On a quiet night, the first Friday of the spring semester at SF State, about 30 anti-death penalty activists made a lot of noise at Jack Adams Hall inside the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

A spoken word event — with “dope beats, sick rhymes, and good food” — served as a fund-raiser for the Save Kevin Cooper Organization, a group working to stop the Feb. 10 execution of Cooper, a death row inmate at San Quentin.

Founded in December 2003, the Save Kevin Cooper Organization was created by members of the pre-existing campaign to end the death penalty. This effort, group member Cameron Sturdevant said, marked an attempt to coordinate all the groups wanting to get involved in the fight to save Cooper’s life.

“There are only 10 days left before Kevin Cooper is murdered by the State of California,” Master of Ceremonies Kirya Traber said in the rally’s opening statements. “Why are they doing this to Kevin?”

Performers included San Francisco’s Michael Franti from Spearhead, Malik Kyre from Malik Speaks, and Illiteracy, a group of slam poets who were joined by a traveling house band from UC Davis. Between acts the audience broke into loud cheers and chants of “death row, hell no.”

If Cooper is lethally injected, he will be the first man executed since January 2002, and the 11th man since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978.

The Save Kevin Cooper Organization said they will use the funds raised to purchase a signature advertisement, denouncing the execution in The New York Times and The San Jose Mercury News on Feb. 3.

Even though Gov. Schwarzenegger announced on the day of the rally that he would deny Cooper clemency, the group still plans to go forth with the ad, which boasts support from political heavy hitters such as Danny Glover, Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, and Noam Chomsky.

“The way you stop an execution like this is to put political pressure on the governor who has the power, you make it politically hard for him not to (grant clemency),” said Michael Hoffman, a SF State student and member of the International Socialist Organization.

Cooper, 45, was convicted on four counts of first-degree murder in 1985 for allegedly killing two adults and two children after escaping from nearby minimum security Chino State Prison, where he was serving time for burglary.

Throughout the years, Cooper has continually maintained his innocence.

Members of the Save Kevin Cooper Organization claim much of the condemning evidence is faulty, having been altered or tampered with by desperate authorities eager to pin the crime on a convictable assailant. Although authorities have DNA evidence linking Kevin to the crime, the group claims that the methods of collection are controversial.

Further evidence, including the eyewitness testimony of the sole survivor — a boy who was eight years old at the time — implicated up to three assailants identified as either white or Latino.

The group points to the existence of three different weapons used, the autopsy results that place the time of the four deaths within 90 seconds of one another, and original crime scene photos, as holding the key to Cooper’s innocence.
It would be “virtually impossible” for one person to have committed this crime, said a member of the American Board of Pathology.

According to the group, clumps of long, blonde hair were found in the hands of one of the victims, but photos of such evidence were never shown to the jury.
Other controversial evidence still looms. The group argues that there is more than a reasonable doubt regarding Cooper’s guilt. But law enforcement agents and proponents of the death penalty argue that family members and those closest to victims of such horrendous crimes deserve retribution and justice.

Cooper is the first death row inmate who has sought clemency from Gov. Schwarzenegger. Though the governor has publicly denied it, he has minutes before the execution to exercise his executive power to grant clemency.

“The death penalty is barbaric, no industrialized nation besides our own employs it. It is a black mark on the face of American democracy. It’s legalized lynching,” said David Russitano, a student at SF State and also a member of the International Socialist Organization.

“I came out to support this cause because what’s happening is unjust. Not just because he is African American, whether he was black, white, purple, or green. That it is set to happen during black history month is a slap in the face. But there are a lot of unjust things happening right now politically and I felt I needed to speak up,” said Enjo`li Beverly, 19, a SF State freshman. The creative writing major performed at the event, reciting an original piece entitled “truth.”

“There is a time and a place for everything,” added Chris McDonald, 18, a SF State freshman and a theatre major. “It (executing an African American during black history month) is like Charlton Heston and the NRA holding a conference in Colorado shortly after the Columbine killings … It’s just inappropriate.”