It was the final day of the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break, and they say that all good things must come to an end. But fortunately for us, our mission doesn't end here. We have gained essential tools and personal stories to share with a public that tends to develop generalized opinions based on a snap-shot of the issue.
On this final day, we were first introduced to Vincent Villano from Campus Progress (campusprogress.org), that helps students on campuses around the country mobilize their student bodies for an array of issues and policies they believe in. He guided us through a workshop that loaded our tool belt with effective means of communicating with the press, some insight into giving press conferences, and how to speak in "sound bites" when giving an interview with a reporter. The media filters interviews in search of quick impactful statements that make for good viewing. Together the spring breakers collaborated on a message toolbox to develop our very own message, and the results would later pay off.Media Workshop with Vincent VillanoVincent Villano of
Campus Progress at the Center for American Progress.Much importance was paid to conveying our message - and to the right people. Legislators and their staff are combated with a variety of issues by numerous lobbyists on any given day in the Capitol. We were obliged to spend some time with Alison Brock, Chief of Staff to Texas State Representative Sylvester Turner. She was just as humorous as she was knowledgeable and her demeanor brought some much needed laughter to the students. I was shocked to see how few students were aware of who their representatives were. She guided us to www.house.state.tx.us , and accordingly to www.senate.state.tx.us to locate the legislators in our districts. "Relationships drive your agenda," Ms. Brock shared, and reminded us that it isn't always about what you know, but more importantly who you know. It was remarkable to get an inside perspective of the actions that will actually get a response from the representatives and their aides.
Lobbying Workshop with Alison Brock, Chief of Staff to Texas
State Representative Sylvester Turner.Our official press conference and panel discussion began at 11:00 a.m. and the anxiety seemed to return to the students. The difference between workshops in the Communications building on the UT campus, and a media-filled room in the Capitol are incomparable. Our location was the Texas House Speaker's Committee room and poised in front of a wall mural of the Texas emblem, our eyes gazed as each exoneree delivered their story. Although we had heard each of these stories prior, the astonishment of these travesties resonates still. It is a humbling experience to stand in front of a man standing 6 feet 2 inches tall as tears roll down his face. I think the realness of this conference finally settled in.
Fox 7 coverage of the Alternative Spring Break.We were given the opportunity to scatter throughout the Capitol in our grassroots attempt to lobby. Being that the Texas Legislature is not in session, few legislators were available, but just walking down the halls breeds confidence. The experience sparked something in the students and reminded us that the distance between us and our elected officials is not all that broad. The Capitol is an open public building and with names posted outside the door, one can literally walk right into their representative's office. Is it really that easy? Yes and no. Gaining access to staff seems to be considerably easier that gaining access to the representative themselves, but the ability is there and with a little determination gaining some one-on-one time is most likely reachable. Perhaps I will return during session.
The climax to our day, and the conference as a whole, occurred at 5:00 pm when we gathered on the South steps of the Capitol. Once again, at a podium, the exonerees along with guest speakers from other anti-death penalty organizations delivered quick impactful synopsis of their personal stories. The turnout was greater than I imagined. Media was in tow and amazingly tourists halted even if for a moment to hear the commotion. My attention caught an older woman who had stopped for a moment to listen. She appeared to be somewhat shocked by what she was hearing, perhaps a little appalled. Whatever her reasoning she picked up a protest sign and joined the others on the steps. Does it simply take a little understanding to grasp the injustice that is taking place? Our rally gave way to a march down Congress Avenue, through Sixth Street, and back again. The energy was electric, and the SXSW participants seemed more than welcoming to our sign and chants. Some applauded and some joined in for a block or two. This was a refreshing end to a loaded week. Our mission ended with a call for justice. Our voices were loud and our hearts pounded with the opportunity to be part of the process.
Bill Pelke of Journey of Hope from Violence to Healing, talks
during the capitol rally.
All in all, this experience was moving. I had the opportunity to learn details about the death penalty and it cemented by previous convictions of its wrongness. I met six people who had lived the hell that we had talked about all week. I met students from all over the country that shared my opinions and speakers from different organizations that donated their time to sharing their expertise. If someone unaware were to have looked into the room were meeting in all week, they would have witnessed our very own Breakfast Club. There was the ex-military, the preps, the outcasts, the overachievers, the laid-back "silent-but-deadly", and the amateur journalist documenting it all. Each from our own background, with our own ideals and stereotypes, we were most definitely unique. But however distinct we were, our purpose was common. We all believe that the death penalty is barbaric and archaic, and should be abolished in the same manner as slavery and lynching. I don't believe in murder in any form - be it a citizen or the State. Murder is murder, and it is not the right of any government to use it on its citizens.
Students leaving the Texas Capitol.
6th Street: A marching band and several SXSW attendees join the protest.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Alternative Spring Break: Learning how to participate in the legislative process
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Wednesday's Schedule for Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Campus Progress Southern Regional Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
Friday, February 6, 2009 - Sunday, February 8, 2009
Campus Progress is hosting our first ever Southern Regional Conference at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia from February 6-8, 2009! In addition to our summer national conference held each year in Washington, DC, we are adding an annual regional conference for both journalists and activists. This event couldn't come at a better time - fresh off the heels of an amazing election. This event will bring together over 200 of the brightest students and young people, including campus organizers, bloggers and journalists from all over the South, for three days of networking, training, and skills-building.
There will be both a journalism track and an activism track at the regional conference.
Click here to find out more about the Campus Progress Southern Regional Conference and apply today!
The journalism track will offer students:
- Engaging speakers with media experience
- Hands-on workshops to enhance reporting and writing skills
- Publication critiques with professional journalists and Campus Progress staff
- Tour of CNN headquarters
The activism track will allow students to:
- Hear from inspiring leaders
- Get trained on the strategies and skills you need to change your campus, community, and world
- Network with other organizers about key issues
- Discuss post-election organizing
- Engage in a community action
This conference is free and open to the public; however, you must apply to attend. The application deadline to be considered for a travel grant or housing is Sunday, January 18, 2009. If you do not need a travel grant or housing, the application deadline is Tuesday, February 3, 2009.
Click here to find out more about the Campus Progress Southern Regional Conference and apply today!Wednesday, August 27, 2008
No moratorium on the death penalty's flaws
In 2007, the Supreme Court accepted a case from a Kentucky inmate challenging the constitutionality of lethal injections. This created a national moratorium on executions that lasted for more than seven months. Now, after the longest death penalty moratorium in 25 years, executions have resumed in the U.S. Georgia executed the first inmate, and Texas followed, executing eight more people. The next execution in Texas is scheduled for Sept. 9. Litigation that caused the moratorium did not question the death penalty itself but rather the manner in which it is carried out. This forest-for-the-trees approach, however, avoids a fundamental question: What did we learn during the seven-month-plus postponement? And how should what we learned influence us as we go forward?
Arizona Judge Rudolph Gerber, who came to oppose the death penalty after serving on the state's appeals court, recently noted that the moratorium has had several ripple effects. "Around the country, no judges are staying up late awaiting the final appeals from the condemned," he wrote in an op-ed for The Sacramento Bee. "Governors and justices of the Supreme Court are not worrying that the person about to be executed may be the exceptional one who is innocent. Prison guards, family members of victims and of death row inmates, and even the media are relieved of the tension and uncertainty that each pending execution brings."
"But much of the death penalty system remains unaffected by this hold on executions," Gerber continued. "Prosecutions, trials, appeals and the rituals of death row continue to absorb an enormous share of the judicial system's time and resources. Justices from some of the states' highest courts have complained about the extraordinary strain this one issue places on the bench. In many states, there are not enough qualified lawyers willing to handle the appeals."
Gerber brought a real-world analysis to the issue of capital punishment. But he could have gone even further. The fact is, our 30-year experiment with capital punishment has failed. The death penalty system remains flawed and fraught with blunders, biases and bureaucracies. Blunders, because too often it convicts innocent people and sends them away to await execution. Biases, because no matter how much we tinker, we can't get around the fact that race and class influence who receives the ultimate penalty. Bureaucracies, because appeals can take decades - and it is the murder victim's family members who suffer as the appeals of the perpetrator who took their loved one away wend interminably through the courts.
During the recent moratorium on executions, several notable things happened. Three states - California, North Carolina and Tennessee - launched studies of their death penalty systems. Two states, Maryland and Nebraska, debated abolishing the death penalty in their state legislatures. A third state, New Jersey, did away with capital punishment altogether. For the first time in Texas, Rick Reed, a candidate for the Travis County district attorney's office, ran on a platform opposing capital punishment.
What happened when states paused and contemplated the pros and cons of this public policy? If anything, more Americans came to question whether the death penalty is really necessary. And more Texans learned that without the death penalty, the word doesn't turn upside down, murder rates don't skyrocket and death-row inmates don't run away from prisons murdering more people. During this period, more people questioned what we are accomplishing and if the significant costs of conducting trials and appeals could be put to better use.
One American who thought so was Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. "The time for a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits that it produces has surely arrived," Stevens wrote in the latest court case. Stevens - voting to uphold the constitutionality of a specific lethal injection protocol but expressing his view that the death penalty itself now violates the Eighth Amendment - saw the forest for the trees. As Texas rushes to execute more inmates, we all could use Stevens' clarity and vision.
Hedayati, a government senior, is president of Students Against the Death Penalty, member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Campus Progress at the Center for American Progress advisory board member.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Alternative Spring Breaks
This year students will have three exciting opportunities to use their spring breaks to fight for progressive social change! Campus Progress is teaming up with several partner organizations to organize Alternative Spring Breaks on three different issues. Each event will include training, actions, and education about their respective topics. There will also be plenty of fun activities and chances to meet cool and committed students from around the country. Register online at:
www.springbreakalternative.org
Death Penalty | Austin, TX | March 10-14
Iraq Action Camp | Philadelphia, PA | March 15-17
Climate Change | Santa Barbara, CA | March 24-27
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Student Issue Campaign of the Year
More updates coming soon...
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Campus Progress wants you to apply to be a Student Representative!
We are sure that you have some amazing ideas on how to organize, mobilize, and galvanize other students on your campus. As a Campus Progress Student Representative you will be given the unique opportunity to work with students from over one hundred different campuses, and will receive the tools to help you achieve your anti-death penalty goals. Backed by the resources of Campus Progress and the Center for American Progress, Representatives will strive to build strong and sustainable progressive communities across the nation. Campus Progress Student Reps will receive special access to Center resources, including networking opportunities, funding, experts, and media and political guidance.
As a Campus Progress Representative you will help set up events with progressive speakers, strengthen progressive voices in print and other media, advance progressive causes at the local level, and participate in Campus Progress' national issue campaigns. This year, our Representatives will be working on issues like fighting the death penalty, ending the war in Iraq, making college more affordable, making their campuses more environmentally friendly, protecting the free exchange of ideas on campus, and advancing other key progressive issues, from civil rights to privacy to building a safer world.
Over the past year, our Campus Progress Student Representatives have played a critical role in our ability to spread the message and advance our work with young people all over the country. Here is what some of them had to say about the program:
When I came to DC last summer, I had no idea what Campus Progress had to offer. After attending several summer events and the national conference, I was inspired to take my progressive values to the next level, to take on a leadership role in my community back in Berkeley . As a Campus Progress representative, I had the opportunity to make lasting impacts on my campus as well as lasting friendships that will exceed my time as representative. -- Maytak Chin, UC-Berkeley
I liked having access to the listserv and seeing all the different events and activities that were going on at other campuses, and I liked having access to resources and feeling connected to a wider community of student activists. I also liked the support and encouragement provided by CP staff. -- Stephanie Lee, Miami U. of Ohio
Not to be too cheesy, but I was so happy to find CAP and Campus Progress. I am grateful to be part of an organization that is dedicated to authentic activism, sophisticated issue discussion, and a broad progressive movement. -- Lee Fang, U. of Maryland-College Park
We hope that you will apply to be a Campus Progress student Representative for the 2007-2008 school year. To apply, visit: http://www.campusprogress.org/repapp. Please apply before July 25th.
If you have any questions about the Student Representative program, Campus Progress, or the application process, please email organize@campusprogress.org.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Queque
SA Current always has a fundamental significance for us at the TSADP. Because they were the first paper to cover our activities. A few months before my graduation from high school, I organized TSADP's first protest in front of Bexar County courthouse in downtown San Antonio on April 2005. We were able to gather around twenty students from local high schools and the Trinity University to protest execution of Douglas Robert and Milton Mathis.
They also published a very hilarious piece this week on Rep. Miles and the art show censorship during the spring break. You can read the full article online.
It ain’t no easy trick for the Queque to escape not only the office, but the city for a couple days mid-week. Especially if our main goal is to check out the hottest new Nordic indie-rock outfits. But even political bloodhounds can’t resist the scent of SXSW blowing in from the 35: armpit patchouli, flat and fetid bargain beer, and freshly mowed grass (the class-B-misdemeanor variety).To justify the trip, the Queque wormed our way into a 20-minute speaking slot at the Alternative Spring Break, which is the annual activist-training camp thrown by the Texas Students Against the Death Penalty for high-school and college activists. (Can you imagine the stories? “One time ... at death-penalty camp ...”). We met with Say-Town’s own survivalists, both from the International School of the Americas: Jew-froed, Matisyahu acolyte Sam Kohn and Aryan Hedayati, brother to Hooman Hedayati, TSADP’s president. Dave Maass embarrassed himself, but for details you’ll have to read his confession on our Chisme Libre blog.
The Queque’s pilgrimage coincided with the death-penalty art censorship controversy. Surely you read about it, perhaps in the LA Times, the NY Times, the Washington Post, or the Guardian? Last week, the Texas Moratorium Network moved much of the artwork from their annual anti-death-penalty art show, “Justice for All?”, to the E2 Capitol Annex. Representative Boris Miles, a Democrat from Houston, happened upon these two images while leading his 5 and 8-year-olds down the corridor:
“Doing God’s Work,” a watercolor by Portland-based artist and Art Institute of Chicago alumnus Shanon Playford; and “The Widowmaker,” by death-row inmate and native Cuban Reinaldo Dennes, which links racist lynchings to the death penalty.
In order to protect his children from the horrors of art reflecting the horrors of Texas state policy, Miles yanked the two works off their easels and locked them in his office — that’s instead of complaining to the State Preservation Board, which oversees Capitol displays, or Representative Harold Dutton, who sponsored the exhibit. The first offends Christians, the second offends blacks, Representative Miles told student activists. Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network, found it amusing and wished only that it had been a Republican censor instead.
The Queque is obviously a proponent of free speech, especially at the Capitol, the most public of public buildings, where ideas should flow as freely as snot from a crying babe’s nose. All things should be discussed under the Pink Dome, particularly the ugly stuff, like the rapes and abuse within the Texas Youth Commission. Rapes and abuse, by the way, are not appropriate for children.
Next week we hope to hear that Miles is tearing up the tile at the Capitol with his bare hands. This mosaic pattern is certainly questionable:
