"The Fire This Time"

Harry Edwards' (architect of the black power salute at the Olympics a decade ago) rousing talk over alternative radio suggests that James Baldwin's "Fire Next Time" has been updated by events, and that the "fires" we are living with are growing, becoming potentially less controllable, dangerously precipitious. His examples are many, and I won't repeat any of them here.

Troy Davis's execution by "lethal injection" last week in Georgia was still another example of the fires raging in our Nation, and elsewhere. On death row for many years, Tory's time ran out: his appeals, the almost complete reversal of the evidence for his sentence, and ultimately the refusal of the Supreme Court to review the case, meant that he had to die.

We are thus reminded of the stupidity of death sentences, as we are by the African-American minister who presided at Troy's memorial service who reminded us that "we are all on death row." The needs of others are forgotten most often because of our self preoccupations, our forgetfullness, our very survival in d e n i a l of reality. "I am Troy Davis."