The Supreme Court ended its term last week and all the justices and clerks hurried off to wherever those kind of people spend their summer months. That’s too bad, because if they were around this week, the might see the sixth annual fast and vigil held in front of the court by the Abolitionist Action Committee, a group which opposes the death penalty.
The vigil began Tuesday, June 29, the 27th anniversary of Furman v. Georgia, the case in which the Supreme Court found the various state death penalty statutes were being applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner. In other words, no equal justice under law. The vigil ends July 2, the 23rd anniversary of Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruling which allowed executions to resume. During this week, many people keeping the vigil will not eat; they will pass out leaflets and speak to passers-by about the death penalty.
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Secrets and Lies
It was the Indiana humorist Kin Hubbard who said, “It’s no sin to be poor – although it may as well be.” Bill Clinton is proving the truth of that statement this week as he visits some of the poorest regions in America. More than halfway through his second term, after surviving dozens of scandals, the president has finally decided his poll numbers can stand the damage if photographers catch him standing next to a poor person.
The people the president is visiting are not only poor, they’re dirty, and I don’t mean that in a personal sense. If it may as well be a sin to be poor, then the hell the poor are consigned to is besmeared by heavy industry, reeking of poison and death. It’s well-known that poor communities, especially poor communities of color, get more than their share of pollution, but to understand exactly what that means, you have to see the devil in the details.
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