May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month.
My friend the Rev. Laura Mariko Cheifetz is celebrating the month with a series on her blog with guest writers “from many generations, different ethnic groups, and represent the diversity of what it means to be Asian Pacific American and Presbyterian.”
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Antiracism, Friends, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Staying at a hotel in downtown Louisville, I have had a couple interesting, disturbing experiences.
Two of the last three nights, I have gone to a nearby convenience store for unnecessary snacks.
Both nights, a confrontation occurred between the store employees and a customer. In each case, the store had barred the customer for some previous experience. In each case, the employees became abusive toward the customer. The first time, an employee shoved the customer to the floor. Tonight, an employee chased the customer from the store and challenged him to a fight. The customer engaged in a shouting match as he walked away. Each confrontation involved different people.
I regularly go convenience stores near the Shire in New York for unnecessary snacks. Never have I witnessed a confrontation.
The moral I take? No more snacks.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Louisville, Travel
Reflections on Baltimore by Derrick Weston. Much to ponder.
Filed under Uncategorized
Not sure what it is;
it isn’t flowers;
but purple it is.
13 April 2015
Manhattan, New York
On April 3, 2015, Anthony Ray Hinton walked from a prison in Birmingham, a free man. Free after almost thirty years on death row. Thirty years spent in the shadow of execution – for a crime he did not commit.
The Death Penalty Information Center notes that Hinton is the 152nd person sentenced to death to be exonerated since 1973.
The New York Times cites two documented cases in which individuals who were almost certainly innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted were put to death.
The possibility of executing one innocent person should give us considerable pause. It provides a strong argument against capital punishment.
Speaking after Hinton’s release, “Bryan Stevenson, one of Mr. Hinton’s lawyers and the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said Mr. Hinton’s right to justice had been limited as an impoverished black man.”
The racial and economic inequities in the application of justice in relation to provide additional arguments against capital punishment.
The exoneration of Anthony Ray Hinton and the others prove that the system does work, however long it may take the wheels to grind.
But when the sentence is death and serious inequities exist, the stakes are simply too high.
It is time to end the death penalty.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Capital Punishment, Current Events, Death Penalty
Along the Graybeard Trail 