Some of the people who were on the Walk, including family of death row prisoner
By Katia
Today was kind an adventure. We all met around 12 at Denny's to have some real cool breakfast as we knew that we would all need a lot of energy! People were always Us meaning Andre, Bill, KC and her sons, Giulia, Kristen and the family of Death row prisoner Jeff Wood, with a lot of kids to bring some more joy to the Walk.
We then went to Office Depot to have some flyers printed out and we got stopped by the police because the people in the store said that one of us looked like someone who had just committed a criminal offense in the store. So they checked our ID and looked into our purses and what not. I'm telling you, it was pretty crazy. But everything ended up good and we got ready to go.
Finally, with some delay we walked to the Capitol. The gardens surrounding the State Capitol were open to the public so we just took the way through the park to reach the front of the Capitol. There were people hanging out there and visitors of the Capitol. We just got there and stood in front of the entrance with our signs high.
We decided to start and do some shouting so we started shouting "What do we want - Abolition!" and also..."they say death row - we say hell no!". It was good. You can bet we had people's attention by then. After a while we decided to move outside of the garden to not get into any trouble...so we moved outside and in the meantime we spread flyers to the passers by. Me and Bill were singing "We shall overcome" and even if sometimes we were messing up with words we were really believing in what we were doing.
What was really good was that some people asked for the flyers. Some people asked us about what we were doing. It was so great! We moved outside the garden, just in front of the gates of the State Capitol in front of that big street that faces the Capitol. We stayed there with our signs and we got a lot of cars blowing their horns and showing us the peace sign. When we saw passers-by gathering at the corners of the street we started to shout again and a couple of times people showed us support. That was a great encouragement for us all.
It was a great experience to be there and share with all these people what we shared today. Many of these people I didn't know. I had never met them before but the intensity of what we believe in was such a blessing and I am glad I got to share and be part of that.
When people from everywhere and with the most different experiences in life join together for something that is not about themselves but about a common cause--that regards the life of everybody--that is just amazing. That is just God's hand leading the game.
Probably I will never meet many of these people again in my life, but I feel like I have to pay homage to them for the strength and the courage and the incredible desire of justice that they brought in the Walk.
So, to the family of Jeff Wood, I really wanna say thank you and I really send my wishes for many blessings to come.
Bill Pelke has just been a tremendous help and like a "column" in this Walk. He offered one of the most beautiful things that a person can have inside and can share with others: compassion. Bill always has a good word for everyone and a smile to share and I am grateful that I could be among the recipients of such gifts.
The events and the people I met today just led me to think that I still have many things to learn...still have a lot of qualities that I want to acquire and I'm glad that I could have examples in front of me to look at.
While talking with Jeff Wood sister she was telling me how in the previous day there had been people offending and mistreating Kristen and Jeff Wood's daughter, simply because they were trying to educate people about the value of human life. We agreed that we can have different opinions and still respect each others. This made me think about what just happened with another person within this movement in Texas and I just realized how, so many times, we want to teach others that we need to respect human life, but we are unable to respect and cherish our own comrades and people nearest to us.
This tells me that probably, we all have to learn from what we believe in, and use God's grace to open our eyes and others' eyes.
Katia
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