it’s rather easy when you start out organizing on this issue, to remain objective – distant, that is …

in fact for some of us it’s downright necessary and that “us” includes me … i have toured death row in tennessee but i purposefully don’t visit anyone on “the row” – i need the emotional distance or i know i will burn out, that is, not last for the long run (i.e. abolition) …

in the beginning you know few people in “the business” and you maintain some private space apart from “the work,” but the nature of grassroots organizing makes that difficult to maintain …

why’s that???

because organizing is all about relationships and successful organizing is all about establishing, building, and deepening those relationships so that a level of trust, faith, and compassion become a shared foundation that replaces ephemerality with the basis of socio-political success (e.g. we win!) …

so no matter how hard you try the very thing you need to develop like a tree grows roots – relationships – keep eating away at your personal space …

and so it is today and leads me to the point of this entry – reggie clemmons …

now i have never met and i don’t know reggie clemons – but i know his mother vera thomas … you see i’m in the 2nd year of my second term on the board of the ncadp and i served with reggie’s mother, vera thomas, during my first term …

she’s an older woman (relative to my 48 yrs), short (like my grandmother, g_d bless her soul), a little shy, and a person you want to get to know because she’s a nice lady …

and her son reggie (whose case is described as one of reasonable doubt) is now a month (2 months???) away from being killed by the state of missouri which brings me back to how it keeps gettin’ personal…

to execute someone (i.e. commit homicide in the name of all us citizens) the state must paint the individual as a “monster” rather than identifying the crime (their act) as monstrous – these are two separate things entirely… and hell, we know that sometimes the state convicts and sentences the wrong person (Kirk Bloodsworth, Juan Melendez, Ray Krone to name only 3), yet the state maintains, sometimes even after an exoneration, that these innocent human beings are “monsters,” or “scum of the earth” who don’t deserve to live …

and what the state never talks about, the most well kept secret of capital punishment’s seemingly bottomless bag of dirty secrets is that these people on death row, guilty or innocent, have mothers, like vera thomas who suffer deeply and unimaginably for a crime they surely did not commit (and all too often their child on death row did not commit either) …

so when I receive the news from vera that one of her son’s co-defendant’s has been executed I know she must be apanic inside, more so than ever, and that I must tell you why it keeps getting’ personal and ask you to take action to try and stop vera’s son from being killed by the state of, in this case, missouri …

so visit reggie clemons website or write his mother vera thomas and ask how what you can do to help save her son’s life…

peace out – <3

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