Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XXIV Number 3, March 2016
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday, March 24, 8:00 PM. Monthly
Meeting. We meet at the Caltech Y, Tyson
House, 505 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena. (This is
just south of the corner with San Pasqual.
Signs will be posted.) We will be planning our
activities for the coming months. Please join
us! Refreshments provided.
Tuesday, April 12, 7:30 PM. Letter writing
meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner of Hill
and California in Pasadena. This informal
gathering is a great way for newcomers to get
acquainted with Amnesty.
Sunday, April 17, 6:30 PM. Rights Readers
Human Rights Book Discussion group. This
month we read "Foreign Gods, Inc." by Okey
Ndibe.
COORDINATOR'S CORNER
Hi everyone
March marks the death of our former Group 22
co-coordinator, Lucas Kamp, last year from
pancreatic cancer. Let's continue to keep Group
22 strong in his memory.
There is a vigil in April to mark the birthday of
Iranian human rights activist Narges
Mohammadi that Alexi has helped organize.
See Alexi's article for further information.
Con Carino,
Kathy
Next Rights Readers meeting:
Sunday, April 17
6:30 PM
Vroman's Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena
Foreign Gods, Inc.
by Okey Ndibe
RIGHTS READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion
Group
Keep up with Rights Readers at
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
AUTHOR BIO
Okey Ndibe (born 1960) is a novelist, political
columnist, and essayist. Of Igbo ethnicity, Ndibe
was born in Yola, Nigeria. He is the author of
Arrows of Rain and Foreign Gods, Inc., two
critically acclaimed novels published in 2000
and 2014 respectively. Ndibe is one of the
foremost respected and admired contributors to
the social and political essence of Nigeria.
[from Wikipedia]
BOOK REVIEW
The New York Times
By JANET MASLIN DEC. 29, 2013
Trying to Filch the Blessings of the Idol Rich
'Foreign Gods, Inc.,' by Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe's razor-sharp "Foreign Gods, Inc."
steps into the story of a Nigerian-born New
Yorker called Ike, just as everything in his life
has begun to go horribly wrong. The only thing
worse than Ike's present situation is the plan he
makes to remedy it.
Ike, whose name is correctly pronounced EE-
kay, has an Amherst degree cum laude in
economics. But his accent has kept him from
finding a job. So he works as a cabby, with
customers who call him "Eekay," which means
"buttocks" in Igbo. He has made a bad marriage
to a woman who walked off with his savings,
and debts now overwhelm him. The only thing
he has of value is something of age-old mystical
significance that is not exactly in his possession.
And, intellect notwithstanding, he gets the
bright idea of acquiring and selling it from a
trendy article in New York magazine.
A friend sends Ike the article about an art
gallery called Foreign Gods Inc., which gives
this book its terrifically apt title. Only in
mimicking a slick American idiom does Mr.
Ndibe falter, and that's probably to his credit.
(From the fake New York magazine: " 'A
summons to heaven doesn't come easy or
cheap," says a gallery patron, referring to the
place's most expensive upper floor.") But the
gist of the piece is that a dealer named Mark
Gruels traffics in deities from faraway places,
which mean nothing but money to either him or
his customers. As the book begins, Ike arrives at
the gallery to see a tanned woman holding a
squat statue to her breast, leaving Foreign Gods
and getting into her BMW.
Ike is desperate enough to believe that Gruels
will pay big money for Ngene, the powerful war
god that presided over the Nigerian region
where he was raised. Mr. Ndibe has his own
memories of war to draw upon: He grew up in
the midst of the Biafran war and was a Nigerian
journalist and academic before coming to the
United States, as a protˇgˇ of Chinua Achebe.
He has had a distinguished teaching career and
is the author of one earlier novel, "Arrows of
Rain" (2000). But "Foreign Gods, Inc.," which
arrives early in January, will still have the
impact of an astute and gripping new novelist'
Not far into the book, Ike is on his way back to
Nigeria with only one plan in mind: to steal
what he thinks is an inanimate object and bring
it back to New York. That scheme alone is
evidence of how far he has strayed from his
roots, and how much of a re-education awaits
him.
At first, he is simply struck by the physical
changes to his native land: Where did all those
zinc-roofed concrete buildings with satellite
dishes come from? But then the sense memories
of the place begin to seduce him, and he falls
into a swoon of reminiscence that would be
enchanting, if it were not constantly interrupted
by the harsh realities of his relatives and former
neighbors.
Ngene the war god plays some mysterious role
in all of this. Much of the village's hardship
dates back to the disruptive visit of a British
missionary who was determined to teach the
superiority of Christianity to Nigerian pagans.
Even this takes the form of materialism, as the
increasingly mad Englishman, Stanton, insists
that his God is more powerful because he owns
everything, while the Nigerian gods possess
nothing. Nothing but the hearts and minds of
their followers.
Stanton is gone, but in his wake he left bitter
divisiveness and a terrible conflation of religion
and greed. So Ike returns to find that his mother,
who for years has had Ike's sister bombard him
with plaintive, begging letters ("Mama wonders
if you want us to eat sand"), has fallen under the
spell of a pastor who sees religious commitment
in terms of dollar signs.
The influence of America is everywhere, and so
are its own foreign gods: Ike finds impoverished
Nigerian kids watching old reruns of Michael
Jordan playing basketball, talking about what
they would do if they were as rich and widely
worshiped as he once was. They'd buy houses.
Cars. Shirts with brand names on them. And
pizza, even though not one of these kids has
ever tasted it. They've just seen people eat it on
American TV, and the people look happy after
they do.
Ike's journey through his past is so richly
evocative that he and the reader may almost
forget what he went home to do. But by the time
he turns his attention to Ngene, whose high
priest is Ike's uncle, it's clear that Ngene is more
than just a wooden artifact. The past has proved,
to anyone who would take heed, that Ngene is
powerful, indestructible, vengeful and not easily
subject to the whims of others. So a great deal
more than art dealing is at stake as Ike enacts the
final stage of his crazy, misbegotten plan.
Throughout "Foreign Gods, Inc.," Ike's hard-
won urban Americanness, the kind that allowed
him to drive a New York taxi, slowly
evaporates. It is replaced by a more primal,
physical life, as he becomes more attuned to
sounds and smells, especially to the stinks of
suffering, failure and fear.
Mr. Ndibe invests his story with enough dark
comedy to make Ngene an odoriferous presence
in his own right, and certainly not the kind of
polite exotic rarity that art collectors are used to.
At one point, the novel compares him to the
demonic Baal, and Ngene shows many signs of
wishing to live up to that reputation. In Mr.
Ndibe's agile hands, he's both a source of satire
and an embodiment of pure terror.
[www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/books/foreign-
gods-inc-by-okey-ndibe.html]
PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
Narges Mohammadi
by Alexi Daher
As in previous years, Amnesty has been doing
an annual Nowruz (Iranian New Year) in
solidarity to prisoners of conscience in Iran and
their families. You can access the action from
the Individuals at Risk page of the Amnesty
International USA website:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-
work/campaigns/individuals-at-risk
or from the Iran page:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-
work/countries/middle-east-and-north-
africa/iran.
The seven cases for this year include: Seven
leaders of Iran's Baha'i community; physicist
Omid Kokabee; human rights defender Narges
Mohammadi; journalist Hossein Ronaghi
Maleki; artist Atena Farghadani; student and
women's rights activist Bahareh Hedayat; and
human rights attorney Abdolfattah Soltani.
We are midway in our planning for the Narges
Mohammadi vigil, on her birthday April 21.
Please reserve the date: April 21st, 2016 at 5:30
pm, and join us in solidarity to demand the
immediate release of Narges Mohammadi and
to bring awareness to the global community that
human rights violations continue to be a blatant
21st Century problem.
Invitations to join the vigil can now be
forwarded to the community, organizations, and
local Amnesty groups. If you know a group who
would want to be involved, would want to
organize vigils, or join in other solidarity actions
on that day, they can contact me at
alexi.daher@gmail.com.
Invitation to the Vigil:
Human Rights Violations STILL a Blatant 21st
Century Problem
Join Amnesty International, Caltech Pasadena
Group 22
Vigil on Thursday, April 21st, 2016 at 5:30 pm
To Support, Never Forget the Legacy and
Demand the Immediate Release of
Human Right Defender Narges Mohammadi
On Thursday, April 21, 2016, Narges
Mohammadi's birthday will be marked with a
candlelight vigil at (location TBD). The vigil will
take place in honor of Narges Mohammadi, who
fought and is still fighting for human, women,
and children's rights in Iran. She is currently a
prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for her
peaceful exercise of her rights to freedom of
expression, association, and peaceful assembly.
The right to privacy and the right of free speech
have consistently been under attack by
controlling governments and entrenched powers
whether in the East or in the West; packaging
them as Salil Shetty, Secretary General of
Amnesty International, says, "in opposition to
national security, law, and order" and
contributing to the "crushing of civil society."
As a collective and global community we have
the moral obligation to stand in solidarity and
call on governments to defend international law
and to protect people's rights.
This event is part of an international
collaboration with local and International
Amnesty Groups in Belgium, Germany,
Denmark and the USA, demanding Narges
Mohammadi's immediate release and renewing
our commitment to continue to bring awareness
on human rights violations around the globe
and its devastating impact on individuals, their
families, and their communities.
Amnesty International Group 22 (Caltech/
Pasadena) encourages the community
throughout Los Angeles to join us at (location
TBD) at 5:30 pm. Individuals can participate
through Twitter by tweeting this action's
hashtag, #UnitedforNarges. On April 21st, the
day of the vigil, participating Groups and
individuals will video stream the events of April
21, tweet, and retweet, connecting all the vigils
through streams of pictures and videos.
Community members can participate
independently by placing a lit candle in their
front window beginning at 5 pm. Take a picture
and tweet it with the action's hashtag
#UnitedforNarges on April 21, to shine a light
on human rights abuses, and as a sign of hope
that all detained individuals-at-risk, like Narges
Mohammadi, are immediately released.
If you and your own group want to be involved
and organize vigils or other solidarity actions on
that day, you can contact Alexi Daher at
alexi.daher@gmail.com, or via Twitter at
Alexi@AdaherAI.
DEATH PENALTY NEWS
By Stevi Carroll
The Justice that Works Act of 2016
I spoke with Terry McAffrey, Amnesty's
California coordinator for The Justice that
Works Act of 2016. He said he would send
some petitions to me for us to use to get
signatures needed for it to be on the ballot. I
will pass them out when I get them - I hope by
our monthly meeting on the 24th. He will be in
LA for a meeting on April 12th, and after that, I
will have more to report.
Pope Francis
In February, Pope Francis once again called for a
worldwide abolition of the death penalty. He
combined it with prison conditions generally
and said "all Christians and people of goodwill
are called today to work not only for the
abolition of the death penalty, but also in order
to improve prison conditions, in respect for
human dignity of persons deprived of liberty."
He appealed to Catholic politicians to make
"courageous and exemplary gesture and ensure
that no convicted inmate is executed during the
church's Holy Year of Mercy, which ends on
November 20." (We can remember that Supreme
Court Justice Antonin Scalia's final legal action
was to let Gustavo Garcia, a man in Texas, be
executed a few days before Pope Francis's
sermon.)
It (the death penalty) does not render justice to the
victims, but rather fosters vengeance.
- Pope Francis, March 20, 2015
Something's Happenin' Here
For some reason, people who might be thought
of as strong supporters of the death penalty are
saying something completely different. In both
Utah and Washington state people intimately
connected to the execution of the death penalty
are on the record as opponents of it.
Creighton Horton, a prosecutor in Utah with 30
years' experience, wrote in an op-ed earlier this
month that he has come to believe the death
penalty does not make us safer. He does believe
individuals who commit what are now capital
crimes "should never be allowed the
opportunity to victimize society again." One of
his concerns is that innocent people may be
sentenced to death. He also has seen how use of
the death penalty can be unfair to the victims'
families since the time from sentencing to
execution may be extended which denies the
families 'closure'. When a person is found
guilty of murder and is sentenced to life without
parole, Mr. Horton said then "the victims'
families are able to move on with their lives."
Utah State Senator Steve Urquhart (R)
introduced a measure to abolish Utah's death
penalty, but unfortunately had to withdraw it in
mid March because while he came close to
having the needed support "there were enough
lawmakers on the fence in the GOP-controlled
House of Representatives that the debate would
have taken hours and irritated legislators." And
even if he had gotten enough support,
Republican Governor Gary Herbert might have
vetoed it. Some of the conservative lawmakers
who favor abolishing the death penalty think
the years of appeals delay any justice that might
be served and others express concerns that the
government could execute someone who has
been wrongly convicted.
I see a positive opening in Utah.
In Washington state, 78 people have been
executed since 1904 (while Texas has executed
four people already in 2016, just a little
perspective here). Even with that small number
in Washington, 56 former and retired judges
have urged the Washington Supreme Court to
declare the death penalty unconstitutional.
Retired judges are not given to take a side
publicly on an issue, but these judges see this
situation as one of fairness where assuring
fairness is difficult because of the arbitrary
nature of the death penalty.
These judges signed the American Civil
Liberties Union's friend-of-the-court brief along
with the League of Women Voters of
Washington, Murder Victims' Families for
Reconciliation and several faith organizations.
Presently, nineteen states and the District of
Columbia do not have the death penalty.
Perhaps we will see more to follow, even
California.
Ah yes, and then there's Virginia
We remember how difficult it has become to get
those lethal injection drugs. On March 7th, the
Virginia state Senate approved a bill that makes
the electric chair the default method of execution
should those drugs not be available. At this
time, the bill has been sent to Governor Terry
McAuliffe (D) who has not said whether or not
he will sign it.
Romell Broom
September 15, 2009, the executioners at the
death chamber located in the Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, tried to
execute Romell Broom. After two hours and 18
attempts to find a vein into which the lethal
drug could flow, his execution was called off.
On March 16 with a 4-3 decision, the Ohio
Supreme Court authorized the state to try for
the second time to execute him. The reasoning
in this case is interesting and I will take it from
the Death Penalty Information Center's article:
Justice Judith Lanzinger, writing for the
majority, said the event was not a failed execution
because setting the IV line was only a "preliminary
step" to an execution and the execution itself
"commences when the lethal drug enters the IV line."
The majority reasoned that "because the attempt did
not proceed to the point of injection of a lethal drug
into the IV line, jeopardy never attached." The court
denied Broom an evidentiary hearing on his claim
that a second execution attempt would constitute
cruel and unusual punishment, assuming that prison
personnel would this time adhere to the state's
execution protocol. It wrote: "Strict compliance with
the protocol will ensure that executions are carried
out in a constitutional manner and can also prevent
or reveal an inmate's attempt to interfere with the
execution process. We simply are unable to conclude
that Broom has established that the state in carrying
out a second attempt is likely to violate its protocol
and cause severe pain." Justice Judith French
dissented, saying, "The majority's decision to deny
Romell Broom an evidentiary hearing on his Eighth
Amendment claim is wrong on the law, wrong on the
facts, and inconsistent in its reasoning. If the state
cannot explain why the Broom execution went
wrong, then the state cannot guarantee that the
outcome will be different next time." In a separate
dissent, Justice William O'Neill wrote, "Any fair
reading of the record of the first execution attempt
shows that Broom was actually tortured the first
time. Now we embark on the task of doing it again."
Dr. Jon Groner, who examined Broom shortly after
the 2009 botched execution, described the attempts at
accessing Broom's veins as, "somewhere between
malpractice and assault." Broom's attorneys said
they intend to seek further review in other courts."
Stays of Execution
March
14 Daniel Blank LA
15 Thomas Meadows PA
16 Ricky Javon Gray VA
16 Jeffrey Martin FL
17 Mark James Asay FL
18 Christopher Johnson PA
23 Alva Campbell OH
Execution
March
9 Coy Wesbrook TX
Lethal Injection 1 drug (Pentobarbital)
GROUP 22 MARCH LETTER COUNT
POC 6
UAs 12
Total 18
To add your letters to the total contact
aigp22@caltech.edu
Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code C1-128
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com
Amnesty International's mission is to undertake research and action focused on
preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity,
freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the
context of its work to promote all human rights.