https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A341628/datastream/OCR/view
For some reason, it appears I never posted Laryy's Alcoff's original article.
It appears in the sept 29th, 1976 edition of the fsu flambeau
https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A341705#page/5/mode/1up
https://archive.org/details/Florida_Flambeau_1976_Sept/page/n224/mode/1up?view=theater
Please note the below is a copy and paste, where the paste produced garbage and I am trying to correct manually:
Death penalty is discriminatory
In July the Supreme Court passed the death penalty and it
is expected the first executions will take place by the end of
this bicentennial year. Of the 611 people on death row 56 per
cent of them are of minority nationalities. This means that
black, chicano, native American, and Puerto Rican people
are condemned to death over four times more frequently
than their percentage of the population. This is a direct
result of the chauvinist and racist character of the judicial
system from the Supreme Court to the local sheriffs and
cops.
But while minority people arc hit especially hard by the
death penalty, its victims are all working people. The 267
white people on death row are all working-class and poor
people. There isn't now and there never has been a rich
person on death row. When rich people commit crimes we'd
to the electric chair for, they get their friends in the
capitalist class to get them off. So while working-class and
poor people get death row, the capitalist class and rich
people get the Ritz and filet mignon.
Why have the capitalists and their state brought the death
penalty back? This is because they'd like to rule through
their "legal processes" — they'd like us to peacefully
accept their laws that have created the capitalist crisis,
unemployment and the hard times we're in today. But it
isn't working anymore; we can see whom these "legal
processes" serve and whom they attack. The death penalty
has been returned to meet the growing resistance of the
working class to the crisis and the whole system of
oppression that the rich people are running.
What have the liberals and the Democrats had to say
about it?' Those who "oppose" it say, 'The state should not
degrade human dignity." But these fine sounding words
have little meaning in real life. Every state degrades the
dignity of a certain class in order to maintain the power of
another class. Whether it uses violence against its own
citizens in the legal form, via the death penalty, or in the
extra-legal form, by shooting strikers, demonstrators, etc.
in the street, the capitalist state remains an organ of violent
oppression of the working class and all the fancy words in
in the world (or anything else) will not cover it up.
The question of the death penalty is not a question of
abstract principles, it is a question of by whom, by which
and against which class this form of repression is
administered. We absolutely oppose the death penalty when
the capitalist state against the workers and
minorities. It is wrong when applied to Pitts and Lee or to
Gary Tyler. But it is not wrong when applied to the Ku Klux
Klan and other racists who carry out terrorist attacks against
Afro-Americans and other minorities and working-class
people, or to a Calley, who commitled wanton massacres. or
to a Hitler and similar scum.
The Supreme Court decision is of great educational value.
It teaches, that political power is maintained by force and
violence. This is a lesson that the working class will never
forget. When the working class itself takes power
(socialism), it will remind the pig capitalists of this lesson in
politics.
The Tallahassee Call Committee encourages all
justice-minded people to take part in the activities of the
Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty: meetings
Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Center, Forum
Thursday, Sept. 30. at 7:30 p.m. in Room 117 Bellamy. and
Rally this Saturday at noon, meeting at the Supreme Court
Building.
Abolish the Racist use of the Death Penalty
Jobs or Income Now ! Jobs. Not Jails!
Free Gary Tyler! Death to the Klan!
End Wage-Slavery Tallahassee Call Committee
Larry Alcoff
Calley probably refers to William Calley, who was convicted of war crimes in Vietnam for his role in the My Lai massacres, and pardoned by Nixon. There were numerous problems with the court marshal procedure, including pre-trial publicity, bad charges, and congress withholding evidence and witnesses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley
Gary tyler as a youth allegedly killed a 13 year old boy and wounded another in 1974, but might have been actually innocent. He was sentenced to death, but the same case that affirmed the death penalty in 1976 also found that the Liousianna death penalty statute was unconstitutional so Tyler's conviction was later commutted to life, with parole possible in 20 years. The Scotus, following human rights treaties [they didn't technically have to] found that applying life sentences to minors was unconstitutional. Eventually, after 40years in prison, the court and the D.A. reviewed his case and he accepted a plea to manslaughter to vacate his murder conviction.
Notice, Alcoff wants tyler free for killing a white boy.
Pitts and Lee was quite a mess. The same attorney who handled the well known Gideon v wainright case, who freshly after this decision, made it clear inmates were probably best to represent themselves. The police used torture to obtain false confessions, and a jailhouse inmate was able to identify the real killed, and that killer admitted to such on tape, and also the witnesses against them recanted. So the case was vacated for a new trial. The recanting witness recanted yet again, the real killer plead the fifth amendment, the judge wouldn't allow the tapes to be heard by the court. And once again, they were convicted and sentenced to death. in 1972 the scotus put a hold on the death penalty, and the killer then agreed to testify about the murders. As a result, Lee and Pitts were acquitted in 1975. They were later compensated $500k in 1998.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetailpre1989.aspx?caseid=255
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries gun fights between companies and striking unionist were quite common. The original columbine massacre wan't a high school, but a mine. Mind you, many of these things were truly endemic for some 40 years or more prior to his rant. Notice it wasn't evil "capitalist" killing picketers (which picketing might have been illegal at the time), but police, national guard, guards, sheriffs, and the Klan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes
there is more the flambeay says about alcoff. he is indeed talking about william Calley. And is angry that Nixon was pardoned or at least remained a free man.
https://archive.org/details/Florida_Flambeau_1976_Oct/page/n20/mode/1up
In another week, a satirical article appears, supposedly a coalition to kill larry Alcoff.
https://archive.org/details/Florida_Flambeau_1976_Oct/page/n155/mode/1up
If they were serious, we wouldn't have antifa.