We’re Ready to End the Death Penalty and We Need Your Help

Last night’s execution of an innocent man, Troy Anthony Davis, by the State of Georgia demands that we renew efforts to end the death penalty.

“Troy’s execution, the exceptional unfairness of it, will only hasten the end of the death penalty in the United States,” wrote Ben Jealous of the NAACP last night. “The world will remember the name of Troy Anthony Davis. In death he will live on as a symbol of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.”

The Equal Justice Society sees the death penalty as one of the most egregious manifestations of discrimination in our country. Eva Paterson last year wrote a personal and compelling post about how the death penalty disproportionately impacts Blacks and Latinos and we have continued to engage in anti-death penalty efforts.

Last month, the EJS legal team traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the civil rights movement, where we met with death penalty litigators from around the country to identify strategies to overturn McCleskey v. Kemp, a 1987 Supreme Court case in which a habeas petitioner presented statistical evidence showing grave disparities in the imposition of the death penalty in Georgia.

EJS is ready to end California’s dysfunctional death penalty and we need your help!

The SAFE California Campaign was launched last month to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole and create the SAFE CA Fund for local law enforcement to keep our families and communities safe.

We need your help to ensure that California voters see the SAFE CA Act on the ballot in 2012. On October 20, the SAFE CA Campaign will officially begin gathering signatures from across the state to place the initiative on the ballot in November 2012. We’ll need over half a million signatures – a tall order, but one our network of volunteers and activists is ready for. Please stand with us and lend a hand to end the death penalty.

Here are ways that you can help:

• Signature Gatherers comb their communities for people to sign the petition to put the SAFE CA Act on the ballot. They are the backbone of our community activist network and will ensure that Californians get a chance to vote for a SAFE California.
• Community Captains recruit, organize, and train Signature Gatherers. These are the fearless leaders for teams of Signature Gatherers in communities around the state, providing guidance and motivation for activists.
• Phone Bankers reach out to their fellow Californians by phone, recruiting volunteers and educating voters from the comfort of their own home or their local campaign HQ.

We’re ready to dump the death penalty in California in favor of real public safety solutions.

Sign up today to join the SAFE CA campaign to to end California’s dysfunctional death penalty.