No, I'm not talking about graduation from any particular institution of learning, although congratulations to everyone who has graduated in the past months. Instead I'm talking about the maturation and development of student leaders right here in the Tennessee abolition movement.

A few days ago I sat down with the working group on the TCASK Student Caucus, and we focused particularly on the Tennessee Student Conference Against the Death Penalty, which will be held at MTSU on Saturday September 9th. I've come to expect a fairly high level of work from these students, but they blew me away again. In about an hour and a half at Bongo Java we came up with the full structure of the conference as well as the general outline for the caucus as a whole. The students even began planning the workshops that they will give - and I've gotta tell ya, these workshops sound terrific!

To begin with, these are accomplished students who have a lot of experience and skills to offer in the areas of campus organizing, fundraising, event planning, the moratorium campaign, and organizing in high schools. These students have already successfully formed TCASK chapters on their campuses, raised sometimes thousands of dollars, brought Juan Melendez, Bud Welch, and many other incredible speakers to Tennessee, and brought groups of students to TCASK lobby day and literally wowed legislators. I can learn from them, and, on September 9th, we'll all have the opportunity to do so!

On another exciting note, we've finally received our budget for the Student conference, and we now can guarantee that we'll be able to afford to bring an exciting keynote speaker, like Juan Melendez or Ray Crone, as well as anti-death penalty experts from Equal Justice USA and hopefully a Tennessee State Legislator as well!

So if you're a high school of college student in Tennessee, mark your calendars for September 9th! And give Alex or Kate in the TCASK office a call to learn how you can become more involved in the TCASK Student Caucus. Students are preparing to become a more centralized and solidified force in the abolition movement. It's graduation day!