[Peace-discuss] FW: [NYTr] MLK Day/former IL Gov Ryan Nominated for Nobel Peace

[Boyle, Francis A]

Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)


-----Original Message-----
From: nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com [mailto:nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com] 
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 3:18 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients <undisclosed-recipients:;>
Subject: [NYTr] MLK Day/former IL Gov Ryan Nominated for Nobel Peace

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Francis Boyle - Jan 13, 2005

Former Illinois Gov. Ryan Nominated for 2005 Nobel Peace Prize

On Monday, January 17, 2005 the United States of America will celebrate the annual National Holiday in honor of the late, great and martyred civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. To mark this occasion, University of Illinois College of Law Professor Francis A. Boyle has nominated former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize because of his courageous and heroic opposition to the racist death penalty system in America, which differentially targets African Americans. 42% of America's death row population are African Americans. Of those defendants executed in the United States since 1976, 34% were African Americans. Of the 167 persons whom George Ryan liberated from Illinois'
racist death row two years ago, about 60% were African Americans.

Illinois proudly boasts that it is "The Land of Lincoln": President Abraham Lincoln, a resident of Illinois, freed the slaves. In the tradition of Lincoln, Governor Ryan freed over 100 descendants of slaves from Illinois'
racist death row. As Dr. King's associate the Reverend Jesse Jackson has persuasively argued, today the administration of the Death Penalty in America is nothing more than a system of "Legal Lynching" (1996) against African Americans and other People of Color. The time has long passed for America to eliminate this racist and barbaric measure of state terrorism directed against African Americans, other People of Color, and poor Whites.
Toward that end, George Ryan has performed more effective work against the racist death penalty system in America than the entire American Abolitionist Movement combined. For that reason, he richly deserves to win the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. Just as the elimination of slavery in America emanated from "The Land of Lincoln," so too the final elimination of the death penalty from America shall be traced back to George Ryan and the State of Illinois.

 
Francis A. Boyle
       
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