we have, it seems, found a most reliable way to drive traffic (i.e. people) to our entertaining and constructive peek inside the world of issue based organizing (e.g. how we carry out a strategy to abolish the death penalty) - face a very serious execution date...

in the week leading up to sedley alley's temporary reprieve last night we had 482 visitors to our blog ... we had 403 visitors all last month - our busiest month since launching the blog around halloween last year!

that rocks because the little jesuit dude and myself, the tennessee dude, believe that we have a unique "product" here and want this blog to serve at least 2 functions: to supply people - especially in tennessee - a method to grasp how we are going about the work of implementing a grassroots organizing strategy (often in amusing detail), and as a "public commons" for people to visit and dialogue about and through the challenging issues of killing a human being as a matter of public policy...

and we know that in the process that proponents of capital punishment (or at least of killing sedley alley) have found our blog, some finding us through the notoriously angry, vile, and bitter sixmeatbuffet site and others through simple yahoo or google searches ... we have posted numerous comments from people not supporting our mission and position on this emotionally laden policy issue ... and we will continue to do so within the parameters of good taste laid out by the lil' jesuit dude a day or 2 ago...

so here's the punch line - we do not subscribe to the us v. them framing of this issue preferred by some but rather, understand and accept that this issue is not about who suffers more (the murder victim's family members or the condemned person's family members) but that the pain and anguish of violence and killing lives and breathes on a continuum along which we seek to help those affected by murder to heal and to keep others from suffering the trauma and loss of a loved one through fruitless violence motivated by the raw and sensitive wounds of grief brought on by a tragic and senseless murder...

so please return often to this space in search of common ground and contribute to the dialogue necessary to develop a policy response to murder that, rather than diverting resources away from victim's services where they are most needed, truly holds the survivor of homicide's best interests at heart without creating an entirely new set of victims...

peace out - <3