President Dick Cheney, who staged a rare teleconference with the media Wednesday to deliver his verdict on the Democratic primary defeat of incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. The three-term senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000 lost to political newcomer Ned Lamont, who ran as a critic of the war in Iraq and attacked Lieberman for his vocal support for the war.

( Read the rest here )

Dear livejournal,

Today has been pretty uneventful. I'm almost finished with Out of this furnance by Thomas Bell. It's a novel about three generations of "Slovak" immigrant labor in Pennsylvania. It's a solid read. The writing is pretty straight forward. I like it more for the local history/cultural aspect than for anything else. I have a few pages left. I have so many books that I want to read. I feel like I'll never be able to get them all done in my lifetime.

It rained really hard all day, so it's been pretty comfortable inside my house. My basement flooded again. Blah. The lights have been flickering on and off because of the power surges. I finally put a screen in my window so there shouldn't be anymore annoying bugs crawling in. I went to C's waffle house with Phill Cresswell today. I got chicken parmesean and a salad. It was pretty radical. Phill C. got all you can eat spaghetti. We caught up with eachother. Pretty boring stuff.

I reject the view that the state of our lives and the world as a whole are the irreversible consequences of "original sin" or "human nature," rather they are the products of historical and cultural circumstance, gradually imposed over the course of time and inherited by you and me. We must recognize: our senses of perception are overwhelmed and muddled by the toxic flurry of brand names, unwitting victims shellshocked by the visceral psychological war waged upon us daily via thousands of conduits in the service of forces seemingly far removed from our personal lives. From the moment we become sentient, thinking beings we're conditioned to identify ourselves with various artificial constructs of the marketplace, handicapped by habits borne of a hydra-headed consumer culture, ever-maneuvering, suppressing our humanity for the sake of base personal interest (monetary, sexual, etc.). We are all the produce of the same crop; the organic, biological, human crystallization of our immediate and wider surroundings. Yet we identify with other people based on our musical taste, clothing, job, skin color, appearance, etc.. We identify based on the smallest trivialities.

( Read more... )

My Grandpa Walter Martin (on my biological mothers side) passed away on Friday. He was 86. His death is the end of a chapter, one left complete with unsolved problems, the conclusions never addressed, and pages ripped out in the next chapters after. ( Read more... )

Notes to self:

-- Stop being so self-deprecating .
-- Don't bother typing large journal entries when you know you won't post them because you're so fed up by the end.

Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.

Tomorrow is Ryden's last show. It's in Grove City at Sun Gin's. Frankly, I'm glad it's over. I can't take Nathan anymore. He's bad at drums and a horrible person: a liar, a womanizer, and a back stabbing asshole.
He limits "the band's" creativity because of his limited musical skills, then he turns around and tells people that it's my fault because "he doesn't like what I play on guitar." Well, that's stupid. I'm not very sorry that Nathan can't play drums to complex guitar parts. It would be hard if your genitals operated as your brain, as in his case. His reason for dumping his girlfriend was that he "wanted to fuck other girls."
Well, whatever, I'd never do that. We have opposite outlooks and views on life, morality, ethics, etc.
I cannot wait until school is over. It's driving me insane.
I hate being around people whom I can't stand half the day.

The weather has been really wonderful lately. (What an extremely interesting thing to write about, right?)
It has been really nice weather to just sit outside while wearing a sweater and drinking coffee. It's good to just relax and discuss the insignificant happenings of life with friends.
Chelsey, Joel, and I went to Panera bread today. We drank some coffee and bullshitted for a few hours.
I told them about a cool science trick: using pressure on top of liquid in a container to push it through a straw. Ha. Anyway, hanging out was pretty fun; I had a good time. I've noticed lately, though, that all of my conversations end up gravitating toward "school" and its happenings. I hate that. I feel like it isolates anyone who doesn't go to my school. That's another reason why I can't wait 'til it ends. (There I go again! School, school, school. Ugh. Fuck school.) Summer is going to be good. I want to read a ton of books, hang out with friends, study math, and just lounge around. I need to get cracking on organizing an antiwar protest (which is something I've been thinking about a lot for the past half year). I guess, I'll save those details for another time. It's getting late.

This is new. I don't have the time to write an in depth analysis of my life right at this moment. Maybe later. ;)