Budget Cuts and the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike

[Magda Hassan]

Legendary Comedian Dick Gregory On Hunger Strike To Protest Capital Punishment, Death of Troy Davis

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Civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory was among the people who filled the 2,000-capacity Jonesville Baptist Church that hosted Troy Davis' funeral on Saturday in Savannah, Georgia. Afterward, he told Democracy Now! he was starting a year-long hunger strike that night to protest against the death penalty. "I will not be eating solid food until next fall," Gregory says. He called on others to pray and meditate that "the truth will come out" in Davis' conviction for the 1989 killing of off-duty police officer, Mark MacPhail a crime which Davis has always maintained he did not commit. [Includes rush transcript]

Filed under Troy Davis, Death Penalty

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Dick Gregory, comedian, civil rights activist and longtime opponent of the death penalty

[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: After the burial of Troy Davis, the family and hundreds of supporters, families, friends, went to the International Longshoreman's Hall in Savannah. Among those who had eulogized Troy Davis was civil-rights activist, comedian Dick Gregory. At the Longshoreman's Hall, I got a chance to talk to him about what he announced that he is starting, a year-long hunger strike to protest the death penalty.[/B][/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: So why did you come down to Savannah, Georgia.?[/B][/B]
[B][B]DICK GREGORY: Well, I'm ashamed to live in a country that kills people, the state. I'm ashamed as a Christian, well though a Christian is different. My momma always said, "Accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior". OK, Jesus ain't gonna hear ya, a Jew, you know. But how can Christians cry over the crucifixion of Christ and don't get rid of capital punishment, when the state killed Jesus, the state. He wasn't mugged to death or run down by some drunken chariot driver, the state killed him. It's easy to sing some cheap song. Were you there when they crucified the Lord-2000 years. You weren't there then and most of us wouldn't be there now.[/B][/B]
[B]I'm not against capital punishment. When I started off fighting against I had a gun in my house. I am not against capital punishment because poor folks get it or somebody might be accused wrong, I'm against killing. The state, the state. The one thing that happened with Troy Davis, America was the loser, and China was the winner. No longer can America talk to China now about human rights, OK. Now there was a time, they could do it but with the fastness of the news shows heard all over the world, the Chinese are sitting there saying I wish they would come over here again and tell me about it again. It's like me, as a father, saying to my children, you can't get drunk, you can't spit on the floor, you can't smoke dope, but I do it. See, I've lost the moral authority, and that's what happened with this. And the reason is this case, see.[/B]
[B]Many of us forget that Northern Ireland solved their problem by some men willing to fast till they die. No other reason. It embarrassed Britain so bad all over the world, Bobby Sands. I remember all the stuff I got in my head. Bobby Sands, god, starved to death. And that whole thing and the hatred that existed over there in Northern Ireland was just incredible, and yet, they was able to resolve that when was able to make that supreme one. That's what they just did here. They have been able to get away with it, but not with the quickness of the news today.[/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: You said you are going to start a fast at midnight tonight?[/B][/B]
[B][B]DICK GREGORY: Midnight tonight until next... Well, see, it's an easy day to remember. They killed him on the equinox, the fall equinox, now I don't believe that's no accident. On the 21st was the equinox. I will not be eating no solid food until next fall. And this asks people, not to fast, but to tune in at 12:00 noon, that the truth. Let me tell you about that prayer. The cop's mother who's glad he's dead, she should join us if she's interest in the truth. We didn't say prove that he wasn't guilty, we just say pray and meditate that the truth will come out. That's powerful and I tell you what, it won't be in a year, that's so powerful for that to happen. It will happen.[/B][/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: On September 21st, 2011, when Troy Davis was executed at death row prison in Jackson, Georgia, you were at another execution in Texas, the execution of Lawrence Brewer. Can you talk about why him? Why were you there? Who he was?[/B][/B]
[B][B]DICK GREGORY: I would have been there if Hitler was there. The state does not have a right to kill people. If you and I are in the military and we are trying to kill these people, and give their country to our country, if they capture us, they can't snatch our teeth out or give us electric shock treatment. If them barbarians at war have certain laws to war and America don't? See, if I kill somebody and they give me life, that's punishment; when they give me death, that's revenge. That's altogether different a different group. And again I say this, if a white man raped my three-year old granddaughter, and so I go out and started raping three-year old white children, I'd stoop below them. So, that's my problem here. Somewhere, it has to stop.[/B][/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: Now, with Lawrence Brewer's execution-this is the man was involved with the killing of James Byrd, that brutal ex-killing where they ripped this African American man apart-James Byrd's family members are opposed to the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed him?[/B][/B]
[B][B]DICK GREGORY: I don't base my thoughts on what somebody else is. The first time he came up for, to be executed, I took Martin Luther King the Third down there, and we fasted and James Byrd's son. I brought him to Houston and I asked him a question, "The night they killed your daddy and lynched him where were you?" He said, "I was in Camp Lejeune". Said, "Tell me about this." Said, "I just volunteered for the Marines. I was in boot camp." I said, "tell me what happened." Said, "Well a company commander came and told me what happened. Gave me a three week pass, and I went to the funeral, went back to Camp Lejeune, went to training, went to Iraq. So why should I care what they think?"[/B][/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: And he didn't want to see his father's killer killed?[/B][/B]
[B][B]DICK GREGORY: After we told him how stupid it was, he'd sit there us and when they get ready to kill that other white boy that was with him, he said, "Here is what they did. It was three white boys did it. This one told on the other two. So he don't get it." There is something wrong with that.[/B][/B]
[B][B]AMY GOODMAN: That was activist and comedian Dick Gregory.[/B][/B]