Amnesty
International Group #642
15 May 2006
Starbucks
Superior Street and 4th Avenue West, Duluth
Present: Mayra Gomez, Breth Thiele, Warren Howe, Hal Bertilson, Haji Dokhanchi,
and Ryan Jordan
1.
As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the referendum.
2.
Wisconsin has not had the death penalty in more than 150 years; it
certainly does not need it now.
3. Current Wisconsin law allows society to be protected from dangerous criminals by providing a maximum of life in prison without parole for the most serious homicides.
4. In study after study the death penalty has been shown to be fraught with geographical and racial disparities. It is immoral and expensive.
5. Nationally 123 persons in 25 states have been released from death row due to evidence of wrongful conviction. The criminal justice system is a human system, prone to mistakes. Even seemingly simple mistakes can put innocent persons on death row.
6. The death penalty is a violation of the basic human right to life, and the right to freedom from cruel, inhuman degrading treatment or punishment. These rights are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
7. There is an ever growing list of nations in the world who have abolished its use. Wisconsin would join human rights abusing countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran if it were to reinstate the death penalty.
8.
Many persons assume that victim family members support the death penalty.
However, as groups like Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation and Murder
Victim Families for Human Rights point out, the death penalty can actually be
detrimental to the healing process for victim families.
National Weekend of Faith in Action on Death Penalty—October 20-24.
We discussed the National Weekend of Faith in Action.
Perhaps a Twin Ports action could be coordinated with this event.
See http://www.amnestyusa.org/faithinaction/
Hal and Haji will contact the churches, synagogues, UW-Superior Student Club,
and Superior Senior High Student Club. Bret
will contact UMD and St. Scholastica students.
The Annual General Meeting included four plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, program sessions, and two human rights rallies. The plenary sessions paid tribute to outgoing AIUSA Executive Director, Bill Schulz, and welcomed new Executive Directory, Larry Cox. Welcoming messages were heard from Q'orianka Kilcher, actress and youth activist. The keynote speaker was Peggy Bird, an attorney/consultant/human rights activist working to enhance the sovereignty of Native women.
The keynote address on the second day was by Mira Sorvina, spokesperson for AIUSA Stop Violence Against Women Campaign. Lijiljana Raicevic was honored with the Ginetta Sagan Award for outstanding contributions to the human rights of women and children for raising the issue of human trafficking and it's negative consequences on women's human rights. In 1999, she founded the Women's Safe house, the first shelter for women in Montenegro.
Participating from Duluth/Superior were Mayra Gomez, Bret Thiele, Haji Dokhanci, and Hal Bertilson. David Stamps, formerly of Duluth, was also a founding member of Group #642 who participated at the Annual General Meeting. Students from the UW-Superior student group who participated in the Portland meeting were Chelsea Upthegrove and Abby Schmidmayr.
Program sessions attended by Duluth/Superior
members included international arms trade, human rights abuses in the Niger
Delta, stop violence against women, cruel and unusual punishment of the death
penalty, poverty as a human rights issue, and the dead women and children of
Juarez.
Petition for freedom for Ma Khin Khin Leh.
We signed a petition for freedom for Ma Khin Khin Leh of the Union of
Myanmar.
Genocide in Darfur. We
viewed two video clips of Sameera's tears and are encouraged to take human
rights actions at http://millionvoicesfordarfur.org