Feeling Safer??

Wednesday evening, the State of Texas killed Karl Eugene Chamberlain. He was sentenced to death because the Plano East Senior High School graduate raped and murdered his downstairs neighbor. Chamberlain was guilty. During his time in prison, he became quite remorseful over the horrific things he had done to Felecia Prechtl in 1991. His remorse did not bring her back … neither did his execution. If Felecia’s family has been waiting since her death to feel a sense of closure in this tragedy, studies show that this second death won’t bring it to them.

The busiest death chamber in the free world has been empty for nine months. Executions around the country were halted while the Supreme Court decided if the drugs used for lethal injections created cruel and unusual punishment. They ruled that it isn’t cruel for the state to kill people in this way.

Since Texas, and specifically Dallas, leads the nation in exonerations, I had hoped that people of good conscience in Texas would have clamored for an end to a practice that every civilized nation in Europe abandoned decades ago.

The argument that executions deter crime is repudiated by the fact that the Execution State (Texas) has a higher violent crime rate than ANY nation or state that has abolished capital punishment. Clearly, this isn’t about reducing crime. So, what is it about? Why do people who are normally gracious and compassionate not feel that locking someone away for the rest of their life to ponder their crime is not justice? Killing them is not cheaper in the long run, and it does not make us safer. Crime rates did not rise during the nine-month moratorium.

Texas only executes the poor. It is most likely to execute people of color. It is especially likely to execute people of color whose victims were white. While African-Americans constitute only 12 percent of the population of Texas, some 60 percent of those who have been exonerated in recent years were African-American. Does this mean that if you are African-American you are five times as likely to be executed even if innocent?

Ultimately, what this means is that violence begets violence. Every statistic available to us testifies to one fact: State-sponsored killing does not reduce violent crime, but, in fact, may enhance a culture of violence. Far from making us safer, being a state that supports state-sponsored killing has actually made Texans less safe, not more. I, for one, believe that it has damaged the fabric of our society and certainly the quality of our own souls.

Living Wage Update

As you will recall, Rev. Piazza, on behalf of Hope for Peace & Justice, recently presented a petition signed by 1,00 people to the Dallas City council, urging them to ensure that sanitation workers are paid a living wage. Well, the Dallas City Council has agreed to review the contract that covers the city’s sanitation workers. Currently, the lowest hourly wage paid to city employees is $8.62, while contract sanitation workers only earn Federal minimum wage (currently $5.85). The consensus seems to be to require contractors to pay sanitation workers $8.62/hour this year, $10/hour next year and then a true living wage in subsequent years. There is a graduate public policy class at the University of Texas-Arlington that currently is working on a research project regarding living wage for public employees and whose findings will be used in the future to calculate the living wage.

Please continue to email your City Council members to encourage them to vote for the increased wages for sanitation workers.

With gas and food prices at an all time high, the poorest among us are struggling even more.

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