Emmanuel Littlejohn has been waiting for months to find out whether he will die on Thursday or get to live. It's been "the hardest thing I ever did."

Littlejohn, 52, is set to be executed for the shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery in Oklahoma City in 1992. If Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt declines to grant him clemency, Littlejohn will be the third inmate executed by the state this year and the 17th in the nation. He's also one of five men the U.S. is executing in a six-day period, and he's set to die just about eight hours before Alabama is expected to execute Alan Eugene Miller using nitrogen gas.

"I would say to the governor: Do what you think is the right thing," Littlejohn told USA TODAY in a recent interview.

Littlejohn has admitted to his role in the robbery but has maintained that his accomplice was the one to pull the trigger, not him.

"I accept responsibility for what I did but not what they want me to accept responsibility for," Littlejohn previously told USA TODAY. "They want me to accept that I killed somebody, but I haven't killed somebody."

In a rare move, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to recommend clemency for Littlejohn, whose legal team argued that the evidence in the case was unclear, especially who the triggerman was.

Still, Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said afterward that his office would still be arguing against clemency to the governor, calling Littlejohn a "violent and manipulative killer."

If you’re outraged over Missouri murdering Marcellus Williams, then you should know Oklahoma is planning on carrying out an execution of Emmanuel Littlejohn this Thurs. at 10am.

Littlejohn was pardoned by the PPB. There’s still time to call the Governor: 405-521-2342.

I was able to leave a voicemail by pressing 1 then 4 then 0. After what happened in Missouri, there's an overwhelming sense of hopelessness that the care about public comments but I hope Emmanuel is able to avoid Khaliifah's fate.

a lot going on in this article and the fact that they didn't let anyone in his family know except by leaving a fucking business card at his mom's door is fucked but i keep thinking about this part:

anyways. "no special duty" to protect the people and yet they're fucking everywhere on the subway all day playing fucking candy crush on their phones. literally all they are there for is to protect the city from $2.90 fare evasions and that's fucking it. i know this is very obvious and not a novel observation that the police don't protect people but the fact that it's the fucking nypd on the subway… just can't stop thinking about these two events together

Also the NYPD and the MTA a n d the mayor all are defending this because the man who evaded fare "had a knife." 4 people were shot. That's more people than dollars of fare evaded. That's one concealed knife vs 4 bullets in people.

Last year nearly 200 environmental defenders were killed — certainly an undercount. The leading culprit? The mining industry. The most dangerous region? Latin America.

These are the stark realities we need to confront as we face a new mining boom linked to the energy transition

— Thea Riofrancos (@triofrancos) September 14, 2024

Nearly 70 percent of mining companies globally are headquartered in Canada and 50 percent of the world's publicly listed mining and mineral exploration companies are in Canada.

—salvador allende’s final speech, 9/11/73

this week marks the 47th anniversary of the US-backed overthrow of salvador allende. allende was the first latin american marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy. under allende, universal healthcare, tuition-free education, minimum wage, worker safety protections, free school lunches for children, and other socialist programs were implemented. according to the national bureau of economic research, blue collar wages rose 56% in 1971.

after allende moved to nationalize chile’s US owned industries and align with socialist cuba, nixon (who’d already been carefully monitoring allende’s rise) gave direct orders to the CIA and the US state department to “put pressure” on allende’s government. while the US publicly worked to sabotage chile’s economy with trade restrictions and aid denial, the CIA secretly collaborated with reactionary forces in the country to undermine allende’s credibility and ultimately overthrow him in a bloody coup.

WHY WE MASK: It's Not "Just A Cold": A Handy Scientific Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Together

Here, have a free science zine with a ridiculously long title! Endless thanks to my partner and fellow disabled artist, Kimball Anderson aka @earnestattempts, who helped through the entire year-long process with art edits and image descriptions (located in the alt text). Additional thanks to my friends Dupe and Caitlin, who gave me thorough copy-edits, and every friend who read drafts or listened to me rant about COVID-19.

Feel free to spread it far and wide! And hit me up if you're interested in printing &/or distributing free copies :D

Read WHY WE MASK with Endnotes - includes working URLS so you can read the scientific papers I cited for yourself. Plus links for all the other resources, and a full transcript.

Download WHY WE MASK - Free PDFs to read, print, and share! Any donations go towards print copies &/or local mask blocs.

Can't get enough free printable COVID zines? Check out @newlevant's excellent What's Up With COVID & How To Protect Yourself: 2024 Ed! It was a huge inspiration in the final stretch.

Extra pages under the cut:

You’ve heard of employee unions using collective bargaining to force the bosses to provide better pay and better working condiditions. But did you know if you rent an apartment in an apartment complex, you can do something similar?

It’s called a Tenant Association, and it’s basically a union for renters.

Here’s an overview of the why and how of forming a tenant association

Here’s a more thorough organizing manual

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The connections are commonsense but the conclusion is shocking.

Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to an increase in infant mortality.

According to the research, published Thursday in the journal Science, farmers in affected U.S. counties increased their use of insecticides by 31 percent when bat populations declined. In those places, infant mortality rose by an estimated 8 percent.

“It’s a seminal piece,” said Carmen Messerlian, a reproductive epidemiologist at Harvard who was not involved with the research. “I actually think it’s groundbreaking.”

The new study tested various alternatives to see if something else could have driven the increase: Unemployment or drug overdoses, for example. Nothing else was found to cause it.

Dr. Messerlian, who studies how the environment affects fertility, pregnancy and child health, said a growing body of research is showing health effects from toxic chemicals in our environment, even if scientists can’t put their fingers on the causal links.

“If we were to reduce the population-level exposure today, we would save lives,” she said. “It’s as easy as that.”

The new study is the latest to find dire consequences for humans when ecosystems are thrown out of balance. Recent research by the same author, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, found that a die-off of vultures in India had led to half a million excess human deaths as rotting livestock carcasses polluted water and spurred an increase in feral dogs, spreading waterborne diseases and rabies.

It's also made me terrifyingly, devastatingly aware of how few bugs there are compared to when I was a kid and that those numbers are visibly dropping every year. Butterflies are still a rare sight, no matter how hard I try. I'm getting more bees visiting my squash and bean plants, but less in the flowers. The wasp nest that was built near my window like it is every year is considerably smaller than previous years, even with more material to build with and a consistent source of water nearby. There's fewer grass spiders and the huge orb weavers I loved so much have disappeared completely in the last couple years.

We've stopped raking the leaves. We've planted more things, even started a wildflower garden. I've set out bug baths and a bee house. I'm planning on planting more next year, but will that even help? How can my little yard even begin to undo just a fraction of a fraction of the damage done by climate change and massive loss of habitats?

because my writing to prisoners post is making the rounds again, heres a helpful resource from NAC on how to get started

adresses of revolutionary/socialist and anarchist political prisoners in:

germany and italy

these are stones

Her mother is suffering from a respiratory infection, and her father is diabetic—both difficult conditions to manage with limited access to medicine, clean water, and food. Ahed is asking all of us to help raise the money so she can evacuate her family (8 members) when the crossing opens again, and they can build their futures somewhere safer. In her own words,

Please don’t read this as a tragedy story. I’m here to ask you to prevent it from getting more tragic and to help us start our life all over again. I’m here to ask for your help not your sympathy, to ask you to take action whether by donating or by sharing this to everyone you know who can help, please read this with your heart and take action as if it’s your family, your mom, your siblings who are under these conditions.

Her campaign is verified on line 407 of the Butterfly Effect Project's spreadsheet.