The Armband Protest Against the Death Penalty

 Under the abiding conviction that when the citizens of the United   States of America become fully aware of the frequency and injustice of the use of the death penalty in this country they will rise up and demand its abolition, I urge each of you to join The Armband  Protest Against the Death Penalty.  This movement is a cyber-based public awareness campaign, using e-mails, faxes and phone calls to inundate officials in jurisdictions still scheduling executions with facts and passion protesting this government-sponsored killing.

The Armband Protest has three essential components:

 Awareness – We publish a weekly Execution Scorecard that shows the people scheduled for execution the previous, current and following week, including disposition of the cases as they happen. This gives a ‘big picture’ view of the frequency with which this country’s governments use the ‘permanent solution’.

 Public Pressure – The Armband Protest sends out an Execution Log every Wednesday. It contains details on each execution scheduled for the following week, condensed into convenient cut & paste copies of the e-mails we send to officials and media in the jurisdictions of the executions. The log also contains links, phone numbers, and fax numbers that can be used in addition, or as an alternative, to the e-mails. This kind of fact-based pressure coming from more and more directions will wear down those in government making these deadly decisions.

 Alerts – This is the ‘public’ in the awareness. The day before each execution that remains scheduled, The Armband Protest sends an Armband Alert
to each member, giving details of the cases and prompting the wearing of a black armband in silent protest on the day of the execution. As we have
discovered during this campaign, this protest is often not silent at all; the wearing of the armband prompts questions from those around us that give us a
chance to profess our conviction that the death penalty has no place in our civilized society.

I believe that as more and more black armbands show up around the country in this mute and powerful protest, one by one our citizens will join the growing chorus of death penalty resisters, and we will soon see the day that the death penalty is abolished from our beloved United States of America!