Hurricane's Last Wish

David McCallum kisses his mother after being freed from prison

"When I walked through the doors of this office in January, I inherited a legacy of disgrace with respect to wrongful conviction cases." -Ken Thompson, Brooklyn District Attorney

"A Brooklyn man convicted of murder was ordered free Wednesday after he spent 29 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. The convictions of David McCallum and his late co-defendant, Willie Stuckey, were overturned by a judge at the prosecutor’s request." -International Business Times

Related: In The Palm Of Some Fool's Hand?

Humanity And Freedom

"The courageous thing for both sides is to embrace the dignity, grace and strength of the other. We have no choice but to work together to heal our wounds, wipe our tears and, while learning the lessons of the past, to look forward. George Orwell said that the further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. We all bleed the same colour and the life of all is equal and precious. No cause justifies the killing, intimidating or threatening of human beings."

From ...I Call For An End To This Bloodshed, The Guardian July 2014

Wheels Of Fate

"Tiananmen showed the world that the Chinese people are no different from everyone else. When given the chance to express their views freely, they seized it and howled in unison their desire for democracy, freedom and human rights. Although their understanding of the concepts was elementary, they instinctively grasped, like the protesters in Place de la Bastille and Wenceslas Square before them, that these ideals formed the foundation of any civilised and humane nation."

Quote excerpted from Ma Jian's Tiananmen Square 25 Years On

“They can incarcerate my body but never my mind."

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

May 6th, 1937 - April 20th, 2014

Stop The Trans-Pacific Partnership!

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a secretive agreement being negotiated behind closed doors by government bureaucrats and more than 600 corporate lobbyists. It threatens everything we care about: democracy, human rights, workers' rights, the environment, healthcare, freedom of speech, and the Internet... All in the name of so-called "free trade."

#FreeAlaa

"Whenever a regime is cornered, one of the first

things it starts doing is arresting activists." -Alaa

"Nearly three months since his arrest, the Egyptian blogger, software developer and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah remains imprisoned. Charged in December with organizing a demonstration to protest the failure of the draft constitution in legislating against military court martialing of civilians, Abd El Fattah is awaiting trial in prison."  -Jillian C. York, Electric Frontier Freedom Foundation

In The Palm Of Some Fool’s Hand?

"You may remember me from my other life as a middleweight boxer. But fate had other plans for me; I was wrongly convicted of a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, and spent 19 years in prison trying, along with generous friends and good people from every walk of life, to right this wrong and gain my freedom. I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish to those with the legal authority to act. My single regret in life is that David McCallum of Brooklyn — a man incarcerated in 1985, the same year I was released, and represented by Innocence International since 2004 — is still in prison. I request only that McCallum be granted a full hearing by the Brooklyn conviction integrity unit, now under the auspices of the new district attorney, Ken Thompson... McCallum was incarcerated two weeks after I was released, reborn into the miracle of this world. Now I’m looking death straight in the eye; he’s got me on the ropes, but I won’t back down. I ask Thompson to look straight in the eye of truth, a tougher customer than death, and not back down either." -Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, excerpted from Hurricane Carter’s Dying Wish (NY Daily News)

Watch: Reasonable Doubt: The Story Of David McCallum (trailer)

Days Of Decision

Photograph from Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs Of

The Civil Rights Struggle (University of California Press, 2014).

Justice for Daryl Kelly Sr.

"My father, Daryl Kelly Sr., has been in prison since 1998 for a crime he never committed — based on a lie I told. When I was just 8 years old, my drug addicted mother forced me to make an accusation of sexual abuse against him. But the truth is that my father had never laid a finger on me. Even my mother has admitted she forced me to lie about this during one of her drug binges. But my father is still in prison, 15 years after being wrongfully convicted… My dad needs to be freed and this wrong must be righted. I will not stop until it is. So far, all of his appeals have been denied  — the courts need to listen or Governor Cuomo should grant my father clemency" -Chaneya Kelly

Sign Chaneya's petition

Let Us Be Clear

Artwork by Jack Kirby