The 2007 Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break was on MTV’s TRL Thursday at 3:19 Central.

A longer version is going to be aired on MTV’s “The Amazing Break” on March 24, Sunday at 8 AM Eastern (7 AM Central) with repeats to follow on other dates. MTV has a page up about the spring break. Also the news special will get some repeat airings at MTV News in other time slots.

Total Request Live (commonly known as TRL) is the flagship television series on MTV that features popular music videos. TRL is MTV’s prime outlet for music videos as the network continues to concentrate on reality-based programming. In addition to music videos, TRL to promote their newest works to the show’s target features daily guests. The show is a popular promotion tool used by musicians, actors, and other celebritiesteen demographic.

According to Nielsen Media Research, TRL averages 451,000 viewers a day.

ISIAH CAREY’S ‘INSITE’: BORRIS MILES RESPONDS TO ART REMOVAL CONTROVERSY!

TMN’s Scott Cobb will participate in a roundtable discussion at Texas State University in San Marcos on LOYAL OPPOSITION, “Art as a Vehicle for Protest and Dissent,” scheduled at 11 a.m. March 27 in JCM, Room 2121. The discussion will include several of the artists with works in the exhibit. One of the topics of discussion will be the recent controversy at the Texas Capitol when a state representative took it upon himself to remove two pieces of artwork that he deemed “extremely inappropriate and highly objectionable”.

LOYAL OPPOSITION is an art exhibition of protest and dissent at the Joann Cole Mitte Art Building in Gallery I at Texas State University. It was curated by Mary Mikel Stump and contains artwork by a few artists that were also in TMN’s “Justice for All?: Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty”.

LOYAL OPPOSITION is comprised of 41 pieces of art, including photography, paintings and sculptures. The pieces were created by 21 emerging and mid-career artist from across the nation.

Each piece of art in the exhibit signifies a social issue concerning “Protest and Dissent,” such as racism, politics, segregation, justice and drug abuse. Works in the exhibition include the stitched cotton “WHITE FLAG” by Jack Daws, a woodcut piece entitled “Good Worker” by Daniel Gonzalez and “Freedom of Expression National Monument,” a photograph by Erika Rothenberg.

Derrick Durham, a Texas State alumni and resident of San Marcos, created the large mural outside of Gallery I for the exhibit.

“It’s important the viewer not walk away thinking that is the end game,” Durham said.
For the art to be effective in creating an impact, he said, “action must be followed.”

Mary Mikel Stump, JCM gallery director, said she appreciates the opportunity to support programs such as Common Experience. Stump traveled to several galleries and art shows across the nation to obtain pieces of art for LOYAL OPPOSITION.

“I like the characterization that each artist represents a singular voice about their particular issue,” Stump said.

We have heard that MTV’s Total Request Live is going to air a report on this year’s Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break today, March 20, Tuesday, sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 PM. According to Nielsen Media Research, TRL averages 351,000 viewers a day.

They also plan to air a longer segment on the Amazing Break this Sunday at 8 AM Eastern (7 AM Central) with repeats to follow on other dates.

Check it out.

Another Texas execution is scheduled for today. It will be the 9th execution in the U.S. this year and 8 of them have been in Texas.

Meanwhile last Fall, the Tides Foundation gave out $182,500 to groups around the county trying to stop executions, but it did not give any money to Texas organizations, instead giving $50,000 to an anti-death penalty organization in Wisconsin, which does not even have the death penalty. No wonder Texas executions are continuing at a torid pace. The national leaders of the anti-death penalty movement would rather fight the death penalty where it doesn’t even exist, rather than in Texas.

Call the Governor of Texas and tell him we need a moratorium on executions.

Contact Governor Perry to Protest Each Execution

Office of the Governor Main Switchboard: (512) 463-2000 [office hours are 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. CST]
Office of the Governor Fax: (512) 463-1849

For anyone who wonders about stays on the day of an execution here is a number to call:
TDCJ Public information—1-936-437-1303 —-just ask if the execution is still scheduled.

Condemned prisoner Charles Anthony Nealy says he wasn’t even in Texas on an August evening almost 10 years ago when two men were gunned down during the robbery of a convenience store just south of downtown Dallas.

“It’s not me,” Nealy says of a grainy videotape image from a security camera that shows one man carrying a shotgun and another with a pistol taking money from a cash register and then grabbing a bottle of wine and a couple of six-packs of cold beer. “Two kids — that’s what I see. Possibly teenagers. And I wasn’t one of them.”

A Dallas County jury believed otherwise.

Nealy, who would be 43 later this week, faced lethal injection Tuesday evening in Huntsville for the shooting death of one of the men, store owner Jiten Bhakta, 25.

He’d be the ninth condemned inmate executed this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state. Two more are set to die next week.