10/12/2000: And Now!... More... "This &
That"
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CONTENTS
*And the Nobel Peace Prize Goes to....
*Nightline - ooops!
*Don't Forget - NPR Tonight!
*On George W. Bush and the Elections, including:
*Steve Bright on the elections, in The Nation
*Bush Rankings
*Death of a Friend
*MacNiel/Penzato Birth Announcement
*******
And the Nobel Peace Prize Goes to....
Watch for the announcement tomorrow! Sr. Helen Prejean is a
candidate. Just imagine the boost to the movement that would
bring! So, with baited breath.... we wait.
******
Nightline - ooops!
To those who did not watch nightline after I posted the message I
received from the Nightline producer last Friday, I apologize.
I did not watch either, and while they did not run the Steve Earle
piece (now scheduled for the 20th), they did run what I'm told was
an *excellent* piece on Earl Washington, a Virginia prisoner
exonerated by DNA but still being held on lesser charges - charges
under which he would have been freed years ago. If you want
more info on the case of Earl Washington, <visit http://www.vadp.org>.
Lesson re-learned: with TV news programs, ya never know!
*****
Listen to National Public Radio Tonight!
Straight From the Mouths of a State's Executioners
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/12/arts/12SALA.html
NATIONAL / RADIO: 10/12/2000
Witness to an Execution
On Thursday, October 12, NPR's All Things Considered (broadcast at
4:30 and 6:30pm EST) will premiere "Witness to an
Execution," an extraordinary story told by the men and women
who participate in or bear witness to executions at the Walls Unit
in Huntsville, Texas, where all death sentences for the state of
Texas are carried out. Narrated by Warden Jim Willett, who
oversees all Texas executions, the radio documentary provides
minute-by-minute details of the process before and during an
execution by lethal injection. Willett's account is interwoven with
the personal testimonies of other Texas Department of Criminal
Justice employees who take part in executions as well as several
journalists who witness and cover them. This is the 1st time many of
them have agreed to speak about their experiences to the media.
Following the second airing of the documentary, NPR will be running
a special hour-long call-in show at 7:00pm EST, hosted by Robert
Siegel, featuring some of the people from the documentary.
*******
On George W. Bush and the Election
Regarding last night's debate, one Florida activist commented to me,
"Bush's solution to hate crime was disturbing. He had this
smirk and real pride with no sense of the deep tragedy of the whole
issue." In case you missed it, this was Bush's chance to
tout the death penalty and his reputation for being tough on crime.
And as noted, he just couldn't help himself -- allowing the smirk
which had been trained out of him to return, albeit briefly.
As you may or may not know, 13 months ago, as Bush conducted his
100th prisoner-killing, CUADP worked with Texas activists to ensure
the occasion was marked. We launched a web page (http://www.cuadp.org/bush.html)
and called for a campaign to highlight Bush's record. We were
unsuccessful in attracting funds enough to fully implement a
campaign, but we have made some resources available. This
weekend there are three major events in Austin, including 1000+
activists expected in a march on the Governor's mansion on Sunday.
The following are links to photos of "The Bush Head" in
action. For a "how to make the Bush Head" step by
step instructions, send an e-mail to <cuadp@cuadp.org>.
http://www.cuadp.org/bush.html
http://www.cuadp.org/images/big/bush1.jpg
http://www.cuadp.org/build.html
http://www.fadp.org/tampabush.html
http://www.cuadp.org/natgovassocmeet.html
*****
Steve Bright on the elections, in The Nation:
The Killing Machine
For many of the 3,682 men and women on death rows across the nation,
and their families, this election is literally a matter of life or
death. With one or more appointments to the Supreme Court, the
next President will probably change the balance of power in the
Court's review of capital cases. The Court could play a
greater role in restricting the use of the death penalty, or it
could give the states free rein to carry out more and more
executions.
Neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore is going to appoint Justices like
the late William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who believed that
capital punishment violates the Constitution's prohibition of cruel
and unusual punishment. But the next President's appointments will
have an enormous impact on how much death is used as a punishment in
the next several decades and the fairness of the process by which
people are denied their lives and liberty in the criminal courts.
Bush has expressed his admiration for Justices Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas, who have vigorously maintained that the
Constitution allows states to execute just about anyone -- children,
the mentally retarded, even the innocent--and provides virtually no
protections, not even a decent court-appointed lawyer, to a person
facing death.
Their approach to capital cases is much like the one taken by judges
in Texas, which dispatches people to its busy execution chamber in
assembly-line fashion. Bush has defended the Texas system, claiming
that the condemned had "full access to the law," while
presiding over 144 executions during his 6 years as governor. No
other state has carried out more than eighty executions in the past
25 years.
Al Gore will probably appoint moderates like the 2 Justices
appointed by Bill Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer,
whose votes reflect their views that the Constitution restricts the
ways in which states may impose death and that the federal courts
have a role to play in deciding what those restrictions are and in
keeping the death penalty within them.
Many of the Court's most important capital decisions have been
decided by a 5-to-4 vote. In those cases the outcome has usually
been determined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.
When they join with Scalia, Thomas and Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, the death sentence is upheld -- as in 2 5-to-4 decisions
in Virginia cases this year. In one of these, Weeks v. Angelone,
they upheld a death sentence even though the judge misled the jury
regarding how it was to reach its sentencing decision. In the other,
Ramdass v. Angelone, the defendant was not allowed to tell the jury
that he would not be eligible for parole if sentenced to life in
prison instead of death. Ginsburg, Breyer, John Paul Stevens and
David Souter dissented in both cases.
If either O'Connor or Kennedy joins the Court's 4 moderates, the
outcome is different. Just how delicate the balance is was
illustrated by the 1989 case of Penry v. Lynaugh. John Paul Penry is
a mentally retarded man sentenced to death in Texas. Justices
O'Connor and Kennedy were part of a 5-to-4 majority holding that the
Constitution does not prohibit the execution of the mentally
retarded, but Justice O'Connor cast the critical 5th vote for
setting aside Penry's death sentence because the jury was not
instructed that his retardation should be considered in mitigation.
Steve Bright is the director of the Southern Center for Human Rights
<http://www.schr.org>.
******
and finally I add this, from who knows where....
The state of Texas, under the leadership of Governor George W. Bush,
is ranked:
> 50th in spending for teachers' salaries
> 49th in spending on the environment
> 48th in per-capita funding for public health
> 47th in delivery of social services
> 42nd in child-support collections
> 41st in per-capita spending on public education
>
> And ...
>
> 5th in percentage of population living in poverty
> 1st in air and water pollution
> 1st in percentage of poor working parents without insurance
> 1st in percentage of children without health insurance
> 1st in executions (average 1 every 2 weeks for Bush's 5 years
> as Governor)
******
PERSONAL
Death of a Friend
I spent almost three years working for the family of farm worker
leader and United Farm Workers of America (AFL-CIO) co-founder Cesar
E. Chavez. My function as assistant to the director, and later
as acting director of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation included
representing and supporting members of Cesar's immediate family.
Cesar's daughter Linda, better known as "Lu," straightened
me out very quickly upon my arrival at "La Paz," the UFW's
compound and headquarters in the Tehachapi mountains near
Bakersfield. She had called the office and I answered the
phone, "Shavez Foundation." The next minute was
spent learning how to say the name properly. "Cha" -
as in "cha cha cha," with the accento on the
"a," followed by the "vez."
"Abe," she said, "this is less about you saying our
name right, and more about making sure the people you encounter
respect you and that fact that you represent our family."
Lu never held back, be it with constructive criticism, or
encouragement -- particularly when I told them I was leaving to
create a new organization to fight the death penalty.
Lu died early Monday morning, Oct. 9 in Los Angeles of complications
from scleroderma after nearly five weeks of hospitalization. I
can't help but wonder if the disease was in part as a result of
exposure to chemicals used in the fields she worked and organized in
as a child and as a young woman. Linda Chavez Rodriguez, who
would have been 50 in January, is survived by her husband, Arturo
Rodriguez; daughters Olivia Irlando and Julie Chavez Rodriguez; son
Arthur; son-in-law Andrés Irlando; mother, Helen Fabela Chavez;
brothers Fernando, Paul and Anthony Chavez; and sisters Sylvia
Chavez Delgado, Eloise Chavez Carrillo, Anna Chavez Ybarra and
Elizabeth Chavez Villarino. There is a rosary tonight and the
funeral is in the morning. The family requests that
remembrances go to the Linda C. Rodriguez Memorial Scleroderma Fund,
P.O. Box 62, Keene, Calif. 93531. For more information on the
Farm Worker Movement visit <http://www.ufw.org>.
*******
PERSONAL
MacNiel/Penzato Birth Announcement
And on an up note, speaking of creating new organizations, when I
left La Paz, I moved into a house in Los Angeles with Mike
"Otto" Penzato, who had moved to California to organize
the 1995 California Journey of Hope ...From Violence to Healing.
Soon we were joined by Mariah MacNiel, who I knew from my days as an
Area Coordinator for Amnesty International. Mariah worked with
Marie Deans at the Virginia Coalition on Prisons and Jails before
moving to California. Mike and Mariah were inspired to produce
the 1998 "Dead Man Walking" concert, which featured some
of the performers from the Dead Man Walking CD that accompanied the
film. I moved out to Texas, they bought the house (in which
CUADP was conceived and born in), and now the two love birds have
brought a new abolitionist into the world: Born 6:45am,
October 11,2000 - at 7lbs, 9oz, 21 inches - Baby Boy "Ichabod"
Penzato. (Yes, that name is temporary). Those wishing to
correspond (suggest a name!) may write to "Mariah &
Otto" <mariahmac@earthlink.net>
******
And for today, that is all.
paz!
--abe
"Talk is cheap. It's the way we organize and use our
lives every day that tells what we believe in."
-- Cesar E. Chavez
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