1) Effort to get city councils to adopt moratorium resolutions
2) Review of Napoleon Beazley action
3) Texas Bar Association to vote on moratorium resolution
4) Texas Defender Service needs volunteers
5) 3rd Annual March for a Moratorium set for October 12, 2002. Save the Date!
6) TMN Online Petition and updated website
Texas Moratorium Network
http://www.texasmoratorium.org
Greetings moratorium supporters!
First, we want to welcome about 400 new members to the newsletter this month. These new people may have come to us various ways. They may have recently visited Sister Helen Prejean’s Moratorium Campaign website, or signed up for the newsletter on the TMN website or at the recent Rolling
Thunder event in Austin. No matter how you got here, we hope you stick
around and help us achieve a moratorium on executions in Texas.
If you ever want to be removed from this monthly list, just hit “reply” with
the subject line “REMOVE”, but please don’t leave. We need your help! Right
now, we have about 2,200 people on this list. Our goal is to reach 10,000 by
the next Texas legislative session in January 2003. That’s an ambitious
goal, but we need people on the list so that next session we can put lots of
pressure on the legislature to pass a moratorium. Now, on to the news.
CITY COUNCILS MORATORIUM RESOLUTIONS EFFORT
One of the projects we are developing is an effort to ask the Austin City
Council to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. People
in other Texas cities are also working on their city councils. Hays and
Rollingwood, Texas have already passed moratorium resolutions. San Antonio
and El Paso came close to passing resolutions. Contact us, if you want help
getting in touch with other moratorium supporters in your city, so you can
work together to get city council resolutions passed.
Many city councils around the country have already passed moratorium
resolutions, including Atlanta; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh;
Oakland; Cincinnati; Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Winston-Salem,
Greensboro, and Durham, North Carolina; Tucson, Arizona; Lexington and
Charlottesville, Virginia; and Buffalo, NY.
One of the aspects of the city council push is to ask city councils in other
countries that have sister-city relationships with Texas cities to ask their
Texas sister-cities to support moratorium resolutions. To find out the
sister-cities for your Texas city go to:
http://www.sister-cities.org/sci/directory/usa/TX
Austin has a sister city relationship with Koblenz, Germany. Mayor Gus
Garcia of Austin will lead a delegation to Koblenz, leaving June 18 and
returning June 26th. We would like to ask you to contact the members of the
Koblenz City Council and let them know that you would like them to ask the
Austin City Council to pass a moratorium resolution. In the coming months,
as we develop this project, we will let you know how to contact members of
the Austin City Council, but let’s take this one step at a time. First,
let’s get our sister city on our side.
In your emails to Koblenz, you can mention that the United States is now the
only country in the world that continues to execute juvenile offenders.
Every other country has agreed by international treaty to ban executions of
juvenile offenders. Texas is the leading executioner of juvenile offenders
among U.S. states. Of course, feel free to mention other issues as well, such as the fact that 65 percent of all people on death row in Texas are members of ethnic or racial minorities and that only poor people get the death penalty.
The mayor of Koblenz is Dr. Eberhard Schulte-Wissermann. His email address
is: OB@koblenz.de
There are 56 members of the Koblenz city council representing five political
parties. You can contact the leaders of each of the five factions at the
following email addresses:
Heribert Heinrich of the SPD Party (20 members), email:
fraktion@spd-koblenz.de
Michael Horter of the CDU (30 members) email:
m.hoerter@cdufraktion-koblenz.de
Hans-Peter Ackermann of the Greens (3 members), email:
buendnis@abo.rhein-zeitung.de
Ursula Schwerin of the FDP (2 members), email: ursula.schwerin@t-online.de Rolf Jahner of the FBG (1 member), email: jahner+merwald@rz-online.de
You can, of course, write them in English! The SPD and the Greens are the
parties on the left of center. The CDU and FDP are on the right. The FBG’s
place on the spectrum is unclear.
REVIEW OF NAPOLEON BEAZLEY ACTION
Last month we asked you to visit our website and send a free fax to the
Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles asking them to commute Napoleon Beazley’s
death sentence to life in prison. A total of 471 people sent faxes. The
final BPP vote was 10-7. The chair of the board, Gerald Garrett voted in
favor of commutation. We are sure that your faxes played some role in
convincing those 7 members to vote for commutation. We also hand-delivered
7,083 petition signatures from Sweden to the BPP. TMN also ran a 1/4 page ad
two weeks in a row on Napoleon’s case in The Austin Chronicle. About 150
people showed up May 28th at the Governor’s Mansion in Austin to express
their opposition to the execution of Napoleon and to the executions of all
juvenile offenders. Another 70 people or so showed up in Huntsville to
protest. The large number of people who took the time to protest Napoleon’s
execution is a good sign of the growing opposition to executions of juvenile
offenders.
TEXAS BAR ASSOCIATION TO VOTE ON MORATORIUM RESOLUTION
The Texas State Bar Association is poised to vote on a resolution calling
for a moratorium on executions at its annual meeting in Dallas, June 13-15.
So far, only *seven* other state bar associations have passed such
resolutions (Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, North
Carolina, and Pennsylvania). The Resolution will be considered by the
Resolutions Committee on Thursday, June 13 at 4:00 p.m. If you live in the
area, please attend the Committee meeting to show your support, even if you
are not a lawyer.
Please pass this message on to anyone you know who may be able to help pass
the resolution, especially to your lawyer friends. If you are a lawyer
licensed in Texas and can help in any way, or if you are planning on
attending the meeting in Dallas, please contact:
Nancy Trease
nat4@georgetown.edu
512-326-3382
Nancy will fill you in on how to get involved. The Texas Bar Association
resolution effort website is http://www.moratorium.info
TEXAS DEFENDER SERVICE NEEDS VOLUNTEERS
Texas Defender Service has asked us to locate people who can help them
conduct some research for an upcoming report. They are looking for people in
Bowie, Maverick, Dallas, Randall, Harris, Smith, Lubbock and Potter counties
to help review some court files for their study on racism. If you can do
some work on this over the summer, please contact Andrea Keilen at
akeilen@texasdefender.org.
3RD ANNUAL MARCH FOR A MORATORIUM SET FOR OCTOBER 12, 2002. SAVE THE DATE!
October 12, 2002 has been chosen for the 3rd Annual March for a Moratorium.
You don’t want to miss this high-energy annual event organized each year by
a coalition of many groups under the umbrella of the Moratorium March
Network. Among other speakers last year, Rena and Ireland Beazley spoke
eloquently on the steps of the Texas capitol building about the plight of
their son Napoleon. This year we again expect a good roster of compelling
speakers and a record turnout.
The first organizing meeting will be Saturday, June 29, at 2pm at 1311 E. 13th St. in Austin at the home of Lily Hughes. Contact Lily Hughes with CEDP at 494-0667 or austincampaign@hotmail.com to find out how to get involved in organizing the march. A lot of hard work goes into making the march a successful event. Many groups and individuals have been involved over the years, but as always, the more the better, so please get involved.
ONLINE PETITION AND UPDATED TMN WEBSITE http://www.texasmoratorium.org
TMN has a new website administrator! Richard Reveley began working with us a
couple of months ago. He is making our site a must-visit for news about the
push for a moratorium in Texas. He recently added an online petition. We will collect names and present them to the Texas Legislature next year. Add
your name to the list of people calling for a moratorium on executions in
Texas at http://www.texasmoratorium.org/petition.php. You can also download
a petition to collect signatures from your friends and neighbors. And you
can answer our online survey about which issue you find most concerning
about the death penalty in Texas. Thank you, Richard!!!!
And thank YOU for reading to the end of this newsletter. Sorry for the long
email, but there is a lot going on in the push for a moratorium in Texas.
Remember, you can always contact us and find out more about how to get
involved.
Best Regards,
TMN
