ever been in "that place" where you wondering if in opposing the death penalty you're playing out the role of don quixote???

many of "us" have - first you have to admit it ... good, good ... and then you can begin to heal ...

and there would, then, be those mornings where you just don't "feel the love," feel cynical, maybe your heart has hardened, or maybe the existential buzz is gone and you just need to feel like you're getting somewhere ...



totally understandable ... but, you musn't give in to those impulses ... here's why ...

well first the obvious - we need you! ... organizers need activists who can become organizers who can mobilize activists ... who can become organizers (tell me stop when you see the pattern emerging)...

but less obviously your persistence, your marathon approach, will pay dividends ... how do i know???

k', fair enuf ... just yesterday i received a call from the news director at a clearchannel owned a.m. station which also happens to have a news department that sends statewide feeds to small community stations' news departments across the state - every hour on the hour...

why'd he call you ask??? - that's an astute question - lemme tell you - because we're here, we've been here, and he knows we're going to be here until we work ourselves out of a job ... we didn't send out a press release; there was no recent local news story that put the death penalty on his radar; there was no reason ...

except that he was looking ahead to the january legislative session, he knew that we had pursued moratorium and study legislation in the past, and he wanted to know whether or not we would be pushing legislation next session and if so, how would we get the attention of legislators???

it opened the door to lay out our 3 year legislative plan, how we were doing the work, traveling to legislative districts, identifying local activists, training them to be local organizers, and building a grassroots network capable of flexing some political muscle 2-3 years out... and to talk about the potential for a schizophrenic (paranoid type) to be executed in february...

so we may or may not have gotten a particular message onto the airwaves (i can't monitor their news casts from here) but we did continue to educate an important media point person and reinforce our importance and our utility as the go-to place for death penalty information and analysis...

and that's because we have been persistent ... we have tenaciously hung on when times were lean ... when it appeared that windmills were all we were doing battle with ...

our time is a-coming ... the environment has shifted and as a movement we have matured and managed to learn what we need to be doing day-to-day to be ready to take advantage of opportunities when they arise ...

so remember this now or hear me later ... persistence and longevity matter...

peace out...

<3

it could be said that this is a short scripted tale of whether the cup is perceived as half empty or half full ... in fact we know that it is both, the metaphor simply identifies if one is generally an optimist or a pessimist...

as for organizing - i sit here on christmas day and channukah eve pondering which it shall be ...

on the empty side there is the fact that my e-mail program crashed last week and i have, at least temporarily, lost all of my unanswered in-box e-mails as well as all of my archived folders and their contents... i will be able to recover them but it will take a full day of tedious work next week to reconstruct everything ... ...

on the full side - and this is SO poignant - are the people who are working with me to end this stupid, damnnable thing we call capital punishment ... my board chair amy who is just a godsend (ironic considering i'm an agnostic myself); my co-worker alex who at 22 is just so much smarter and energetic than i am at 48; james and wright our technical and image gurus who do more than i manage to grasp to make us in-the-know, attractive, and interesting; lawyers such as dana, steve, chris, and brad who have watched our process of maturation and embraced our efforts; my national consultants and strategic gurus shari, peter, kristin, sue, diann, brenda, dick, and my state peers steve, celeste, david, stephanie; our major donors such as mary, patrick, fredric, and sally; and so many local volunteers that this blog would never end if i even began to list them (THANK YOU all, each and every one)...

i could be counting sheep in an effort to sleep through the moments of tedium and frustration but these are all such human moments and experiences that in the end they both compliment and set off moments of sheer exhuberance and inspiration...

so instead i am focusing my heart and mind on those blessings that enabled me to nurture an environment, a structure, a vision that has gifted me with the memorable and fleeting moments to interact with and come to know people who are both passionate about the struggle and not afraid to win...

here's a holiday toast to mutual aid and winning - cheers!

<3

posted by the tennessee dude Permalink    0 Comments

tcask launched it's blog october 31st immediately upon returning from the annual ncadp conference held this year in austin, tx ...

as of this morning the on the road to abolition organizing journal has seen a 1000% increase in traffic over the month of november ...

that's phenomenal!!! - thanks for stopping in to check out our personalized roadmap to the end of executions in tennessee - you visitors rock our little southern world...

<3

2005 has been a break through year for the death penalty abolition movement here in tennessee ... and i hope that other southern state organizations can take note...

i came on 5 years ago (december 2000) and have spent that time, working alone - really alone, re-tooling and rebuilding an existing statewide organization from an emotional outlet through which passionate individuals can oppose individual executions into a professional organization that, when opportunities either present themselves and/or are created, can effectively educate, organize, and mobilize individuals with diverse sets of often complicated motivations and change state public policy regarding capital punishment ...

in other words - abolish the damn death penalty ...

and we are going to do it in tennessee - tennessee will be the first southern state to do the deed - and we will celebrate like you won't believe ...

and we'll do it because now that the organizational foundation has been laid we are building the capacity to carry out the step by step tasks to achieve the mission...

case in point - we added alex to the staff as a jesuit volunteer and his commitment and passion has led him to commit to a second year as a full-time traveling organizer, at poverty level wages ... and our grassroots productivity has SOARED under his hard work, experiential insight, and and keen skillset...

...and tcask will add another jesuit volunteer in august of 2006, another full-time traveling organizer in july or august 2006, and a 1/2 time intern from a masters level social work program ... that'll be 4.5 staffers, up from 1, while barely doubling our annual budget (which is and will remain lean enough to be seen only through smoke and mirrors)...

i read that and it's impressive...

but here's the rub and the whole bit about the "wing and the prayer" - you remember the wing and the prayer doncha'??? ... i mentioned it way back in the title and then took you on a ride that appeared to lead away from rather than to the subject at hand - uh, yeah, "tis' the season of on a wing and a prayer..."

tennessee is looking at a funding gap between late february/early march through mid-june ... and we need to raise $28,000 in short order to cover that gap...

and that sounds daunting...

yet i remain confident that we will attract the funding because we have consulted, built relationships inside and outside the state, demonstrated savvy, laid the groundwork, and built up an impressive structure whose funding will soon catch up with its imagination, its vision, and the blood, sweat, and tears that has been unselfishly poured into a belief that the state has neither the insight nor the moral history to decide who lives and who dies as an outcome of taxpayer financed public policy...

so we end the year looking at that financial chasm and continue working knowing that on a wing and a prayer tcask will survive, tcask will continue its work uninterrupted, that those with the capital will recognize our strength and make sure we move forward to end the punishment...

oh yeah, so if you know persons unknown to us that want to make a sound tax deductible investment in a venture guaranteed to trigger the fall of capital punishment in this country make sure they contact us through our web site, our e-mail, snail mail, or by phone...

peace out and happy holidays from the tennessee dude...

<3

Possibly the first thing that Randy said to me when I arrived in Nashville to start my year as a Jesuit Volunteer was that in organizing, personal relationships are everything. It was a maxim that I'd heard before and it couldn't be more true. What I didn't realize is that personal relationships mean "Thank You" cards. On my first full day in the office, I wrote two personal thank yous, and I haven't slowed down since. But the end of the year (and the holiday season) offer a special opportunity for personal relationship thank yous.

You see here at TCASK, and I imagine many other Southern abolition organizations, we don't have a tremendously huge budget or donor base, so what we have, we want to keep. Each individual contribution makes a difference to us, and we know a lot of the individuals who give us a little of their hard-earned money personally. It's all nice and rosy. Nice and rosy thank you cards. That's right, at the end of the year, we end personalized, hand-written thank yous to each and every person who donated to TCASK in the previous year. It's a lot of card writing, I don't mind telling you, but it comes at a good time of year, since there isn't a huge amount of organizing work to be done; no one wants to take on a new project right before Christmas. So instead of calling churches, I write cards (with the occasional typing break to work the cramps out of my hand). And though it may seem silly, we've been doing it for years, and I notice that annual donations of individual members are continually on the rise. They're important to us and it's only right that we tell them so.

Merry Christmas to all!

The federal government, which has executed only 3 people since 1967, has decided to try to make up for lost time. Instead of mere states being guilty of homicide, the federal government now wants to be a leading culprit. Execution dates were recently set for three men, James Roane, Corey Johnson, and Richard Tipton. And the national government decided to do it all in one week, setting dates of May 8, 10, and 12 respectively. All three men, like 50% of those awaiting execution by the federal government, are black.

Roane, Johnson, and Tipton were sentenced under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 which allows for the death penalty in drug related murders. It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has observed the procedures of the death penalty that this act falls disproportionately on minorities, as does the federal system as a whole. In fact, of the three people that the federal government has executed, only one of them was white, Timothy McVeigh. And Timothy McVeigh certainly qualifies as a somewhat special case. For one thing, he was found guilty of the largest act of domestic terrorism (at that time) in America's history. Moreover, he "volunteered" for execution, by foregoing all his appeals. The others have been people of color, a Hispanic man who was convicted of dealing drugs and murder, and an African-American convicted of murdering and raping a white woman. Roane, Johnson, and Tipton are now set to become the next victims of a racially biased system. Their only resort may be presidential clemency.

THE FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY
There are currently 42 people awaiting execution by the federal goverment. Five of them committed their crimes in states which do not have the death penalty. Allowing the federal government to circumvent the decisions of the people of Iowa, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Maybe more shocking, the federal death penalty can be imposed for crimes other than murder, including treason, espionage, and (wait for it) trafficking in large quantities of drugs. Would anyone be shocked to find that such sentencing would be mostly used for people of color?

Today, the radio program Democracy Now, hosted by Amy Goodman, spent an hour interviewing Harold Wilson, a man who spent 16 years on Pennsylvania's death row and recently became the 122nd death row prisoner exonerated since the resumption of executions in 1977. I'd encourage everyone to listen to this program live or over the web, if they have the chance. It's worth remembering that there are human faces to exonerations.

Moreover, as Mr. Wilson attests, after his exoneration, after 16 years of being imprisoned, dehumanized, and threatened with death, he's simply released with a bus token. We need to remember and shed light on the way we treat the people who's lives we've torn apart by incorrectly accusing and convicting them of horrendous crimes. The state should not simply be able to say, "oops, our bad." The state of Pennsylvania owes Harold Wilson some form of compensation, as the other 24 states owe the other 121 death row exonerees. And we all owe it to them and to ourselves to take a more serious look at issues of prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective council, and police malfeasance.

Actually, I didn't do much this Saturday night. No, it's not because I don't have any social life (I may not have one, but that is not the reason that I stayed in on this particular Saturday night). No, it was because I knew that at 7:00 AM, my phone was going to ring, and it wasn't just going to be my mother. It was going to be a live feed to Christian Dissent radio (By the time this is posted, they will hopefully have our interview linked).

Yes that's right, apparently someone is listening to the radio from 6:00 to 8:00 on Sunday mornings. But the show is actually a good one, so next time you're up, you should tune it in, or at least go listen to the segments that they have linked on their website.

We ended up having a really great conversation for over half an hour. We talked a lot about biblical and theological responses to capital punishment, and ways that we can have conversations with conservative Christians about capital punishment. One of the most interesting, or at least unusual, questions that I was asked was that with capital punishment, even having surpassed the 1,000 execution mark, we're talking about a tiny number of people in comparison to issues of poverty, war, racism, and other forms of violence. Are we making too big a deal about capital punishment really?

I hadn't really heard the sentiment put quite that way before. The first thing that I mentioned was that this demonstrates again the arbitrariness of the death penalty, which is applied in under 2% of possible cases. America could never support the number of executions necessary if we applied the death penalty in all possible cases.

But I think the question does run deeper: why are we so concerned about this tiny number of people? For many of us, much like the proponents of capital punishment, the death penalty is a symbol. But in this case, it is a symbol of our respect for human life and human dignity. If our society can so degrade a human being as to kill them, what does that say about us? Or maybe we know that for the state to kill one person is too many. But I'd be interested to know why other people working for abolition are doing it.

before they come round again... so says my old' buddy jackson browne...

why bring him up??? well here i sit today just a little deflated after a manic high of elation yesterday... friday is traditionally clean up day in every sense of the word - i mean you want to start monday off with as clean a slate as possible...

now yesterday was a 17 hour work day for me ... and well worth it ... i came in at 6 a.m. because i knew that the cchd grant application was due that day, no ifs ands or buts... so absent a 2 hour slot to go pick up a check from community shares (and buy a decent bottle of chardonnay) i worked through this on-line application ...

but midway through the day we received an e-mail from abe at cuadp and "went" to watch the web cast of the debate over the moratorium and study bill in the nj senate - we got there just in time and as you all probably know it was no contest at 30 - 6 in favor!

AWESOME! - tcask sent out a press release just to alert our own legislators and statewide media and especially to give our supporters something to celebrate and feel good about - we all need to do victory laps, long distance high-5s, and dance to gloria gaynor's "i will survive" in the office on occasion ... and yesterday was such a day ...

and then back to the grant application and when i hit the submit button at 11:05 p.m. last night i felt the weight of the world melt from my shoulders <ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...>

and that was a great end to a great day...

but today - a little ennui, a little deflation, a little focus on mundane tasks ... cleaning off the desks, putting up the 2006 planning calendars (yeah, we're a little late, what are you gonna do - execute me???), printing off 2-up tcask thank you cards and cutting them in half on the $15 cutter, and stuff like that ...

but that's a part of organizing too ... the small, otherwise unnoticeable tasks, the attention to details, the run-of-the-mill s__t that must be attended to in order to remain systematic, focused, and on top of the strategic gameplan ...

so it's okay that things are running in 3/4 time today cause as my buddy jackson notes...

All good things got to come to an end
The thrills have to fade
Before they come 'round again
The bills will be paid
And the pleasure will mend
All good things got to come to an end
All good times, all good friends
All good things got to come to an end...

for now ... peace out from music city usa

<3

Forget your revenue stream, it's time to diversify your staff input stream! What!? Has this blogger gone nuts or did he just fail 2nd grade grammar? Well, the former isn't true, and I'm fairly sure that the latter isn't either. Here's the point, here at TCASK we have a staff of two. That's right, there are only two of us for the whole state. Now that may sound bad, but we're actually fairly well staffed compared to a lot of state abolition organization.

Well this year we added our second staff person, yours truly, by applying for a Jesuit Volunteer. While I admittedly may be a little biased, the JVC (Jesuit Volunteer Core) and other similar service programs offer a great opportunity for state organizations to add a full-time staffer for about a third of what one would normally cost. And moving from a staff of one to a staff of two exponentially increases the output of an office. I mean with me to make his coffee, bring in the mail, and take out the garbage, Randy has a lot more time to get actual organizing work done.

Yesterday, we had an initial meeting in an attempt to further enhance our staff, in this case through an intern position. We are hoping to add a social work intern next fall, who would work in the office two days a week, particularly working to build our campaign the stop the legal killing of the mentally ill. This would bring our staff up from two to two-and-a-half, and offer another huge boost in our staff productivity. And if we can increase our funding enough to keep me on (another way to add to your staff is to find people who will work for poverty level wages) we also hope to add a new JV next year, which would bring our staff up to three-and-a-half, and boost our capacity to the point of being ready to truly challenge the practice of state killing here in Tennessee.

So, I don't actually mean that we shouldn't be diversifying our revenue streams. We obviously all need to do that, but at the same time, let's break out of the hiring professional staff/ seek volunteers dichotomy. We can find other, less expensive ways to expand our staffs and become far more powerful organizations. We've only skimmed the surface in this regard. I am sure that there are other religious volunteer orders, and probably other school programs that are looking for internships. There are probably other avenues we haven't even considered, but it's time we all started.

someone read the previous post and e-mailed me that, using the yiddish term, she thought i was kvetching...

okay - guilty as charged - what are you gonna do about it - execute me??? well THAT's not a deterrent - gotcha!

okay, that was stolen from the Colbert Report's "The Word" on the death penalty...

check it out - it's hilarious...

cheers! - <3

last week when i spoke with him i was supportive, complimentary, and, well, it was almost as if we were downing whiskey at a local drowning hole we were so talkative ...

my how things change in a week...

the "him" is a reporter at a small town newspeper who has written extensively on a death row case...he called last week to check on some activist actions we were using as organizing tools...on one of the tools he asked who the author was and i pointed him towards an e-mail address linking it back to the author - it was a hot e-mail link and i said he should write to her and ask his questions...we chatted about the case and off he went...

i never saw any of our conversation enter the next 2 articles he wrote...

this morning he calls and he's a bit haughty, even a little aggressive...

"hey, even our sherriff thinks this guy will never be executed - it's just taken so long...there's no end in sight..."

"good for him," i said. " he should feel that way!"

"yeah, even the local prosecutor says he's not gonna seek the death penalty on a current murder because of this old case..."

"perfect," i said. " he should feel that way...it's a HUGE waste of taxpayer $$$ and you've talked with the _________ and ___________ families - look what this long delay has done to them - i mean, how dare we do that to them..."

"hey, i've sent that woman 3 e-mails and she hasn't responded yet...her e-mail address ends in _________, do you think that means she works for ___________?... do you have a phone number for her?... do you know her... have you met with or talked with her???"

no i said...

and i ended the call shortly thereafter...he was annoyed and annoying simultaneously...i said i'd send her an e-mail too and said good bye (but meant good riddance)...

after it was over i turned to alex and said, "he's neither woodward nor bernstein is he???" "if he thinks he knows what office she works in he might call information, get the number and try it..."

next time i watch the wizard of oz not only will i see it as a racist parable (the wicked witch in black and the good witch in white) but i''ll be thinking of this reporter when the straw scarecrow sings...

<3

posted by the tennessee dude Permalink    0 Comments

New Jersey is ONE DAY away from a vote on a bill calling for a moratorium on executions and a study in the state Senate! If it passes, the Assembly is expected to take up the bill shortly thereafter and the acting Governor has said that he will sign it. This would make New Jersey the first state to legislatively impose a moratorium on executions! New Jerseyans for Alternatives to Capital Punishment has done an incredible amount of work on the issue and we can help them out so if you know anyone in the Garden State tell them to call their Senator ASAP and ask them to vote for the moratorium.

The issues in New Jersey aren't much different from those in Tennessee and everywhere else around the country. A recent study found that New Jersey has spent $253 million on its death penalty system, above and beyond the costs of life without parole, and hasn't executed a single person. And New Jersey only has 10 men on its death row. In, Tennessee, where we have 103 people on death row, we have probably spent nearly $1,000,000,000 above and beyond the cost of incarcerating murderers for life. All NJ is saying is think about all the good that could have been done with that money; programs for victims families, social programs proven to effectively reduce crime, raising police salaries and hiring more officers. There are better ways. So please, everyone send good vibes (and phone calls, emails, and letters) to New Jersey over the next couple of days. Today New Jersey, tomorrow Tennessee, next week the country.

I'll be honest, I don't know if Stanley "Tookie" Williams is innocent or not. There are strong indicators that he may have been innocent of the crimes for which he was tragically executed early this morning, although he was certainly guilty (by his own admission) of other acts of violence and for inciting others to the same as the founder of the Crips. But I do know that this was a man who had turned his life around. Tookie had become a leading spokesperson against gang violence, a man who had a real-world perspective, and could command a respect and legitimacy with inner-city youth that few others could. I can honestly say that I think that the world has become a worse place because of Tookie's execution and not simply because the state's killing diminishes it and diminishes each and every one of us. No, Tookie Williams had become a positive force in the world. A voice of peace and non-violence. A voice that is now silenced. And yet Governor Schwarzenegger could think of "no reason" that this man might be worthy of clemency. I'm afraid this speaks of either a severe lack of perspective or cold-heartedness.

One of the reasons the Governor found to deny clemency was Tookie's lack of remorse for his murders. This of course brings us back to the issue of his innocence. How can a man feel remorse for a crime he did not commit? We have already seen how our justice system can sentence the innocent to death. Since the death penalty's re-emergence over 120 people have been sentenced to death and only later exonerated. And, as Tookie's case may well demonstrate, there is no way that we can be sure that all the innocents have been found. It is likely that some are being executed. In Texas, new evidence has arisen suggesting that Ruben Cantu, executed in 1991, was innocent. Here in Tennessee we have several men sitting on death row, most notably Paul House, who have strong claims to innocence.

So why does it happen? There are, of course, any number of factors involved, lack of adequate counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, etc. that play a role, but we also have to face up to the fact that our criminal justice process often makes it more likely that an innocent person be executed.

To begin with, the death penalty is often used as a threat to get a defendant to agree to plead guilty for a lesser sentence. And this makes sense, as long as the defendant is actually guilty. An innocent person is far less likely to plead guilty to a charge of murder two, for instance, if they know that they did not commit any murder whatsoever. Moreover, an innocent defendant tends to worry a lot less about their case. There is, for some reason, a faith in the justice system, a feeling that, since they know that they are innocent, all they have to do is show up, tell their story, and that will be it. Unfortunately, that is not how our system works. Finally, innocent people appear remorseless. How could they not? They didn't do anything? Yet to juries, judges, and Governors alike, they seem cold, hard-hearted people, making them more likely to be sentenced to death in the sentencing phase of a trial and then less likely to be granted clemency. Stanley "Tookie" Williams is only the most recent example of this dangerous system that says that it is more important that it is better to be rich and innocent than poor and guilty. Unless our country once and for all turns away from killing, I am sorry to say that we will see the death of more innocents.

So it may only be December 13th, but I've made a New Year's resolution: I'm going to run the New York City Marathon in November. I used to be a serious runner in high school, but had all kinds of injury problems in college and haven't run much since, but today, at 5:45 I pulled on my running shoes and was out of the house for a run. It never hurts to start New Year's early.

There's something amazing about a marathon. I mean it's a long and arduous process, not only actually running the 26.2 miles, but also the months and months of training leading up to the event. No one can just step out of their houses one day and run a marathon, I don't care how talented they are. But anyone can run a marathon, not in world record time, but as their own personal record. It isn't always fun, and it certainly isn't easy. Training can be a pain. There are days when you feel great and miles just fly by, and there are days when every step is a trial. You're tired, or sore, or just not feeling like running. Anyone can finish a marathon, but only if they get out of bed on those mornings when they don't feel like running and soldier through.

Yesterday I had one of those days, not running but organizing. We had an initial organizing meeting in Jackson, and, quite frankly, I was off. In the words of Randy, I didn't bring my "A" game. To tell the truth, I didn't even bring my "B" or "C" game. I'd call it more like my "D -" game. It was just like one of those mornings where your legs aren't in the run. My head just wasn't there, my presentation was unfocused and rambling.

But you know what? That's going to happen. Trying to organize to bring an end to capital punishment is not a sprint, it isn't something that we can roll out of bed one morning and decide to do. It's a marathon, and we'll only reach the finish line if we push through each and every presentation and meeting. Because, no one can give the Gettysburg Address every day. Some days we're not inspiring and we're not really together.

Fortunately for me, I have a training partner who can pull me through those days. Randy was together at our meeting last night and, in the end, it's not about my oratorical ability, but about the injustice of the death penalty. By the end of the meeting, we had a group of people ready to do work in Jackson against the death penalty, organized in a way that they weren't before. Even the runs that aren't pretty bear fruit. When you still "trust the integrity of the process" as the Abolitionist of the Year has told us, you can get good results even when you're not at your most eloquent and inspiring. So at the end of this week, I'll be back on the phone to Jackson, following up on the small specific actions that we all agreed upon last night. Because it's getting those hundreds of little actions and meetings together that make us able to finish this marathon we're all running. No one can get out of bed one morning and have the death penalty abolished by dinner time, even if they can deliver the Gettysburg Address. But even when we can only manage a few painful miles, a few phone calls, a less that perfect presentation, we get closer to the finish line, even when we can't see it.

Keep on running!

We call ourselves a state-wide group here at TCASK, so with a staff of only two (both here in Nashville) we have to spend a lot of time traveling. In about 10 minutes, we'll be heading out to Jackson, TN, to meet with a initial group of people interested in working to end capital punishment. Sounds easy enough, no?

Well, frankly, no. This meeting, I am here to tell you, does not simply happen. So let's go back to October, and the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Conference which, coincidentally enough, was held in Jackson. The TCASK staff attended, as the only none mental health care organization by the way, and while there we stayed at the house of a person who had been in contact with the state office. The afternoon the conference ended, we met with him and his wife and a wonderful lady from a local church who's involved in all kinds of social justice organizations. And thus we started. After getting back to Nashville, we initially tried to set up a presentation at the local Catholic church, but were thwarted by busy schedules, so, back to the drawing board, and Margaret Meade "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world," she said." In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." So maybe we need to find a small group of dedicated people.

So back to the phone to our Jackson contact I went, but with a simpler request. Five names. Five people in her community who she thinks would be interested, able, and helpful in working against the death penalty. So we got five names (then later it became seven and the even ten, but I digress). Which led to five letters, one to each person, explaining who I was, what TCASK does, why I was contacting them, and what we'd like to accomplish. Then five phone calls. OK, that's not at all true, it was far more than five phone calls to get everyone.

"We'd like to have a meeting sometime in these two weeks. What days wouldn't work for you?"

Repeat until you've spoken to everyone. Then schedule a day, and call back.

"Hi, thanks again for your interest. So after talking to everyone I've scheduled our meeting for _____. You'd said that was workable for you. Can you still meet?"

And eventually, you have a meeting. Hard work? Yes. A little frustrating? Yes. But now several clergy members, a former elected official, a college professor, a retired brother, and several hard working folks are sitting down tonight to discuss how to end the death penalty. Worth a little frustration? Oh most definitely.

i feel that i should point out that when i opined that tennessee attorney general's surname was lestat that i meant no ill-will towards anne rice fans ...

and of course no disrespect meant for members of the legal profession ... we love so many of you for your big hearts and daring imaginations...

but as to summers he's just so out of step, so old-school in a bad way, so fred thompson-like (lacking the sense of humor of course) ... he's really the first ag in tennessee since re-instatement of the death penalty who has promoted an agenda of death from such a high state office ...

michael cody - i think not ... even knox walkup was a reasonable and knowledgeable sort of fellow when it came to this draconian and unreliable public policy ... but ag summers???

i mean he's a methodist for crying out loud ... has he not read The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church ???

oy!

<3

Especially in lobbying, your grandmother was right; you have to be patient. It is not, as many tend to believe, the case that legislators don't care. In most cases, legislators, while, of course, chasing money and votes, are doing so because they want to make good public policy and serve their constituents and their state/country/city. Of course, serving a county or two, is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and legislators are, consequently, busy people. And in Tennessee, you also have to remember that they all have other jobs and lives outside the legislature as well.

Case in point, in a few hours, I am supposed to be meeting with our prospective bill sponsor for this year. Yep! As much as I consider myself an organizer, and organizing is the main thrust of our work here at TCASK, someone's got to do the lobbying and legislative work. So I had set up this meeting, accommodated all our coalition partners so they could have a seat at the table, when yesterday, I got a call from the legislators scheduler who informed me that the legislator had to be in depositions all day and, consequently, wouldn't be able to make our meeting.

Now, I'm not going to lie, I was a wee bit piqued, but then I looked down at the lobby handout that I had distributed during our legislative training only a few days ago and read one of the rules of lobbying that I'd been preaching "Your legislator has a busy schedule. . . so be flexible" (italics in original). Time for me to remember to practice what I preach. Sometimes meetings get rescheduled. It doesn't mean that my legislator doesn't want to meet with me, it just means that he has other 50,000 constituents and a lot of work to do. I'm going to reschedule the meeting today. I'll thank him for meeting with me and be pleasant about it and probably even score some points for waiting nicely and flexibly. Minor setbacks can become assets if we just listen to Grandma.

at 6:53 a.m. i'm in the office putting together materials for a training that has been scheduled for a month ... if it weren't for deadlines i believe nothing might ever get done~! :-)

tcask has big plans for student chapters in the state but currently we have one @ mtsu in murfreesboro ... that's my destination ... i'm late leaving the office ... i should be there at 10 and i'm just getting off the interstate at 10 so i'm still 15 minutes out ... i call the chapter's vice-president's cell phone and leave a message, (in a haggard voice) "i'm caught in this blizzard of a snow storm and crawling along in traffic at 20 mph ... i'll be there as soon as mother nature permits..."

i was there at 10:15 ... the training is fairly simple - it's just showing how easy it is to go into a business and ask them to sign a moratorium resolution (a petition for businesses and such to ask for a time-out on executions and a thorough study of the state's death penalty system)...

so alex and i had tweaked a pitch script (thank you buttercup!) to make the point that you wanna stay on point and every quickly all five people there "get it" - it's like, with one exoneration for every eight executions, if that were cars from the saturn auto plant in spring hill having ions recalled at a 12% rate you would want to investigate and find out why this is happening - it's bad business ...

as for the materials it was a simple series of flip pages to complement the very brief conversation and ask...

after the session we went to the city cafe for lunch and they put together a specific list of some 50 businesses as targets and assigned them out...

my work done, i drove back to nashville in the driving rain...

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So things, apparently, aren't hard enough for abolitionists in America. The system, which has killed 1000 in the modern area, is just too soft on criminals. Don't worry, baseball fans, Samuel Alito is here to save us from the danger of not executing innocent or unfairly tried human beings.

Sandra Day O'Connor is hardly a liberal. Nominated by Ronald Reagan, she has consistently supported capital punishment. But O'Connor has occasionally ruled against extremely unfair practices. Not Alito, in an insightful piece in the LA Times, Goodwin Liu recently explored Judge Alito's record on the death penalty. In the ten cases regarding executions on which Alito has ruled, in all five cases that were not decided unanimously, Alito ruled in favor of execution. You can read about all of them in the previous link, but I have to focus on just one, a case regarding racial discrimination in the death penalty. In 2001, Alito ruled against James Riley (an African-American man) who claimed that his rights had been infringed upon because the D.A. had struck all three black potential jurors. Riley's case included the fact that in all three capital cases the same D.A. had tried the previous year, he had used strikes to eliminate all African-Americans from the jury pool. Now, common sense should dictate that there's a pattern here, but that's not enough for Alito who wrote, "Although only about 10% of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?"

Can youbelievee this guy? He's comparing race, and the horrendous history of racial bias in our criminal justice system, to right and left-handedness! The analogy doesn't even make sense. When deciding between life and death, shouldn't we be absolutely certain that we are being fair? Shouldn't we be sure that facts, not underlying attitudes of prejudice, are making the decisions? The answer, from Alito, and current Justices Scalia and Thomas at least, is clear; No! Judges like Alito will continue to refuse to see bias unless the D.A. says aloud, "I want to exclude all blacks [although he'd probably have to use a more pejorative phrase for them to be sure it was discrimination]" Even then, it might not havedefinitelyy effected the outcome of the trial. I guess it's just coincidence as well that 80% of death row inmates were charged with the murder of a white person, even though over 50% of murder victims are people of color. It just happens that a quarter of all African-Americans on death row were tried in front of all white juries. These numbers may shock you and I, but not Alito. I mean, it happens that lefties are under-represented on juries too, does that mean that left-handed people are discriminated against at trial?

at 5:45 pm on wednesday the 7th i was careening (okay, doing 32 in a 30 m.p.h) down tn hwy 243 (better known as main street) in mt. pleasant ... looking for the jones chapel ame church ...

it's dark and i'm looking for numbers when i realize i've passed my mark...and, the odd and even numbers have switched side of the road as north main became south main - oy!

so i turn around in the first lit parking lot i see - it's a liquor store, i don't go in, turn back up the road, find the church and enter...

reverend smith was playing the piano when i entered ... when we talked he told me, "i didn't give you any directions - i tell people that when they miss the church, go to the first liquor store, don't go in, turn around and come back to the church ... we both had a good laugh over that one...

my presentation was a little choppy - i was expecting youth and actually had an all adult audience so i had to re-think my delivery ... but all in all it was well received ...

i opened with "you don't actually have to commit a murder to be executed for it..." and laid out the gary graham case briefly ... and talked about unfairly targeting the working poor, racial disparity based on the victim's color, and the mentally ill...

we had a solid discussion afterwards with four people willing to help us in mt. pleasant ... i will follow-up about a church resolution soon, and identify some local businesses they can approach for support as well... i was invited out to the waffle house after we finished up at 8 p.m. but i had promised mama i would stop by for pinto beans and sweet potatoes...great way to finish a good night...

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Last night, the Nashville Chapter of TCASK took part in our first ever lobby training. At the NCADP Conference in October, one of the comments made was that abolitionists know all the moral arguments against capital punishment, but we don't know how to count.

In a way, that's true.

There's no doubt that the death penalty is a moral issue, and if we don't understand the arguments, both moral and "pragmatic," against it, we won't get anywhere. But in the end, we're talking about changing public policy and that policy is made by legislators. A majority of legislators. In other words, to abolish the death penalty in Tennessee, we need to count 50 (of 99) members of the the state House of Representatives and 17 (of 33) state Senators on our side.

And we're only going to do that by telling our elected representatives what we want them to do, and that means lobbying. It means going to those 67 members of the Tennessee General Assembly and convincing them. How do we do that?

See now, if you'd been at our training last night, you wouldn't have to ask that question, because you'd already know. Our training includes understanding what lobbying is, an explanation of the Tennessee legislative process, the universal rules of lobbying, and how to structure a visit to your legislator. It even includes practice sessions and lets participants know how to lobby even when they're not experts on an issue.

We hope to do a similar training with each and every TCASK chapter in the coming months and culminate with a great big Day of Justice on the Hill in late March, when we can all converge on the capital and tell our legislators in no uncertain terms that we want a moratorium on executions! So get on the phone to me and schedule a lobby training for your local group ASAP!

We can't win if we can't count!

i am 100% convinced his name is lestat...

seriously, the tennessee attorney general is so clearly a vampire that next time he holds a press conference i'm attending with a full-length mirror and just when he's about to deliver his punch line i'll jump out, stand sideways between him and the media and expose the fact that he casts NO IMAGE...

why so certain...

he's like the everready executioner ... he just keeps seeking, and seeking, and seeking execution dates...

of her (protagonist??? antagonist???) main character anne rice says, "He represents the ruthless side in us...he is the male ruthless half of me that, thank God, does not exist, except in fiction..."

yet here's paul "lestat" summers seeking an execution date for someone on december 2nd who's under a stay ... he's set to execute a serious schizophrenic in february ... he's had 20 executions that he's sought stopped since he succeeded in killing another severely mentally ill human being in the spring of 2000...

he never stops trying to kill... i'm betting he's a card carrying member of the nra, a near debutante of the yellowdog political elite, a real corporal punishin' sonofagun ...

and i bet he never bought a bottle of newman's own organic extra virgin olive oil in his life!

peace out...

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So more good news on our outreach front. Everyone (all 3 of you) who's been keeping up with our blog here, remembers that about a month ago I visited Giles County and, on that trip, spoke at the Catholic Church, Immaculate Conception. The response there was terrific, and the church immediately formed a subcommittee (of 14 people!) to work on the death penalty.

Over the course of the last month, the subcommittee has continued to educate their church, including announcements in the bulletin and distributing TCASK literature after mass, and, on Sunday, it all paid off. The parish council unanimously passed a moratorium resolution! That's the first, but surely not the last, church to pass such a moratorium resolution and it marks the second Catholic church in a week to pass such a resolution (see last weeks post "Rockin out in Franklin").

These resolutions come swiftly on the heels of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' call for abolition of the death penalty. We sent out a press release to the Catholic Register which we hope to see turned into an article following up on last week's article on the USCCB's call, in next week's issue. Did anyone see any other press coverage in the local media?

Well, maybe cheap comes with the wrong connotation. Can all the Southern abolition organizations that have tons of excess money and staff please step forward? . . . .

So as is probably evident from the clamor of organizations stepping forward after my previous sentence, we're blessed with many things in the abolition movement, passion, truth, committed people, but we don't generally have a lot of money (and of course this is true of most groups working for social justice). And that brings us to the phone, the organizer's best friend.

Since arriving in Tennessee three months ago I have spent a lot of time on the phone. Every week I send letters to 3-5 churches in targeted legislative districts, which are then followed up with phone calls 9 days later. Imagine my having to visit all of them. Even though people sometimes don't seem to know how to answer the phone, it is just so much more efficient.

Plus, Tennessee's a long state. I mean we exist in two separate time zones. To drive across the state we're talking about a 7 hour trip. And we have chapters all around. It's hard to keep track of everything going on and we need to coordinate our work in the state office with all the great work going on around the state, so we turn to our friend the phone again. And our friend the conference call.

Last night, I was able to spend an hour on the phone with some of our members in Chattanooga. It's been hard to get things going in Chattanooga, but with just an hour of orienting me to the situation and talking about some organizing strategies, techniques, and resources that we have been using in the state office, we came up with a fairly good outline of our strategy in Memphis over the next 3 or 4 months! Putting your heads together really works.

We also use conference calls for our monthly committee meetings (see "Who do you know" previously posted), and now someone from the state office will be on each of those calls as well, so really maximize our work.

So remember, even if you're off in a deserted rural area, as long as you have a phone you can be a big part of TCASK's work. God Bless the telephone, the conference call, and cheapness, I mean fiscal responsibility!

Last night was an exciting for Franklin, TN.

OK, It's possible that it was just an exciting night for me in Franklin, but you get the idea. You see, last night the parish council of St. Matthew Church passed a moratorium resolution! This wasn't a church that we'd done a lot of work with, in fact we'd done almost no previous work there, so I was fairly nervous going into speak to the council.

For one thing, it's a fairly large council (about 20 people), and for another Franklin is not noted for its progressive leanings. But we started out by talking about the recent statement against the death penalty by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and there was almost no argument against it. We discussed the death penalty's lack of deterrent power and the fact that it does not bring healing to victims. And, who'da thunk it? The vote was unanimous.

Now I'd like to attribute this to my oratorical prowess, but I'm afraid that that would not be fair or honest. I would like to share, however, what I've found to be the proper "frame" for the issue of the death penalty for Catholic communities.

OK! So Imagine a frame with four sides (top, left, right, and bottom) consisting of Innocence, Protection of Society, Targeting the Poor, and the Teaching of the Pope and the USCCB. The issue of innocence is a resounding one and one that is probably the most effective issue with people across the board; even if you support the death penalty, you probably don't want to kill innocent people (there are some rare exceptions here).

The Catholic teaching on the death penalty has been a slowly evolving one. The death penalty is permitted in cases where there is no other way to protect society. In America today, the prison system, and long prison terms, are perfectly capable of protecting society from violent people, and thus the Church now calls for abolition in America. Non-Catholics are likewise concerned with public safety, so addressing the issue of protection is critical to any discussion of capital punishment.

One of the central tenants of Catholic Social Doctrine is a preferential option for the poor. Put simply, any decision we make as a society must prioritize the good of the poor. Throughout the Gospels, Christ refers to the poor continually. The arbitrariness and economic bias of the death penalty clearly fails this test.

Finally, Church teachings are central to speaking to religious groups. Grounding your discussion in faith immediately places abolition on the moral high ground where it belongs. This is true also with the United Methodist, Presbyterian, or any other of the many denominations that have taken positions against the death penalty.

Hopefully we'll be able to apply this frame with many more successes in the common weeks and months!