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Oregon's Death Penalty: A System in Crisis

March 1, 2007 is the National Lawyers' Guild's Student Day Against the Death Penalty.

Tomorrow the Lewis and Clark Chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild will host Matthew Rubenstein, a Federal Public Defender and Oregon's new Capital Resource Counsel. Mr. Rubenstein will describe how the State of Oregon is expending enormous resources prosecuting death cases in a capital system that is hopelessly flawed and broken. Hopefully, we will be having a frank discussion about capital punishment on our campus.

Last night, my home state of Texas executed Donald Miller.

Miller, who was tried only for . . . murder, was the sixth condemned inmate executed this year in Texas, the nation's most active capital punishment state. Arriving on death row in 1982, he was among the longest serving of almost 400 Texas prisoners awaiting lethal injection.

I have many problems with capital punishment, but one of my major problems is the race issue that is so rarely discussed. People of Color are vastly over-represented on death row (and prison in general). Please, for more information visit the following sites:

NLG's Student Day Against the Death Penalty site
Death Penalty Information Center
Amnesty International - Anti-Death Penalty site
AntiDeathPenalty.org
Anti-Death Penalty Information

Kick ass webcomic you should be reading

A Softer World.

(Click for larger.)

Why aren't there boy bands like this anymore?

San Francisco

Best Feb 14th E-Card Ever

Thanks, Katy.

New Computer

My brother gave me a hard time because I did not post a picture of the new machine.

So, here it is. It's got a 13 in. screen, and its shiny which I thought might bug me, but doesn't at all.

Close Call

It was touch and go there for a little bit.

I grew up drinking Dr Pepper. Maybe its a Texas thing, maybe its a crazy sugar addiction, I don't really care, it's good. For the most part, I, of course, try to eat and drink organic and such, but sometimes a Dr Pepper just hits the spot. Anyway, yesterday word came out that it may not be vegan. Remember that scene in the last (most recent) Star Wars, where Vader looks up to the heavans and says, "NOOOOOOOOO!" That's what it felt like.

Well, lucky for me the online vegan community came together to research this very important issue. And come to find out the UK version of Dr Pepper is not even vegetarian, but stateside, there are no animal products and it is completely vegan. Granted, if you've read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, then you know that High Fructose Corn Syrup will be the downfall of our society, but dammit we can still have our Dr Peppers...

Free Political Prisoners

12 June 1964
Nelson R. Mandela is convicted of high treason and sentenced to life in prison.

Upon his conviction he had this to say: "I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites."

Similar to Dr. King, we've lost the true story some where along the line. Trained as a lawyer, Mandela led an armed resistance against an oppressive regime. For whatever reason, his history is sanitized--sterilized--to the point that we simply know him as the former President of South Africa. While this is a great honor and we should definitely think of him in this way, we do a great disservice in forgetting the activism that inspired a movement.

In 1960, the South African government enacted a series of "pass laws." The laws required Black citizens to carry a pass book on their person at all times. On 21 March 1960, a protest and civil disobedience action occurred. Thousands of protesters marched to a police station in Sharpeville withouth their passbooks, offering themselves up for arrest. The police opened fire into the crowd killing 67 and injuring almost 200.

The African National Congress (ANC), who had maintained a strict adherence to non-violence, resigned itself to direct action. Mandela helped orchestrate acts of sabotage to destroy apartheid.
 
After living on the run for 17 months, the CIA gave the South African government information on Mandela's whereabouts and he was arrested.

Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. From this cell on Robben Island, he became the most widely known figure in the anti-apartheid movement. The state considered him and the ANC to be communists and (not surprisingly) terrorists, yet his actions and the work of the ANC, including those of direct action, were instrumental in ending the oppression in South Africa.

It was on this day, 12 February, in 1990, on which Nelson R. Mandela was released.








"The world is hungry for action, not words." --Nelson Mandela

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men."

On this day, in 1944, Alice Walker was born.

She attended Spelman College, where Professor Howard Zinn inspired her to activism. She is a feminist, enviornmentalist and animal rights activist. She's done advocacy work on behalf of Cuba, speaking out against the embargo and visited Cuba on several occasions.

She's won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The Color Purple.

For more information about this great activist and writer check out Anniina's Alice Walker Page.

Back in black

Its funny how many people comment on my black laptop black phone & black ipod. I hadn't noticed.

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