The state of California and its supporters of capital punishment want to build a new death row within this state. While at the same time, may I add, they are supposed to be conducting a study on the fairness of the death penalty within the criminal justice system. It sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?
At whose expense is this new death row being built? Not the rich or the powerful people who never seem to bare the burden of such an expense. As always, it will be at the expense of the poor people of this state that this new death row will be built, if it is. Not only will the poor people bare the expense, but they will be the only ones who are sent to live and then be put to death in the new death row!
The politicians who control the state's money tell the taxpayers that there are money problems within the state, to the extent that schools must be closed, hospitals must be closed, parks and other publicly-funded places must be closed. Libraries are closing, wages are being cut and the list goes on and on�
Nurses, teachers, and firefighters are being laid off. The people who work for the state who still have a job are worried that they are next in line to be laid off. Yet somehow certain politicians have found a way to come up with millions of dollars to build an expanded death row. These people want spend all of this money to murder poor people who rightly or wrongly were sentenced to death.
Everyone is going to die sooner or later, even those death penalty supporters. But I guess they forgot about this fact. In order to speed up death for a certain group of poor people, they take away life from another group of poor people! All the money that will be spent on death should be spent on life! Instead of teachers being laid off, executioners should be laid off. Instead of hospitals being closed, death row should be closed. Instead of the door to the library locked for good, the door to the death chamber should be locked for good!
The people in power within this state who want to build this new death row have their priorities wrong. The focus should be on saving life through education, health care and all the things that will benefit people, and not on taking life through the capital punishment system. Something is truly wrong when senior citizens can't even get a flu shot to stop from dying, but an inmate on death row can get a shot of poison to kill him or her!
End the death penalty and use that money on life!
In Struggle From Death Row
At San Quentin Prison
Kevin Cooper
7-19-04