I went to the press conference and rally for Clarence Ray Allen in SF on Thursday Jan 12, 2006.
There were about 50 people there, including TV and newspaper reporters from around the bay area. A number of well known activists spoke at the rally, including Crystal and Barbara B. A few facts came out of the rally that are not generally known:

Mr. Allen's Indian name is Running Bear.

Two Indian spiritual advisors have attempted to visit Mr Allen on death row to offer him spiritual
counselling before his execution. Both of these people were denied entry to the prison, even though one of them routinely visits other Indian prisoners throughout the state of CA.

At the end of the rally, a poet, Jack Hirschman procalimed "Poet Laureate of San Francisco 2006" read some poems that Mr. Allen wrote. These have been translated into Italian, for the benefit of European readers.

What follows is Jack's own poem, THE PUNISHMENT OF CAPITAL, that he was distributing free to the people of SF.

THE PUNISHMENT OF CAPITAL

1.
Comes the time that's the end
of the time you've served.
You're going to be killed

by the punishment of capital
in the extreme. They'll sit you
down, or noose you.

or strap you down and inject you.
The wait and the fight for your life,
day after day after day -- all night --,

will be over.

2.
But the fear that will follow won't
unclench our fists in the air.
Trees will fall over and die in solidarity.

Rivers will turn into wrists and lift up
placards against the atrocity. A woman
will curse in rage and, because

we're all driven mad by the injustice,
will run her plastic bankcard
through the slit in her pussy

in the defiant darkness where being
alone afterward feels like an amputation.
And a 12 year-old kid in a doorway

will fix up: the capital punishment
that's killed you has many death
chambers in this prison of profits

and jingo and lies.

3.
You, murder victim at the hands of the State,
you who killed and killed yourself in wild
youth without ever being able to know

innocence in this vast kennel of rabid attack
dogs driven to destroy each other over
hunks of money -- you found

the truth they're now murdering you for,
the truth that knows you're a man of the poor,
one of billions of the poor,

and that you go to death, yes, innocent of their
crime of perpetual capital punishment
that we your brother and sister billions vow

we will never stand for.

Finally, here is an excerpt from a flyer about another death row inmate, Kevin Cooper, who won a stay of his execution in Feb 2004:

" The case has been sent back to the federal discrict court. Further evidence testing has begun, and activists expect a long legal fight to ensure that the issues of tampering and police and prosecutorial misconduct are raised. Overall, the defense attorneys have found new evidence and witnesses that corroborate Kevin Cooper's innocence claim, and that show the errors and concious misconduct on the part of the state of California."

The full text of this flyer does not appear on the
www.savekevincooper.com website, so I will post it to www.pagesincolor.com by Sunday Jan 15.