So it has now been almost two weeks since our momentous Justice Day on the Hill, and the reverberations are finally calming. A lot of people have asked, if you aren't going to pass legislation this year, when the session is ending, what is the point of having a lobby day? Well it's time that we addressed that question.

The most obvious answer, and the one that we've given previously is that it takes time to start educating legislators about the need for a moratorium and the problems with the death penalty system. And this is true. Most legislators, like most people generally, simply don't know all the facts: that we have innocent people on death row, that we target the poor and the mentally ill, that there is no deterrent effect etc. And that's certainly true. We need to start the education process early to help those who aren't with us yet learn, and to bolster up the spirits of those who are with us but may have been afraid to say so.



There is another, less obvious, reason, however. And that is simply getting noticed. Tennessee is a big state and a lot goes on here (despite what I may have complained to my friends back home), so it's hard to get people to notice the death penalty except when someone's getting executed. So getting mass media to pay attention to us isn't easy.

Justice Day on the hill has brought a ton of attention to the call for a moratorium. Check out previous posts, but you can see that our day brought an article in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, an editorial in the Nashville Scene, and a story on News Channel 2. All from one day on the hill!

See media people want news and they want things that concern the decision makers and elites of our society. By bringing the issue right to them, we automatically provide a hook for the media. They are able (like mike browning did in the Channel 2 piece) to get contrasting legislative views and therefore have conflict and some drama in the piece. So going to the legislators can provide the angle that news reporters need to do a piece, and can get us noticed, bringing a little more information to a public that is pretty uninformed about the realities of the death penalty. So everyone go hit the state house!