Talk:Shaka Sankofa

Copyvio

Publishing his entire lasst statement is probably a copyright violation. This setion should be trimmed to a smaller, highly pertinent extract of his statement only. Rmhermen (talk) 14:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If it's released through state or federal channels, it may not be a copyright violation. In any case, I am removing it and replacing the section with a brief summary. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find a copy as a source.

I used Earwig's Copyvio Detector to find another copyvio. Seems to work well at finding the source of a copyright violation even if there is no link. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 09:41, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

Article Title

I searched for this article because of the demonstrations on the day of his execution. Gary Lee Graham may have changed his name to Shaka Sankofa, but the public knew him as Gary Graham. Noone will search for Shaka Sankofa. A search for Gary Graham brought me to someone else's article, and there is no disambiguation page. To get here, I had to find the "Death Row" article and go through the list of those executed in Texas to discover his full name "Gary Lee Graham" Deatonjr (talk) 19:41, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Article Origins

The article origins are from two different anonymous ip addresses from a couple years ago. Several sources seem biased. The title makes the article difficult to find. Websites that link here and people interested in the history of the Gary Lee Graham case will not know to search for Shaka Sankofa. Deatonjr (talk) 20:03, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Age?

The article states that he has born in 1960 and executed in 2000. If these two dates are correct, how could he have only been 36 (as the article also states) at the time of his execution? -- Entrybreak (talk) 20:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

madness

It's madness that the USA continues to murder people in the 21st century. No wonder it's such a violent and gun-orientated country because people can't expect justice from a system which kills its own people and which targets black people for capital punishment while allowing richer white people to take a lesser sentence. Sick country.--217.203.128.255 (talk) 21:45, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it sure is madness that "the system" "targeted a black man" who committed multiple violent felonies, including rape, kidnapping, attempted murder and murder. How dare those rich whites target such a saint? By the way, murder is the act committed by Graham, not the state of TX. The state of TX gave Graham what he richly deserved after he had been afforded due process and convicted by a jury of his peers. There is no moral equivalance between the actions of TX and Graham. As for the US supposedly being "violent", perhaps you should take a look at the UN's violent crime statistics. Quite a few European and North American countries, including England, have FAR higher violent crime rates. So do Austria, Mexico, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, to name a few. Get back to us when you have something intelligent to add to the debate.

The above comments about higher instances of violent crime in places like Austria, Sweden, etc. are completely false. What statistics is that based on? I can't find any evidence of such stats. The actions of TX equal those of Sankofa. Every developed country in the world except for the USA and Japan (which rarely uses the punishment) have long abandoned this barbaric practice. The US is in the same league as backwards regimes such as Iran, PR China, Sudan and Saudi Arabia. If you think due process exists in the US then you really ought to wake up and rely on media and statistics that don't originate in the USA.--37.183.52.21 (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Dubious sources

So now Workers World is being put forth as a legitimate source for Wikipedia? You have got to be kidding me. What next, the Neo Nazi Times? The article linked to is one of the most biased, ridiculous articles used as a source by this "encyclopedia" I have ever read. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.141.154.101 (talk) 20:44, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Even more ridiculous than the use of Workers World as a source is the citing of a website (no, this is not a joke) entitled "Fight the Death Penalty in the US" as a source for information that could have been gathered from any newspaper in the state of TX. But the ridiculousness does not stop there. The following sentence is absolutely hilarious and is indicative of the "quality" of the rest of the supposedly "encyclopedic" entry: "Despite his claims of innocence, he was executed by lethal injection at 8:49 pm on Thursday, June 22, 2000 in Huntsville, Texas, aged 36." Despite his claims of innocence? You have got to be kidding me. So the state of TX should have taken into account the self-professed innocence of a convicted felon before carrying out his sentence? The sentence I quote cites the aformentioned anti-death penalty site. A similar "despite claims of innocence" load of nonsense is mentioned when discussing Graham's son, with a communist "news" source being used as a citation. And just when you thought the sources couldn't get any more ridiculous, any more biased, you stumble across separate links in the citations section to webpages entitled "Stop the Execution of Gary Graham" and "Gary Graham, a Child on Death Row, a Tragegy Unfolding" both on the "Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty" website. But the madness doesn't end there for those who notice the "Final Call", the paper of the racist, virulently anti-semitic Nation of Islam, being used as a source for an article on the convicted murderer, a scumbag who admitted to over 20 violent felonies. The article, entitled "Memorial services salute Sankofa, the fight against the death penalty", contains some gems, including the following quote from his daughter: "My father was a hero, he will be missed very much by Debra, Gary, Brenda, Elnora and me. But this is not a time for sorrow, but a time to keep the fight going. Because I know that is what my father wants. They took Shaka’s life, but his spirit lives on." Yes, that is right, a man who admitted to committing multiple armed robberies, rape, attempted murder and kidnapping is being eulogized as a hero. And in case you are thinking that is just the words of a grieving relative, the ENTIRE article is similarly worshipful of a violent, convicted, thanfully dead, felon. Wow, what a wonderful source to use for a supposedly "encyclopedic" entry. That it comes from a paper run by an organization more known for its jew-baiting racism than anything else is just icing on the cake. And to fully move this entry into the realm of parody, the use of Democracy Now as a source is thrown in for good measure.

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