Right-Wing Walker Group, Citizens for Responsible Government, Attacks and Slanders Janesville Teachers

Citizens for Responsible Government tied to anti-teacher flier

By STAN MILAM WTMJ Tuesday, May 22, 2012

JANESVILLE — An anti-teacher flier distributed over the weekend in Janesville is the work of a conservative Milwaukee organization with local representation.

Citizens for Responsible Government, also known as CRG Network, filed a freedom of information request with the School District of Janesville on March 29, said Brett Berg, spokesman for the district. Those figures were used to create the flier, said CRG Executive Administrator Chris Kliesmet.

“The group and its representative, Orville Seymer, filed a freedom of information request for a list of all Janesville district teachers, their job titles and annual salaries,” Berg said.

When contacted by The Gazette, Seymer said he knew the names of local participants but was asked not to release them.

“They want to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation,” Seymer said. “However, this is all public information.”

The flier lists the names and salaries of 321 teachers whose salaries range from $59,344 to $75,695. The district employs 765 teachers; the lowest salary is $34,676.

“We did most of the grunt work at the request of people over there,” Kliesmet said. “We did the freedom of information request and gathered the data. People in the area printed the flier and distributed it.”

At the bottom of the flier is a “Parents’ Rights Protection Form” urging parents to send it to Superintendent Karen Schulte and request that “my child be assigned to a classroom taught by a non-radical teacher during the 2012-2013 school year.”

When asked about comments regarding “radicals” and taking students out of classes, Seymer said he did not have any input on the content of the flier.

The flier does not say what its authors mean by “radical,” but it does include information directing people to a website listing state residents who signed the petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

Schulte said if she receives any of the requests, “they’re going in the trash.”

CRG conducted a similar exercise in 2008 highlighting Milwaukee Public Schools expenditures. The group was also involved in an unsuccessful effort earlier this month to recall state Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, and boasts on its website of the successful effort to recall former Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament.

The flier did not state who produced it.

Stephanie Kortyna, a fifth-grade teacher at Jackson Elementary School, said she wasn’t bothered to see her name on the list, but she objected to being classified as a radical.

“I couldn’t care less about people knowing my salary,” she said. “But if these people are this concerned with this, why the anonymity?

“Why are they not saying who is this group, who is the leader of this group, where is the money coming from to make these fliers? If you have a beef with us, or if you are angry with us, make yourself known,” Kortyna said.

The flier was distributed in Gazette home-delivery tubes.

Gazette representatives said the newspaper did not authorize the use of its tubes, and the flier is not connected to the newspaper.

Gazette Circulation Manager Lon Haenel said Gazette tubes are for newspaper use only. The paper asks unauthorized people or groups to stop using The Gazette’s tubes, Haenel said, and will contact the police if they do not.

Schulte said she was shocked when someone showed her the flier Saturday. She said it was interesting that she saw the flier at Craig High School, where 400 people including teachers were volunteering to package food to be sent to feed the hungry in Haiti.

“I think it’s wrong to go after any group that has an honest profession,” Schulte said. “I don’t understand where this intense anger is coming from.”

The flier distributed this weekend is done in the same style as a flier stuffed in some Janesville mailboxes in March. Those fliers listed the salaries of some district administrators and teachers and made specific charges against public schools, including “dumbed-down curriculum,” “Marxist/globalist agenda,” “sexualization of children” and “union bullying and vindictive targeting of students.”

The first flier also contained no information about who made it. It suggested parents pull their children from public schools and put them in private schools.

The Gazette contacted local private schools at the time, and officials said they had nothing to do with it. Some were upset because their schools were listed on the flier.

Only two teachers make more than $74,000. Salaries are based on a salary schedule that awards pay raises for years on the job to a maximum of 17 years and for continuing education up to the doctoral level. Teachers pay out of their own pockets to take the graduate courses. Teachers also receive extra pay for additional duties, such as coaching.

Stop the War on Mothers by Ellen Bravo

(View Ellen Bravo taking a stand against the “big boys” of the right-wing on the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC:

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/melissa-harris-perry/46419672#47049605 )

By Ellen Bravo

I love the image of conservatives hiding behind the flag of motherhood to protect themselves against charges of gender insensitivity. It’s like kids who move the couch to cover up a stain and hope no one will notice.

By all means, let’s talk about the importance of motherhood.

We can start with the right to stay home after giving birth. Rush Limbaugh recently ranted that women have much more flexibility at work than men.

Unlike Rush, I like to begin with the facts.

The United States is one of only four countries in the world that doesn’t ensure new mothers can afford to stay home even for the briefest of times after they have a baby. Not surprisingly, millions of American mothers who’ve given birth go back to work before the six weeks needed just for healing. The majority of new mothers return before 12 weeks.

Why? For many, because they’ll lose their job otherwise. We have two laws protecting new mothers. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act says an employer can’t fire someone for being pregnant but doesn’t have to hold her job for her while she recovers from birth.

Really.

The other, the Family and Medical Leave Act, does protect the jobs of mothers and fathers who take leave to care for a newborn– but it excludes half the workforce because they work for a company with fewer than 50 employees, haven’t been on the job long enough or work part time.

And did I mention the leave is unpaid?

In fact, nearly half of employed mothers receive no pay whatsoever for the time they’re out on maternity leave. Of those who do draw some pay, most are using time they’ve accrued, like vacation.

As anyone with a newborn knows, having a baby is a great joy, but it is definitely not a vacation.

And what about when a child falls ill? More than two-fifths of all workers, three-quarters of low-wage workers, don’t have a single paid sick day. Nearly half of those who do can’t use the time to care for a sick child.

In other words, when the school calls and says your child just threw up and you must come pick him up, women all over the country risk losing a day’s pay — or worse, their job — for being a good mom. Many of those women work for multi-billion dollar restaurant or nursing home chains, home health care agencies or child care centers.

Because when women do for a living the work that mothers do in the home – feeding people, taking care of the sick or the elderly or the very young – they’re usually paid very little and provided few if any benefits.

Ask those guardians of motherhood why the workers who care for our young children earn less than those who care for our cars or our pets; and why domestic workers and home health care workers are excluded from protection of most labor laws.

Conservatives oppose every policy to correct these injustices – family leave, paid sick days, expanding labor law protection, equal pay laws.

If you really want to know how conservatives feel about motherhood, take a look at what they say when women who happen to be poor want to stay home to take care of their kids. Right-wing pundits and politicians blast these mothers as lazy and irresponsible people who refuse to work and should be forced to do so, no matter what job, what pay, what shift.

“We should ask that all adults participate in work activities to their fullest ability,” Governor Romney has said.

And by “work,” he doesn’t mean feeding or cuddling or playing with their young ones.

I’m all for honoring mothers. Let’s start by making sure they’re not punished for doing that job well, and that the fathers of those children are allowed to share in the joy, and work, of caring for them.

 

 

Wisconsin Iraq Veteran Injured in Oakland, California at “Occupy Wall Street” Demo

In case anyone wants  to send flowers or a card to Scott Olsen (Marine injured in Oakland)

USMC Scott Olsen

Highland Hospital

1411 East 31st Street

Oakland, CA 94602

 

Article By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel

Marine from Onalaska injured in protest in California

Oct. 26, 2011 |(193) Comments

A Marine from Onalaska, Wis., suffered a fractured skull during an Occupy Wall Street protest in California and was in critical condition Wednesday.

Scott Olsen, 24, who served two tours of Iraq, was struck by an unidentified object as Oakland police and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators clashed. Some witnesses said Olsen was hit by a tear-gas canister; others said it was a rubber bullet fired by police.

Olsen was conscious when he was taken to Highland Hospital in Oakland on Tuesday night but was unconscious Wednesday, suffering from brain swelling, said his roommate Keith Shannon, who served in the same Marine unit as Olsen.

Aaron Hinde, who knows Olsen from Iraq Veterans Against the War, said Olsen suffered a seizure at the hospital. A hospital spokesman confirmed that Olsen was in critical condition Wednesday.

Olsen, whose uncle served in the Marines, signed up for the military when he was 17 and still in high school. As a member of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, he was deployed to Iraq from August 2006 to May 2007 and again in 2008-’09. Olsen was not injured in his deployments, but his unit was hit by numerous IEDs, said Shannon, who served with Olsen on Olsen’s first deployment and helped him get a job in information technology in the San Francisco Bay area.

Olsen left the military in 2010.

“It wasn’t what he wanted to do for a career; he didn’t agree with the war and the way it was going. He thought he could best serve people from outside the military,” Shannon said.

As members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Olsen and Shannon participated in Occupy San Francisco demonstrations. When Oakland Occupy Wall Street organizers put out a call for people to participate in a rally Tuesday night, Olsen, wearing his Marine uniform shirt, decided to attend.

The demonstrators had been making an attempt to re-establish a presence in the area of a disbanded protesters’ camp when they were met by police officers in riot gear. The clash Tuesday came as officials complained about what they described as deteriorating safety, sanitation and health issues at the dismantled camp.

Photos posted on the Internet show Olsen on the ground, bleeding and being helped by other protesters who took him to the hospital.

Olsen’s mother was traveling from Wisconsin to California on Wednesday to be with her son, Hinde said.

Shannon said Olsen is a quiet guy who loves to play hockey, listen to Bay-area bands, has a hamster named Agent Carmichael and moved to California when he got a job as a systems network administrator.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Milwaukee’s Alliance High School Featured in Time Magazine as Model Program

Time Specials

By Kayla Webley  Oct. 13, 2011

The taunting started four years ago, when Dylan Huegerich was 10. Back then, he didn’t know what being gay meant, and even today the soft-spoken teenager isn’t sure where he fits on the spectrum of sexual orientation. He knows he’s different. He knows that his sense of style — his chin-length hair, his dabbling with makeup — caught the eyes of school bullies in Saukville, Wis. In seventh grade he was pelted with snowballs and shoved into lockers. Everywhere he went on campus, students shouted anti-gay slurs and pointed and stared. “It hurt so bad,” he says. “I hated my life. I hated everything.”

His mother Amy tried to intervene. She says she was told it was her son’s fault for standing out and that he should cut his hair or try to act “more manly,” allegations the principal declined to comment on. Dylan’s mother considered volunteering in his classroom or the cafeteria, but that wouldn’t protect him the rest of the time. Every morning, she says, “I knew I was driving him back to this place where he was hurting. Oh, they beat you up? Here, go there again. My heart broke every time he got out of the car.” When the time came to register Dylan for eighth grade, she decided against re-enrollment. “I felt like if I turned in those forms, I was giving him some kind of a sentence,” she says.

So instead of sending Dylan back to a school that was a 10-minute drive from his house, his mother opted for the publicly funded Alliance School, an hour and a half away in downtown Milwaukee. The only overtly gay-friendly charter school in the U.S. to accept students as early as the sixth grade, Alliance has several boys who, with their painted nails and longer hairstyles, look like Dylan. But more important, it has many students who say they know how Dylan feels. While only about half of Alliance’s 165-member student body identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), nearly all were bullied or harassed at their previous schools. The hallways are filled with masculine girls, effeminate boys, punks, goths, runts, the overweight and the ultra-nerds. Alliance art teacher Jill Engel affectionately calls the school “the island of misfit toys.”

The Alliance School is a radical solution to a much debated problem. Children have long been taunted with homophobic slurs, but a recent string of high-profile suicides has led school and government officials to pay more attention to this subset of bullying victims. Nine out of 10 LGBT students say they have experienced bullying or harassment, according to a nationwide survey of 7,261 middle and high school students conducted in 2009 by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they have felt unsafe in school; 1 in 5 reported having been physically assaulted.

Parents want to protect their kids, but is wrapping them in an Alliance-style cocoon of tolerance the best solution? Some conservatives oppose the idea of a gay-friendly school on moral grounds, others for fiscal reasons: Why should taxpayers help make sexuality a central part of a child’s or a school’s identity? Developmental experts — and many gay activists — question the wisdom of shielding some students rather than teaching kids coping skills and promoting an atmosphere of respect on all campuses. “Being segregated doesn’t help gay kids learn, it doesn’t help straight kids learn, it doesn’t help bullies learn,” says Ritch Savin-Williams, a professor at Cornell University who chairs the human-development department. “All it does is relieve the school and the teachers of responsibility. It’s a lose-lose situation all around.” And yet to some bullying victims, it’s nothing short of a lifeline.

96-Year-Old Black Woman Denied Right to Vote in Tennessee

Thursday, October 6 2011, 2:06 PM EST Tags: 2012 campaign, Voter ID, Voting 96 Year Old Black Woman Denied Vote in Tennessee http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/oct/05/marriage-certificate-required-bureaucrat-tells/ Dorothy Cooper is a 96-year-old black woman who lives in Chattanooga,Tennessee. She was recently denied a voter identification card because she didn’t have her marriage certificate available — the same card that’s required by the state to vote. This coming election may be the first one she misses in 50 years. In February, all 20 Republicans and one Democrat in the state senate passed a measure requiring Tennessee voters show a driver’s licenses or other government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot. Democrats countered that the bill’s provisions would make it tougher to many of the 500,000 adult Tennesseans — many of them poor, elderly or handicapped — who have no state driver’s license. And this is exactly what’s happening to Cooper, Times Free Press reports: Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander. “But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center. “I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said. “In this case, since Ms. Cooper’s birth certificate (her primary proof of identity) and voter registration card were two different names, the examiner was unable to provide the free ID,” Tennessee Department of Safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls told the Free Press. She went on to add the examiner should have provided additional forms to Cooper. State Rep. Tommie Brown, D-Chattanooga, says Cooper’s case is an example of how the law “‘erects barriers’ for the elderly and poor people — a disproportionate number of whom are minorities,” she told the Times Free Press. Tennessee is just one of an array of state governments across the country that have enacted new laws that make it harder for voters of traditionally Democratic demographics to register to vote. A report released earlier this week found these new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012. The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 . That’s 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Dorothy Cooper is 96 but she can remember only one election when she’s been eligible to vote but hasn’t.

The retired domestic worker was born in a small North Georgia town before women had the right to vote. She began casting ballots in her 20s after moving to Chattanooga for work. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time.

So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new state law she’d need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request.

That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.

“But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.

“I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said.

Cooper visited the state driver service center with Charline Kilpatrick, who has been working with residents to get free photo IDs. After the clerk denied Cooper’s request, Kilpatrick called a state worker, explained what happened and asked if Cooper needed to return with a copy of the marriage certificate.

“The lady laughed,” Kilpatrick said. “She said she’s never heard of all that.”

Tennessee Department of Safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls said in a Tuesday email that Cooper’s situation, though unique, could have been handled differently.

“It is department policy that in order to get a photo ID, a citizen must provide documentation that links their name to the documentation that links their name to the document they are using as primary proof of identity,” Qualls said. “In this case, since Ms. Cooper’s birth certificate (her primary proof of identity) and voter registration card were two different names, the examiner was unable to provide the free ID.”

Despite that, Qualls said, “the examiner should have taken extra steps to determine alternative forms of documentation for Ms. Cooper.”Kilpatrick has had to call the state at least twice after taking someone to get a photo ID or have a photo added to the driver’s license. State law allows anyone 60 or older to have their picture removed from their license.

The state has been working diligently to make the process easy for residents, Qualls said.

POLL-ITICS?

State Rep. Tommie Brown, D-Chattanooga, said Tuesday that Cooper’s case is an example of how the law “erects barriers” for the elderly and poor people — a disproportionate number of whom are minorities.”What you do, you suppress the vote,” Brown said. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.”

The General Assembly passed the photo ID law earlier this year, with lawmakers saying it was needed to prevent voter fraud. The legislature allocated $438,000 to provide free photo IDs for registered voters who don’t have a qualified ID.

“It makes no sense in these economic times that we are shifting our time and resources to this,” Brown said.

In Nashville on Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations announced an effort to repeal the law. Groups such as the ACLU of Tennessee, various chapters of the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and Tennessee Citizen Action announced a petition drive and get-out-the-vote effort.

“This is a nonpartisan issue. It’s a fair voting issue,” said Mary Mancini, executive director of Citizen Action, in a phone interview. “It’s all about the legislators seeing that the people of Tennessee don’t want this law.”

VOTING ALL THESE YEARS

Cooper isn’t worried about the politics of the law.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” she said when asked about why legislators passed the bill.

She just wants to be able to vote.

In her decades of going to the polls, “I never had any problems,” she said, not even before the Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960s.

In her 50-plus years working for the same family, she never learned to drive so she never needed a license. She retired in 1993 and returned to Chattanooga from Nashville.Now, on occasion, one of her bank’s tellers or a grocery store clerk will ask for photo ID when she writes or cashes a check, Cooper said.

“I’ve been banking at SunTrust for a long time,” she said. “Sometimes they’ll say, well, do you have a Social Security card?”

And she shows it to them. She also has a photo ID issued by the Chattanooga Police Department to all seniors who live in the Boynton Terrace public housing complex, but that won’t qualify for voting.

Cooper’s younger sister, now 91, lives in a nursing home across town. Nursing home residents and assisted living residents are exempt from the new photo ID requirement.But Cooper, who barely needs a walker, is not.

Though she’s still able to walk around her apartment without assistance and “takes daily exercise” at a community center next door, Cooper never had any children — although she has outlived two husbands — and relies on others for transportation.

The law “is a problem if you don’t have a way of getting around,” she said. “I’ve been voting all these years.”

After Cooper was denied a photo ID Monday, Kilpatrick contacted Hamilton County’s Administrator of Elections Charlotte Mullis-Morgan, who recommended that Cooper vote with an absentee ballot rather than having to stand in line with her walker again at the state center.

Absentee ballots don’t require photo ID, and the new state law was crafted to allow that exception. A U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding a similar Indiana statute cited the absentee ballot exception as one of the reasons the Indiana law didn’t infringe on constitutional voting rights.

Still, Cooper said she will miss the practice of going to the voting precinct located in the building next door to hers.

“We always come here to vote,” she said, nodding toward a door where voting machines are set up on election day. “The people who run the polls know everybody here.”

Brennan Center for Justice Report on Voting Law Disenfranchisement of 5 Million Americans: Students, the Elderly, Communities of Color and the Poor are Targeted

 Brennan Center for Justice: at New York University School of Law

Voting Law Changes in 2012

By Wendy R. Weiser and Lawrence Norden
– 10/03/11

Ahead of the 2012 elections, a wave of legislation tightening restrictions on voting has suddenly swept across the country. More than five million Americans could be affected by the new rules already put in place this year — a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections.

This report is the first full accounting and analysis of this year’s voting cutbacks. It details both the bills that have been proposed and the legislation that has been passed since the beginning of 2011.

Download the Report (PDF)

Download the Appendix (PDF), a compilation of potentially vote-suppressing legislation proposed in the 2011 legislative sessions.

Download the Overview (PDF), a four-page summary with key findings.

Read the Executive Summary

View the Report

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Executive Summary

Over the past century, our nation expanded the franchise and knocked down myriad barriers to full electoral participation. In 2011, however, that momentum abruptly shifted.

State governments across the country enacted an array of new laws making it harder to register or to vote. Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.

These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election. Based on the Brennan Center’s analysis of the 19 laws and two executive actions that passed in 14 states, it is clear that:

• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

States have changed their laws so rapidly that no single analysis has assessed the overall impact of such moves. Although it is too early to quantify how the changes will impact voter turnout, they will be a hindrance to many voters at a time when the United States continues to turn out less than two thirds of its eligible citizens in presidential elections and less than half in midterm elections.

This study is the first comprehensive roundup of all state legislative action thus far in 2011 on voting rights, focusing on new laws as well as state legislation that has not yet passed or that failed. This snapshot may soon be incomplete: the second halves of some state legislative sessions have begun.

Troy Davis Laid to Rest

Following is a statement by Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP:

Yesterday Troy Davis was laid to rest.

Thousands joined in to celebrate his life at the Jonesville Baptist Church, and tens of thousands more joined online through the webstream. The power of our global community—united to honor, to stand on convictions and to show respect–was palpable inside the church.

There was little talk of sadness, little mention of grief. The Davis family, compelled by their deep faith, chose to celebrate Troy’s spirit, to honor his life, and to continue to move his mission to abolish the death penalty.

Their strength mirrors Troy’s own. Half of his life was spent behind bars, a captive of a system designed to crush even the mightiest of spirits. But Troy never lost hope. He never lost his faith in God or in his higher purpose.

In the execution room, Troy used his last words to proclaim his innocence one final time. He then made a call for his movement—all of our movement—to bring about to end of the death penalty for good. And then, in his final breath, he asked God’s mercy upon those about to kill him.

Even in his darkest hour Troy Davis saw light. In the face of death he showed compassion, resolution and conviction—a bravery that will forever be remembered.

So together, we will honor Troy’s memory and work to end the terror of state sponsored execution. It was a goal of Fredrick Douglass, Ida B Wells, and Thurgood Marshall. And it is a goal that the NAACP will carry forward in the weeks and months ahead.

A punishment reserved almost exclusively for poor people of all colors, and especially for those like Troy who are of color, is not a punishment. It’s the most irreversible and violent act of discrimination, and the ultimate violation of human rights.

The way that each of us can ensure the end of capital punishment comes as soon as possible is to shift from rallies where we shout the slogan I am Troy Davis, to a sustained campaign where we practice the faith of Troy Davis. If our movement is going to be successful, then we must focus on three types of action:

First, we must target the death penalty for elimination in ten more states.

Second, we must approach every sitting District Attorney and candidate for District Attorney and let them know that they will no longer get our votes unless they stop sending people to death row.

Finally, we all must vote. We are more powerful than those who would do wrong in this world. But only through our collective voice will we achieve our goal.

The time has come for us all to come together and finish what our foremothers and forefathers started. We will end the death penalty, and we will do it in honor of Troy Davis.

Sincerely,

Ben

Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP

State of Georgia Planning to Execute Troy Davis Today at 6 PM Milwaukee Time

Following is a statement from Edward Dubose, an NAACP representative from the state of Georgia. He is asking for your help.

In moments of immense sadness, moments that shake the foundation of our faith in the justice system and mankind, adequate words are scarce.

Today, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles co-signed on the decision to execute Troy Davis.

Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to his innocence — evidence that prompted former FBI Director William Sessions and more than a million others to write in support of clemency — Troy’s execution is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 21.

His family has been moved by the efforts of the NAACP and supporters around the world. They have asked us to express their thanks to you personally.

They also asked us to tell you that this is not the hour to give up.

For the past two decades that Troy has been on death row, miracles have interceded at crucial moments. Can you help us make a miracle happen now?

Please stand with Troy and his family. Tell District Attorney Larry Chisolm that he has to intercede:

http://action.naacp.org/Ask-DA-Chisolm-To-Help

Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm is the man who requested the death warrant against Troy Davis. He’s the glue that holds the case together and, even after today’s news, he remains in a unique position to petition the judge to withdraw the death warrant against Troy. It’s a long shot, but it’s Troy’s best hope.

Please, our last hope is to change the heart of District Attorney Chisolm. Sign today, and we will make sure that every name is hand delivered to his office:

http://action.naacp.org/Ask-DA-Chisolm-To-Help

We will soon reach out to tell you how you and your families and communities can organize gatherings in your hometowns to reflect on Troy’s experience, and to offer prayers for his family. But tonight is the time to redouble our efforts, not to back down. Tonight, we hold on to hope.

Please, take one last action and sign the petition today:

http://action.naacp.org/Ask-DA-Chisolm-To-Help

Thanks for all of your support,

Edward Dubose
Georgia State Conference President
NAACP

More on Troy Davis case: