Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Death with a Capital Penalty

Problem:

The death penalty is legal in the United States. And the death penalty, from a progressive point of view, is an act of barbarism. It is the ultimate violation of civil liberty taken on by the state. It fails as a deterrent. Innocent people have been and will be electrocuted (the only method used in Nebraska), injected, gassed, and even hung (it's still legal in New Hampshire and Washington) and shot (it's still legal in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah). The death penalty leaves a kind of blood on all of our hands as long as we permit this punishment on our shores.

But this Wednesday isn't about philosophy and sociological studies. This Wednesday is about a kind of government-sponsored torture. This Wednesday is about doing unto others as you would have others do unto you. This Wednesday is about forgiveness. And this Wednesday is about human decency, common morality, and Troy Davis, who, by some miracle, was actually given a stay of execution on Monday for the punishment he was set to receive on Tuesday. (To read about his story and how disgusting it is that Georgia is even considering executing this innocent man, just click here or here.)

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Make Progress:

On the surface, it might seems as though there's little each of us as individuals can do to fight against “capital punishment– (an obvious euphemism right up there with “passing away– and “we're trying to have a baby– ). But there's plenty each of us can do, and there's plenty more that we can do when we put our efforts together with like-minded people, people with empathy and a strong sense of ethics. There is a wrong, and there is a right, and it's our job as citizens to keep the government from doing the former when it thinks it's doing the latter.

The death penalty cannot be abolished quickly enough. It's time for us to do something.

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Join:

Amnesty International is an organization we can't praise heavily enough. This sucker's been around for 46 years, has won the Nobel Peace Prize, and boasts 1.8 million members. So why do we dig on A.I. so much? Here's five reasons why:

1. They abhor the death penalty and work to both end the practice and organize volunteers to take action to, in particular, prevent the executions of the innocent.
2. They fight to end torture throughout the world.
3. They work to protect the rights of women worldwide.
4. They believe that: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.–
5. They are, above all else, proponents of peace.

So, here's what we're asking: join Amnesty International USA. You'll be helping end the death penalty, protect the innocent, increase the respect for all human life, and promote peace on earth. Just click this sentence to make a small donation, join Amnesty International, and begin receiving a free subscription to Amnesty International Magazine.

If joining ain't, for some reason, your cup of Earl Grey tea, you can also snag yourself the Instant Karma CD we previously covered. For a refresher, this is an album of John Lennon songs covered by the likes of U2, Avril Lavigne, Green Day, Barenaked Ladies, REM, Christina Aguilera, Matisyahu, OAR, and Jackson Browne. Proceeds from the album sale (and iTunes sales, too) will go towards humanitarian efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. And a genocide is a kind of mass execution.

Read:

Since knowledge is a kind of progress, allow us to share with you the facts about the death penalty. The more we all know, the more we can pass along, the more we can act on our knowledge, and therefore, the wiser and more caring we can become.

So, plain and simple, here are the facts, Jack (and Jill):

• According to an extensive study conducted by John J. Donohue of Yale Law School and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, the death penalty absolutely does not deter crime and murder.
• Poor people are more likely to be executed than the wealthy. Clinton Duffy, former warden at San Quentin Prison once referred to capital punishment as “a privilege of the poor.–
• Humans are flawed. This means, of course, that judges and juries are flawed, and we can't trust them to accurately condemn our fellow citizens to death. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: “Since 1973, 123 people in 25 states have been released from death row because they were not guilty.– It follows that, particularly before the advent of DNA evidence, we have executed innocent citizens.
• The death penalty is dolled out differently throughout the country. In 2006, 83% of all executions occurred in the South. 0% occurred in the Northeast. Taxpayers spend more money to execute someone than to keep someone in prison for life.
• In some states, such as Texas (which has conducted a third of all executions since 1973), “a defendant [can] get death for a felony in which [she or he] was not responsible for the murder.–
• According to a Gallup poll, more Americans support life without parole for murderers rather than the death penalty.
• According to a 2005 article in the Los Angeles Times, California spends $250 million per execution. There's another interesting twist to the death penalty in California: you can be executed for perjury that leads to an execution. In other words, they have the ultimate punishment set up for people who might help innocent people receive the ultimate punishment. In other words, California law admits there's a chance that innocent people can be executed.
• 128 of the 194 countries in the world have banned the death penalty. Some of the countries still participating in this abomination include: Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and, of course, the United States.
• 14 states (including the District of Columbia) have banned the death penalty or found it to be unconstitutional.
• In 2006, there were 65 executions in Iraq. In 2006, there were 53 executions in the United States.

Print:

If you live in any of the following states, then this “task– is for you: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, or Wyoming. Those are the 37 states with the death penalty. (In New York, the death penalty is still technically on the books, but in 2004 it was ruled unconstitutional.)

So we're asking that you print, sign, fold, envelope, stamp, and mail the following letter to the editor to your hometown newspaper of choice. Remember, letters to the editor are powerful for several reasons, not the least of which is that politicians read them to get a sense of the attitudes and beliefs of their constituents.

Dear Editor:

I'm writing in response to the recent national news surrounding Troy Davis, an innocent man convicted of murder who was 24 hours away from his execution before getting a stay. The mere possibility of executing someone who's innocent should be reason enough to abolish capital punishment in [Your State]. There are, however, several other reasons.

According to an extensive study conducted by John J. Donohue of Yale Law School and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, the death penalty absolutely does not deter crime and murder. To execute someone, taxpayers spend more money than it would cost to keep that person in prison for life. On top of that, according to a recent Gallup poll, more Americans support life without parole for murderers rather than the death penalty.

Already 128 of the 194 countries in the world have banned the death penalty. Some of the countries still participating in this abomination include: Afghanistan, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and, of course, the United States. Thankfully, we need not wait for the federal government to catch up to Western civilization. We can work to abolish the death penalty in our own state and join the others that have already done so.

No one should face the possibility of this archaic and barbaric punishment. We should never have another last minute stay of execution because we should never have another execution.

Sincerely,

Photo snapped by this news-lover.

Healing Health Care: Mail

Mail:

First, two facts:

1. Today, 8.3 million American kids lack health care (that's 400,000 more than last year).
2. 25 million kids lack dental care. That's one third of all children in the United States.

Now that you’re in the know about children and health care, let's do something a little heartier to help those who can't help themselves, those who we all need to help if we're going to call ourselves a civilized country. We've said some of this before, but we'll say it again. We'll say it until children get treated, not fairly, but justly.

Kids that grow up in hard-working families or large families or poor families and lack quality health care, well, it’s no fault of their own. In many cases, probably most cases, it’s not the fault of the parents either.

And we owe it to kids. As a culture, we’ve already decided that, in many ways, it’s our collective job to protect children. We’ve installed V-chips in TVs. We provide mandatory public education. There are different seatbelt laws for wee ones. Alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and gambling are off-limits. The government has set specific limits on the amount of work teens can do. That the physical health of children and teenagers has been ignored flies in the face of the other ways we collectively lend a helping hand to young ones. It’s a lot easier to play and learn and simply be when you feel good: kids deserve as fantastic a childhood as we can reasonably provide them. All children are our children.

Plus there’s a financial benefit. If you’re healthier, you’re going to find it easier to pay attention in school, and you’ll miss less days. For some families, it’s practically not an option to keep a kid home from school since the rent or mortgage demands the parents go to work. Parents might have to choose between keeping a roof over their children’s heads and nurturing them back to health. Plus, a healthy populace is a more productive populace.

And let's not forget that empathy is the American virtue. You see it in equal protection laws. You see it in homeless shelters, charities, Pell grants, aid to foreign countries, blood drives…. For crying out loud, you see it on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition! We saw it in spades on 9/11 and the days and months that followed. We even protect wildlife better than we protect some kids. To say that some children deserve to go to a doctor and others do not seems about as callous and cold-hearted as it gets. My friends, we’re better than that.

So, here's what we'd like you to do: alter, print, sign, fold, envelope, address, stamp, and mail the following letter to your newspaper’s editor.

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Dear Editor:

If we're to be considered a civilized country, we need to fix health care for kids. There are 74 million children in this country, and 8.3 million of them lacked health insurance in 2005. That’s more people than live in New York City. This is an increase of 400,000 from 2004. To say that some children deserve to go to a doctor and others do not seems about as callous and cold-hearted as it gets. My friends, we’re better than that.

But we needn’t wait for a new President to make change happen. Our state could subsidize health care to all children not covered by their parents plans.

And how could we do this? My proposal is quite simple: we ought to raise the cigarette tax by one dollar. Before you smokers get up in arms, can you honestly tell me you would refuse to pay more for nicotine and therefore refuse to help out innocent children?

I know we have it in our hearts to do better for our kids, our American kids, our future as a country where we believe children deserve our best gifts.

Sincerely,

You

I See Trees of Green: Write

Write:

We know you live hectic lives, and so let us help you help others. While we always will encourage you to write letters to the editor of your own, we recognize that this can be a time-consuming and potentially daunting task. So, below you'll find a letter we've written, revised, and vetted over the past week. Feel free to copy, paste, alter, print, sign, fold, envelope, stamp, address, and ship this sucker off to your newspaper of choice.

Dear Editor:

April 27 is Arbor Day, a somewhat forgotten day celebrating trees, and celebrate them we should. Trees are like the lungs of our planet, inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. They clean toxins from the air, and give us better air to breathe.

There are many things we can do to help the population of trees. We can plant trees ourselves — the National Arbor Day Foundation even offers free seedlings for a measly $10 membership fee.

We can help stop the destruction of the rain forests — at EcologyFund.com, folks can make a few simple clicks of the mouse and help save rainforests and the animals thriving in them.

But there's a third, very easy thing we can all do: we can recycle paper products. I encourage everyone to take another look at this fine newspaper. Learn from its stories. Mourn its obituaries. Chuckle at its comics. Then, my fellow readers, please recycle it.

Sincerely,

You

Doing Work for Hard-Working Families

Problem:

Eric and I have held oodles of very different jobs. Here's a list: bookseller, McDonald’s cashier, factory worker, shop foreman for a construction company, maintenance worker at a state park, newspaper reporter, office assistant, courier, audio/visual equipment operator, audio/visual specialist, college professor, substitute teacher, children's writing instructor, home theatre sales associate, customer service associate in a bank, residence life assistant at a college, and phone surveyor. Most of these jobs are the kind that could best be most kindly described as “learning experiences.–

Partly because of these variegated occupations and partly because of where we've been lucky enough to end up in our careers, we have intense sympathy for hard-working families. We know first-hand how hard it can be to sweat all day and feel depressed by the lack of digits in our paychecks, to watch the walls of a cubicle, to live below the poverty line and live payday to payday, to run up credit card debt to make ends meet, to lack health care and have to struggle through illness because we couldn't afford a doctor's visit. Now that we're in better financial positions, we want to do more to help the kind of people we used to call co-workers, the kind of people we still think of as friends.

Work is something Americans think of as the most identifying quality of a person after their name, and yet we tend to treat our hardest working Americans as lesser citizens, as if their low-paying jobs are their own fault. It's a myth that working harder will necessarily make you more money: we know folks who've slaved away at 60-hour-per-week jobs with no advancement. It's a myth that a higher education means a better paying gig: we know PhDs who work in bookstores. There's a myth in America that we live in a meritocracy. We don't.

The American Dream shouldn't be work. The American Dream shouldn't be to make ends meet. The American Dream should be pleasure in all its permutations like spending time with your friends and family, doing things that strengthen, stimulate, and lift our bodies, minds and spirits.

We owe it to one another to care more about how we all make a living. It's that last word, “living,– that we seem to forget.

Photo thanks to this hard worker.

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Make Progress:

The Declaration of Independence reaffirms that we all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But it's hard to pursue happiness when you lack health care, when you run up ridiculous dept to survive, when you can barely pay for meals, when you can't see an end in sight for a desk job that you despise. It's hard to pursue happiness when you bring work home with you, literally and mentally. Work is hard for all of us, nurses to farmers, temp workers to truck drivers, pastors and cops and folks who man the factory belts.

Dear readers, work is one of the few things that unites us all as people and states. It's about time we made some 9-to-5 progress.

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Doing Work for Hard-Working Families: Print

Print:

The new U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the first raise in the minimum wage in 10 years. This is fantastic, and well, well, well, well (you get the picture) overdue. But this isn't enough. If someone were to work a minimum wage job 40 hours a week for a year at this new amount, which won't fully go into effect for two years, they'd make a whopping (note the sarcasm) $15,080. This isn't nearly enough money to pay for rent, health care, transportation, food, and utilities.

There's a movement being made by progressive organizations for a so-called “living wage,– a wage that, you know, people could actually live on. We think that this framing could be better simply because the situation is graver than even word “living– can indicate.

So, we're calling for a moral wage, one that is driven by an ethical imperative. Our citizens need to have their minds changed, and this starts, in large part, through the media. Thankfully, we control the media in that we can write letters to the editor. Below you'll find a letter we've written that we think does the not-so-magical trick.

We've kept the letter to exactly 250 words, the maximum allowed at many newspapers across this land o' ours. Feel free to copy, paste, print, sign, fold, envelope, stamp and mail the sucker. In fact, we hope you will. To find the necessary information for newspaper near you, just click this sentence.

Picture c/o this fit-for-print photographer.

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Dear Editor:

I applaud the new House of Representatives and the speed with which they passed a raise in the minimum wage. Since this bare bones wage hadn't been raised in a decade, the increase was overdue.

But this increase, if it passes in the Senate, won't begin to touch the problem of poverty in the richest country in the world. According to the latest Census Bureau statistics, 37 million live in poverty. Thankfully, we needn't rely on the slow-as-sludge federal government — we can tackle this on a state level.

I believe we need to eliminate the minimum wage and institute a “moral wage,– a wage that real people can really live on. A common sense moral wage would be $12 per hour. This wouldn't need to happen overnight. As you know, we can ask our state representatives to institute this shift gradually to keep the rate moving along with natural inflation.

At this salary, the state and federal government would make significantly more in tax revenue, and this money could be used to subsidize the increase for small businesses. Consumers would have more disposable income, which would generate taxes and help businesses. Families wouldn't rely as much on Medicaid or child care assistance, further reducing the tax burden.

We have a moral imperative to do this. We owe it to our fellow Americans. Why? Because the American Dream shouldn't be to make ends meet. Because it's patriotic to care for our fellow citizens. Because that's the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

You