SARN Celebrates Human Rights Week in Columbus
SARN celebrated Human Rights Week in Columbus GA in December.  Read about it here in English or aquí en español.

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No Nukes Tour October 3-8, 2011
On October 3, the No Nukes Tour kicked off in North Carolina with a press conference at 10am at the State Capitol, 1 East Edenton Street. The tour brought attention to nuclear power-related environmental injustice in the southeastern United States.
 
A public forum took place in Charlotte on October 3, 7pm, at the Cornwell Center of Myers Park Baptist Church, 2001 Selwyn Avenue, Charlotte 28207 (directly across from Queen University). Speakers included Jim Warren of the NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN); Theresa El-Amin, Southern Anti-Racism Network (SARN) and Howie Hawkins. Howie Hawkins travelled from Syracuse, NY to participate in all stops of the tour in NC, SC, GA, AL and northern FL.
 
Howie Hawkins is co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the United States in 1984. Mr. Hawkins told audiences, "We need a Green New Deal that restores the commitments in the old New Deal including full employment, income security and the right to health care. A Green New Deal needs to go beyond the old New Deal to fund a public investment program that puts people back to work building sustainable prosperity based on replacing nuclear and fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy, mass transit, organic agriculture and clean manufacturing."

Why a No Nukes tour in the South?
The outline of environmental injustice overshadows nuclear power.  This injustice extends to commercial nuclear plants, uranium mines, fuel enrichment and fabrication plants, and waste sites.  Most of all, this injustice affects miners, nuclear workers, and families living near radioactive facilities. 

Recent studies indicate that there is nuclear power-related environmental injustice, particularly in the southeastern United States.  Is this ongoing inequality deliberate?  Or have the habits and patterns of the past become so much a part of the landscape that the image of a colorblind society can be maintained even while injustice persists? 

We must remind and convince officials to take into account this pernicious, unwanted legacy when and where nuclear power decisions are made.  This is why we organized the No Nukes Tour.

Co-Sponsors
- Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (www.bredl.org)
- Florida Green Party (www.flgp.org)
- Georgia Green Party (www.georgiagreenparty.org)
- North Carolina Green Party (www.ncgreenparty.org)
- North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) (www.ncwarn.org)
- Nuclear Watch South (www.nonukesyall.org)
- South Carolina Green Party (www.scgreenparty.org)
- South Carolina Progressive Network (www.scpronet.com)
- Southern Anti-Racism Network (www.projectsarn.org)
- Georgia Women's Action for New Directions (www.georgiawand.org)


Tour Stops
October 3
Raleigh Old State House, 10am 
Contact: Lou Zeller, bredl@skybest.com or (336) 977-0852

Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, 7pm
Contact: Beth Henry, bethhenry@carolina.rr.com or (704) 650-6776
 
October 4
Columbia,  University of South Carolina, 4pm 
Contact: Scott West, slwest@gmail.com or (347) 581-0230
 
Columbia AFL-CIO/CLC, Mojeska Simkins House, 7pm 
Contact: Jenny Patterson, jennypatterson@knology.net or
(843) 270-1308
 
October 5
Augusta, Paine College, 9am
Contact: Charles Utley, cnutley@comcast.net or (706) 772-5558

Atlanta, NRC Regional Office, 3pm
Contact: Theresa El-Amin, pssarn@aol.com or (919) 824-0659
 
Columbus, Denny's, 7pm
Contact: Theresa El-Amin, pssarn@aol.com or (919) 824-0659
 
October 6
Atlanta, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions Luncheon, 1pm
Contact: Amanda Hill, ahill@wand.org, (404) 524-5999

October 7
Dothan, Farley Plant, 9am
Contact: Theresa El-Amin, pssarn@aol.com or (919) 824-0659
 
Gainesville, Friends Meeting House, 7pm
Contact: Michael Canney, alachuagreen@gmail.com or (386) 418-3791

October 8
The public was invited to College of Charleston Robert Scott Smalls Bldg room 235 on Saturday, October 8 at noon to participate in the 4-state No Nukes Tour with Howie Hawkins.  South Carolina is our nation’s largest nuclear waste dump.  Several nuke power plants are planned to be built heavily funded by taxpayers in the South.  Environmentalists, labor and economic justice activists are organizing to fight back against this massive expense that is a deadly danger to all.  Fukishima, Chernobyl, Ft. Calhoun and 3 Mile Island can happen again.  SCG&E is recklessly ignoring all safety while repressing green technologies of solar, wind, wave and hydrogen power systems that pose zero dangers.

A press conference is scheduled at 4 p.m. Mt Pleasant Library Auditorium on October 8.

Local contact 843-926-1750 Larry Carter Center
Southern Anti-Racism Network host theresa El-Amin 919-824-0659

 

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  Georgia Killed Troy Davis

Troy Davis is Free
 
All of the prayers for Troy Davis have been answered. And the answer is: "Troy Davis is a martyr in the struggle to end the death penalty in Georgia." As a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee I will do all that I can to honor Troy and the millions around the world who worked to save his life. Troy Davis understood that he is not the first innocent man to be killed at the hands of the state. His last words forgave his killers. Can DA Chisolm and the Board of Pardons and Paroles forgive themselves?
 
Eyewitness testimony is the most unreliable evidence that can be provided. DA Larry Chisolm said, "There are two Troy Davis cases, the legal case and the public relations case." Unfortunately, Mr. Chisolm couldn't see that his "legal" case fell apart years ago when 7 of the 9 witnesses recanted. Unfortunately, Mr. Chisolm was so bent on winning his case that he ignored the fact that his case disintegrated as the whole world watched.
 
My condolences to the MacPhail and Davis families. For me, the death of a loved one is a wound that somehow never really goes away. I've said to my family, "If I'm murdered and they cut my body up in a thousand pieces, don't kill them for me."
 
I'm convinced that a state should not have the right to take a life. As Thomas Jefferson said, "I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me."
 
The Troy Davis case was fraught with the flaws of human judgment from the witnesses who testified and recanted to the DA who refused to acknowledge his case had fallen apart to the MacPhail family members who believed the Fraternal Order of Police.
 
The Troy Davis case is over. However, two wrongs have never led to justice. As Francis Bacon said in 1625, "Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out." DA Larry Chisolm, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Supreme Court have failed to weed out the revenge that often comes with        the killing of a police officer.
 
It's now up to the state legislature to create law that will protect us from revenge and move us towards true justice. The state should not kill people to demonstrate that killing people is wrong. The death penalty is "unjust in the much". Abolition of the death penalty is what I'll work for the rest of my life.
 
Theresa El-Amin

This article appeared as an op-ed in the Ledger-Enquirer based in Columbus, GA.

Columbus Mobilized for September 16th

The Columbus NAACP sponsored a "Too Much Doubt" press conference to support clemency for Troy Davis on Friday, September 16, 10am at the Government Center in Columbus, 100 10th Street.  September 16 activities sponsored by the Columbus NAACP were part of a global day of action to save the life of Troy Davis. After the 10am press conference on Friday, a bus took Columbus residents to Atlanta for a march and prayer service culminating at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the Martin Luther King Jr. National Park.  The bus, which was sponsored by Amnesty International USA and the Southern Anti-Racism Network, left from the Macon Road K-mart at 4pm.

On August 19, 1989 an off-duty police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail, was shot and killed. The prime suspect identified Troy Davis as the person who killed the police officer. Since that tragic evening, 7 of the 9 witnesses have recanted their testimony. Several have said that they were pressured by the police to identify Troy Davis. Of the two remaining witnesses, one is the initial suspect.  In spite of these serious doubts about his guilt, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis on September 21, 2011.

Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congressmen Hank Johnson and John Lewis, former FBI Director and Judge William Sessions all called for a new trial for Troy Davis and have spoken out against his execution.