Dr. King and President Obama on the Death Penalty & Civil Rights

Martin Luther King and the Death Penalty Movement

Most of the world has abolished the immoral and barbaric practice of the death penalty. Yet the United States continues to condemn men and women to death. Nearly all of the people this country executes are poor and/or people of color, and many of them suffer from mental retardation or mental illness.
The use of capital punishment is an example of how we as a nation continue to try to solve social justice issues with use of violence. The religious community has a responsibility to raise the issue of the immorality of the death penalty.

The death penalty is a microcosm of the problems we have with violence in general.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rejected the violence of the death penalty as have many of his family members. As a way to build on his legacy, the Religious Organizing Against the Death Penalty Project will launch the I Dream A World campaign on the January 2002 holiday...

Many religious leaders such as Rev. Bernice King, Rev. James Lawson, Sister Helen Prejean, Arun Gandhi, Rabbi David Sapperstein and Rabbi Beerman called for an end to the death penalty...

Sending cards to government officials calling for an end ot capital punishment is (one)of many ways to be involved.

Reach out to correspond and/or visit those on death row.

Remember to provide support to victims of violence.

See more from This American Friends Service Committee project during it's origins
here

Obama on the Death Penalty
Barack Obama Obama has written that he thinks the death penalty "does little to deter crime." He supports capital punishment in cases in which "the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage." While a state senator, Obama pushed for reform of the Illinois capital punishment system and authored a bill to mandate the videotaping of interrogations and confessions. Obama disagreed with the June 25, 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing the execution of child rapists. Posted on the Pew Forum

Published today after Obama became our 44th President

Maybe completely rejecting the death penalty isn't far away for Obama, who needs our citizen and group pressures...

A Triumph for Civil Rights
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