The Execution of Troy Davis — Page 3

Today in my Swedish for Immigrants class, we discussed a few world events. Troy Davis was the first of several stories we watched 90 second clips on. I was the only one who knew much about the case really and the only American, so it fell to me to explain to 15 people from 10 other countries how it was that the US still has such a barbaric policy. The only other country represented that still has such a penalty was Somalia.

"And I'm proud to be an American..."

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Although the White House statement was that it is inappropriate for him to weigh-in on a state case.

And I never understood this argument. I understand respecting state level politics, but I mean, shouldn't the president be allowed to intervene in something of this magnitude? It's a person's life, it's not like he's telling someone in Duluth how to run their town hall meetings.

It's funny, my grandfather was a Sing Sing prison guard for 30 years and he said that the reason he didn't believe in the death penalty was that he never saw anyone with money go to the chair. With the exception of the Rosenbergs, maybe. This system is just sickening. I am ashamed of this case.

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Swedish for Immigrants (svenska för invandrare) is just a Swedish language class that starts from the very basics. We all show up knowing nothing in Swedish, but many participants are refugees and many of the women have never written or read before. So, after a little bit of time in the intro group, they move us off to A, B, C or D. There are three levels in each letter except D. I went from intro to C2, but now I am in D. After that there is Swedish 1 and 2, which is typical high school Swedish. I have studied for a year. It's not very intense, but it moves at a comfortable pace. We had a $hit teacher for 6 months, but now I am learning quickly.

If you can count to 10 and don't think Carola is a car, you are already one step ahead of the game. To pass for a Swede, you must also be able to drink lots of coffee, strong and black, automatically turn your face to the sun if it happens to pop out for a minute in the winter and have an opinion on the necessity or lack thereof of the Swedish monarchy.

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