[CUADPUpdate] August 6th Memories, and This & That....

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

Sent *only* to the recipients of CUADPUpdate
Feel Free to Forward


Hi Folks,

Pat Delahanty forwarded the following to the Abolish list.  It is a 
stirring piece.  Below that is a few bits o' This & That.

But first, instead of hiding it below, I'll just say that desperation is 
approaching, and if you are in a position to spare a few dollars (or more 
than a few dollars) towards helping CUADP beat back the wolves (pay bills), 
please visit https://www.compar.com/donation/donateform.html or send a 
check to the address at the very end of this message.  Thank you.

--abe

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CONTENTS

August 6th Memories
Big News from Pennsylvania Abolitionists
(here's what happened to The Moratorium Campaign!)
More on Deterrence
Remembering Sacco & Vanzetti
Something Completely Different!

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AUGUST 6TH MEMORIES

-----Original Message-----
From: JPACJOE at aol.com [mailto:JPACJOE at aol.com]=20
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 7:28 PM
To: JPACJOE at aol.com
Subject: SJN - August 6th, memories - From Fr. Emmanuel McCarthy (SJN)

Hi to all 187 of you Social Justice Network members, family, and friends.

One of the most learned and spiritual priests I have met in my seventy-four 
years is Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a Melkite priest.  He is full of 
wisdom and knowledge and for that reason I share with you this long 
discussion of August 6th that he sent to some of his friends.  I'll keep it 
with me when we meet locally on Friday August sixth to remember what 
happened in 1945.

Peace,

Joe Coudriet (Koo-Dray)
JPACJOE at AOL.COM
Social Justice Minister
Our Lady of Good Counsel Church
Endicott, NY 13760=20
"If you Want Peace, Work for justice." Pope Paul VI


Throughout the world August 6 is rightfully remembered as the day that 
humanity entered into a never before-seen form of homicidal violence - the 
atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Unlike the Fourth of July in 
the United States, Independence Day, or the Fourteenth of July in France, 
Bastille Day, August 6 is a planetary day of remembrance. What is done on 
that day in 1945 is utterly new in human history death finds a new doorway 
into life. So we remember

But, we forget. We forget that on August 6, 1890 another never-before-seen 
form of homicidal violence entered human history - death by the electric 
chair. On that day William Kemmler, age 30, an illiterate alcoholic from 
the slums of Buffalo, NY and a convicted murderer is executed by 
electricity at Auburn State Prison. Something utterly new enters human 
history - death finds a new doorway into life. But, we do not remember. Why?

Certainly the first use of the "killing chair," as it was then called, is 
as much a story of horrifying violence and deceit, of giant intellects 
operating through moral dwarfs, of money and the callousness of big-time 
government officials, as is the first use of the atomic bomb. In 1890 
Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse are in the middle of an 
economic-political fight that became known as the War of the Currents. 
Edison wants the country to adopt his system for electricity distribution, 
which is termed direct
current (DC). Westinghouse sees that his interests require that the country 
adopt alternating current (AC). As the benefits of AC become apparent, 
e.g., easier and cheaper to transmit over long distances, Edison decides to 
discredit AC on the basis that it is extremely dangerous to use. To 
showcase this danger he electrocutes dogs, horses and calves in public with AC.

Then he tells his audience how effective AC would be for a killing chair. 
He lobbies politicians and prison officials of the State of New York to use 
AC in order to produce "instantaneous death" in an electrified 
chair.  Westinghouse sees exactly what Edison is up to and refuses to sell 
his AC generators to New York State.  Edison helps the State of New York 
procure a used Westinghouse AC generator from Brazil. Westinghouse counters 
by hiring a high-priced lawyer, W. Bourke Cockran, to appeal William 
Kemmler's case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The ground for this 
appeal is that the electric chair violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. 
Constitution which prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual 
punishments." However the learned members of the Court decide that there is 
nothing cruel about this type of execution.  They also decide it is not 
unusual although it has never been done before.

William Kemmler is sent off to be killed.  On the morning of August 6, 1890 
a lamp panel lights up on the Westinghouse generator at Auburn State Prison 
indicating that it has reached two thousand volts - which has been 
scientifically determined to be the optimal voltage for executing a human 
being. The switch is pulled by a man named Edwin Davis and electricity 
courses through William Kemmler for 17 seconds. When it is over Albert 
Southwick, a leader in the killing chair movement, exclaims, "There
is the culmination of ten years work and study." The electric chair is a 
mini-Manhattan Project brought to successful completion! However, a problem 
exists. William Kemmler is not dead. Government officials in a panic try to 
turn the Westinghouse generator back on, but cannot. It requires time to 
recharge itself to 2000 volts.

Meanwhile, William Kemmler, who has turned bright red during his 
"electrocution," is in agony, groaning and frantically gasping for breath. 
He has of course urinated and defecated all over himself, since it is not 
known at this time that those to be executed in this manner must wear 
diapers. The New York Herald describing this scene
reports that "strong men fainted and fell on the floor." When turned back 
on, the current is kept rushing through Kemmler's body for over a minute.

The next day newspaper stories tell how smoke rose from Kemmler's head, the 
smell of burning flesh permeated the room, a curious crackling sound was 
heard by all witnesses and flames shot from his mouth. Although there is 
considerable public outcry, it does not move the legislature to repeal the 
electrocution law nor does it move the Supreme Court to see anything cruel 
and unusual in it.

Edison now has a ghoulish public relations field day warning people of the 
clear and scientifically proven dangers of Westinghouse's alternating 
current, which has proved itself only good for "electricide." He cleverly 
embellishes his negative PR campaign against AC by suggesting that 
criminals condemned to death by electrocution should be said to be 
"westinghoused" or "condemned to the westinghouse." In the War of the 
Currents Edison wins the battle of August 6, 1890 but Westinghouse wins the 
war.  AC becomes the household standard.

However, this is morally irrelevant. What is morally relevant is that 
Edison, like his counterparts 55 years later, on August 6, 1945, chooses to 
place a great gift of intellect at the service of homicidal violence. He 
has, in the self-excoriating words of Robert Oppenheimer, The Father of the 
Atomic Bomb, "become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Perhaps on each August 6 it would be appropriate, along with remembering 
the victims and executioners of August 6, 1945, to remember the victim and 
executioners of August 6, 1890. Perhaps it would be good to remember on 
each August 6 that the executioners of that day are not just the crew of 
the Enola Gay or the switch-puller Edwin Davis, but all - including some of 
the brightest people the world has ever produced - who freely participated 
in the long chain of choices without which August 6, 1945 and August 6, 
1890 could not have entered history as they did. Finally, it may be 
spiritually sound and humanly helpful to specifically remember the 
individual human being, William Kemmler, on that day when two utterly new 
forms of high intelligence, high-tech homicidal violence tear into the 
human community.

I make this last observation because in the end homicidal violence cuts 
into life one unique, fragile, pain absorbing person at a time - even when 
hundreds of thousands are killed on a battlefield. "One death is a tragedy; 
a million is a statistic," says Stalin. True enough because of the 
mechanisms that society and its institutions - including religious 
institutions - employ to nurture psychic numbing and indifference to the 
mass killing of human beings by governments and successful violent 
revolutions. But, whether on the blood drenched fields of Gettysburg, or in 
the vermin infested trenches on the Somme, or inside a burning tank in 
Baghdad, each person dies his or her
own private death, every bit as much as did William Kemmler. It should be 
an imperative of truth and morality to always and everywhere acknowledge 
and emphasize this fact, and thereby foster the growth of a deep certainty 
regarding the intrinsic perniciousness of homicidal violence.

If the spirit of homicidal violence had but one victim in human history, it 
would be no less monstrous, grotesque and perverted. The satanic is not 
fundamentally discerned by statistics. Indeed, statistics can dull empathic 
sensibilities that expose critical truths. Exclusive focus on quantity can 
be a decoy of the demonic, whereby the actual concrete reality of an 
irreplaceable person being mutilated or burned to death is rendered all but 
invisible by fixating on the numerical abstractions of competing body
counts. And of course, once a reality can no longer be seen, it is no 
longer subject to accurate moral evaluation. Once the screams of the 
individual person are silenced beneath the clatter and chatter of 
statistics and justifying philosophies or theologies, then homicide ceases 
to be experienced as the phenomena it in fact is. Homicidal violence 
without a unique and irreplaceable face as its victim does not exist in 
reality - and hence, part of the importance of William Kemmler to August 6.

Each who dies on August 6, 1945 dies as William Kemmler dies on August 6, 
1890. Each dies his or her own, very personal death at the hands of other 
human beings. The common denominator between the two August 6-events is 
that both are the enfleshment of exactly the same wicked spirit. The spirit 
that kills William Kemmler on August 6, 1890 and the spirit that kills tens 
of thousands of human beings on August 6, 1945 is precisely the same spirit 
that possesses Cain, kills Jesus and is acting through every person who has 
ever intentionally destroyed the life of another or played at destroying 
the life of another. August 6 should be the day when the world community 
examines its conscience and consciousness, and unequivocally commits or 
re-commits to exorcising this spirit from its presence.

To this end a practical step might be to employ the reality and the symbol 
of August 6 to honestly view what that putrid spirit subjects humanity to, 
once a human being allows his or her body to be its instrument on 
earth.  "Knowledge is in the detail," as the saying goes. Certainly there 
is a knowledge of the repulsiveness of the spirit of homicidal violence in 
awareness of the quantitative extent of its destructive power. But, there 
is an equally important knowledge to be acquired by seeing this spirit at =
the very instant of its actual entrance into human life. This is the 
knowledge which governments, militaries, violent revolutionaries and their 
propagandists systematically keep from the public. This is the knowledge 
that mass media and scholarship refuse to access, study and communicate, as 
only they can. William Kemmler offers an opening onto this avenue of 
perception, not only in terms of himself but also on behalf of every person 
broken and destroyed when this unholy spirit has been given flesh by human 
choice.

Yearly, August 6 holds out the opportunity to view homicidal violence fully 
- in all its macro and micro viperous ugliness. August 6 presents to 
planetary humanity a universally recognizable symbol - rooted indelibly in 
that day's history - by which to examine not only its conscience regarding 
homicidal violence, but also its consciousness of homicidal violence. There 
are powerful and well-financed forces throughout the world who have a 
vested interest in hiding from humanity the realities of homicidal 
violence, of promoting a consciousness of faceless homicide. They forever 
want to have at their disposal the humanly created situation of which the 
19th Century robber baron, Jay Gould, spoke when he bragged, "I can hire 
half the poor to kill the other half." Such hiring would be made as 
socially and as personally noxious as incest if the poor - and the middle 
class - really knew what the spirit of homicidal violence looks like and 
unleashes, at the moment it actually enters human existence.

August 6 is a day for planetary enlightenment. It is a day for 
transfiguring consciousness by stripping away all the theologies, all the 
philosophies, all the rituals and all the medals that camouflage the truth 
about what the spirit of homicidal violence does to both victim and 
executioner at the hour of its incarnational eruption - and for untold time 
thereafter. August 6, like Good Friday, is a day pregnant with remembrance, 
with sorrow, with truths and with lessons for the whole world. Remembered 
accurately, it can be an essential ingredient of the glue that re-members a 
humanity that has torn itself to pieces by giving legitimacy - even 
Christic legitimacy - to the spirit that spawned the accursed events of 
that day in 1890 and 1945.

(Rev.) Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Center for Christian Nonviolence
167 Fairhill Drive
Wilmington, DE 19808-4312
Phone: 302-235-2925
Fax: 302-235-2926=20
E-mail: jjcarmody at comcast.net
<http://www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org/>

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BIG NEWS FROM PENNSYLVANIA ABOLITIONISTS

 From the PAUADP e-newsletter
(get the whole thing by writing "subscribe" to PAUADP at aol.com)

>In September, we will take an exciting step forward in ending the death 
>penalty, not only in Pennsylvania but across the country.  The tremendous 
>energy, vision, and financial stewardship of Pennsylvania Abolitionists 
>have drawn the attention and respect of key leaders in the abolitionist 
>movement in the U.S.  Earlier this summer, we were contacted by Sister 
>Helen Prejean, author of the acclaimed "Dead Man Walking," about joining 
>forces with her New Orleans-based national petition drive, The Moratorium 
>Campaign.  As a result, the nation's largest moratorium petition drive is 
>moving to our expanded offices in Philadelphia.  Renamed Moratorium USA, 
>this program will continue the nationwide effort to gather the signatures 
>and contact information for individuals supporting a moratorium on 
>executions.  Moratorium USA officially opens its doors on September 1, 
>when Project Director Megan Boatright brings her vision and passion to the 
>mission of the campaign.  We are also excited about the privilege of 
>working closely with Sr. Helen, whose new book will be released in 
>January, and with other abolitionist groups across the country.  This will 
>provide Pennsylvania Abolitionists with greater support, connections, and 
>resources to use in our efforts in this state.

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MORE ON DETERRENCE

Suzanne Carter writes:

>The latest issue of The Skeptical Inquirer/The Magazine for Science and 
>Reason (July/August 2004) has as its cover story an article on the 
>reliability of the two types of deterrence studies.  In a nutshell, the 
>conclusion of the article is that the comparative studies are more 
>reliable than the econometric studies.  That is good news for 
>abolitionists as the comparative studies are the ones which consistently 
>show no deterrent effect of capital punishment on homicide rates.
>
>This article is not pro or anti dp - it is an article focused solely on 
>the methodology of these studies. I think this is very useful information 
>to have when the discussion turns to deterrence.
>
>I just picked up a copy of the magazine at a newstand today.The article is 
>not available online. They do seem to put articles on the web pages for 
>the magazine, so perhaps this will eventually appear there. Here is the URL:
>
>http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/

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REMEMBERING SACCO & VANZETTI

The anniversary of this famous execution is just one of many days useful 
for raising awareness to the death penalty issue.  See the Calendar of 
Upcoming DP related events for more annual dates for 
action:  http://www.cuadp.org/upevents-part2.html

For immediate release:                 23 July 2004

Contact:
John J. Fitzgerald
95 Cedar Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
(413) 567-6315
fitzgera at comcast.com

Monday, August 23rd, 2004 will mark the 77th anniversary of the wrongful 
executions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti by the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts in 1927.  To commemorate the date and to build opposition to 
the restoration of the death penalty in Massachusetts, the Hampden County 
Chapter of the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty, will be 
sponsoring a memorial service in Springfield in memory of the wrongful 
executions of Sacco and Vanzetti.

The event, which has been held since 1991, will also honor, Stephanie Page 
and Robert Sheketoff, distinguished anti-death penalty attorneys. Page and 
Sheketoff have dedicated a major part of their professional careers to 
death penalty cases and in support of opposition to the death penalty 
itself. Both individuals have written extensively on the death penalty and 
its propensity for injustice. They are both honored members of the legal 
profession.

The Ken Childs Award, named for a distinguished local opponent of the death 
penalty, will be awarded to Martina Jackson, Executive Director, 
Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty. Other participants will 
discuss the current legal and ethical aspects of the death penalty.

The event will be hosted by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community 
Presbyterian Church at 14 Concord Terrace, Springfield, MA. (Location: 
Between State Street and Wilbraham Road, near American International 
College.) Parking is available.

The public is invited to both attend and participate. Refreshments will be 
served.

For further information, contact John J. Fitzgerald at 567-6315 or Saul 
Finestone at 567-3451.

                        -30-

Brief Background for the Sacco and Vanzetti Executions
compiled by
John J. Fitzgerald

Most scholars and students of this controversial case regard the executions 
of Sacco and Vanzetti as a classic example of the injustice inherent in the 
application of the death penalty.

It has resulted in the execution of innocent people. The death penalty, 
unlike life imprisonment, does not allow for the correction of a mistaken 
conviction of an innocent person.

The executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, in the reactionary period of the "Red 
Scare" during the 1920's, were based on their ethnic backgrounds, and their 
political beliefs, rather than on a just legal proceeding.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants. Sacco's 
occupation was a shoe maker and Vanzetti was a fish peddler. Both men were 
anarchists; they believed that government was an unnecessary evil that 
should be abolished. This was a political philosophy protected by the First 
Amendment.

In April 1920, five armed men in a car robbed a shoe company in South 
Braintree, Massachusetts. The paymaster and his guard were shot and 
murdered. In May, the police arrested Sacco and Vanzetti. They were: 
coupled with a car similar to the alleged robbery car; carried pistols when 
arrested; and made false statements to the police when they were 
interrogated. However, neither had a criminal record, and none of the 
stolen money showed up in their possession.

The behavior of the trial judge and the prosecutor frequently evidenced 
bias and prejudice. In 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were both found guilty of 
murder and robbery and sentenced to death.

Mass demonstrations to prevent their executions were held by defense 
committees, civil liberties groups and sympathetic people throughout the 
United States, Europe and Latin America. Despite appeals, the verdict of 
the lower court was upheld, and on August 23rd, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti 
were executed by electrocution by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

The truth in the case is still being debated. Defenders of Sacco and 
Vanzetti charge that the trial was unfair; the evidence was flimsy, at best 
circumstantial; and that they were really convicted for their political 
views, not for robbery and murder. To this day, many people still have a 
reasonable doubt as to their guilt.
                        -30-

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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Check out what your favorite abolitionist web page looked like when they 
first started out!

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

*******************

SENT BY


Abraham J. Bonowitz
Director, CUADP
<abe at cuadp.org>

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                       YES FRIENDS!
       There is an Alternative to the Death Penalty

   Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
   (CUADP) works to end the death penalty in the United
  States through aggressive campaigns of public education
    and the promotion of tactical grassroots activism.

    Visit <http://www.cuadp.org> or call 800-973-6548
      PMB 335,  2603 13th St NW (aka Dr. MLK Jr. Hwy)
                      Gainesville, FL  32609

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