Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News
Volume XIX Number 5, May 2011


UPCOMING EVENTS

Thursday, May 26, 7:30 PM. Monthly 
Meeting. Caltech Y is located off San Pasqual 
between Hill and Holliston, south side. You 
will see two curving walls forming a gate to a 
path-- our building is just beyond. Help us 
plan future actions on Sudan, the 'War on 
Terror', death penalty and more.  

Tuesday, June 14, 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, June 19, 6:30PM.  Rights Readers 
Human Rights Book Discussion group. This 
month we read "Suite Francaise" by Irene 
Nemirovsky.


COORDINATOR'S CORNER
 
Hi everyone

4 more weeks of school left, but who's counting!
It looks like the RIFs will be rescinded, and the 
number of mandatory furlough days cut in half, 
since the state has found some more money for 
public education!  

Group 22 members participated in the Doo-Dah 
Parade this April, the second year since it was 
moved to East Pasadena.  The theme was 
maternal mortality, and judging by the facebook 
photos (especially of Lucas with a square pillow 
shoved up his shirt), it was pretty funny!  We 
missed it due to a family trip to Pullman, 
Washington for my aunt's 90th birthday that 
weekend.

In June we are reading a book my mother 
recommended to me - Suite Francaise.  I really 
enjoyed this book when I read it a few years 
ago, what a portrait of humanity inside its 
pages!   I look forward to reading it again...

Con carino,
Kathy


        RIGHTS READERS
Human Rights Book Discussion Group

Keep up with Rights Readers at 
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com

   Next Rights Readers meeting: 
        Sunday, June 19, 
            6:30 PM
       Vroman's Bookstore
      695 E. Colorado Blvd. 
         In Pasadena

      Suite Francaise
    by Irene Nemirovsky

       About the Author
Born in Ukraine, Irene Nemirovsky had lived in 
France since 1919 and had established herself in 
her adopted country's literary community, 
publishing nine novels and a biography of 
Chekhov. She composed "Suite Francaise" in the 
village of Issy-l'Eveque, where she, her husband 
and two young daughters had settled after 
fleeing Paris. On July 13, 1942, French 
policemen, enforcing the German race laws, 
arrested Nemirovsky as "a stateless person of 
Jewish descent." She was transported to 
Auschwitz, where she died in the infirmary on 
Aug. 17. 


        AS FRANCE BURNED
      Review by PAUL GRAY
   Published: April 9, 2006
  New York Times Book Review

THIS stunning book contains two narratives, one 
fictional and the other a fragmentary, factual 
account of how the fiction came into being. 
"Suite Francaise" itself consists of two novellas 
portraying life in France from June 4, 1940, as 
German forces prepare to invade Paris, through 
July 1, 1941, when some of Hitler's occupying 
troops leave France to join the assault on the 
Soviet Union. At the end of the volume, a series 
of appendices and a biographical sketch 
provide, among other things, information about 
the author of the novellas. 

        SUITE FRANCAISE

The date of Nemirovsky's death induces 
disbelief. It means, it can only mean, that she 
wrote the exquisitely shaped and balanced 
fiction of "Suite Francaise" almost 
contemporaneously with the events that 
inspired them, and everyone knows such a thing 
cannot be done. In his astute cultural history, 
"The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul 
Fussell describes the invariable progression - 
from the hastily reactive to the serenely 
reflective - of writings about catastrophes: 
"The significances belonging to fiction are 
attainable only as 'diary' or annals move toward 
the mode of memoir, for it is only the ex post 
facto view of an action that generates coherence 
or makes irony possible." 

We can now see that Nemirovsky achieved just 
such coherence and irony with an ex post facto 
view of, at most, a few months. In his defense, 
Fussell had not heard of "Suite Francaise," and 
neither had anyone else at the time, including 
Nemirovsky's elder daughter, Denise, who saved 
the leatherbound notebook her mother had left 
behind but refused to read it, fearing it would 
simply renew old pains. (Her father, Michel 
Epstein, was sent to Auschwitz several months 
after her mother and was consigned immediately 
to the gas chamber.) Not until the late 1990's 
did Denise examine what her mother had 
written and discover, instead of a diary or 
journal, two complete novellas written in a 
microscopic hand, evidently to save scarce 
paper. Denise abandoned her plan to give the 
notebook to a French institute preserving 
personal documents from the war years and 
instead sent it to a publisher. "Suite Francaise" 
appeared in France in 2004 and became a best 
seller. 

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the back 
story of "Suite Francaise" is irrelevant to the true 
business of criticism. But most readers don't 
view books from such Olympian heights, and 
neither, for that matter, do most critics. If they 
did, publishers' lists wouldn't be so crowded 
with literary histories and biographies, those 
chronicles of messy facts from which enduring 
art sometimes springs. In truth, "Suite Franaise" 
can stand up to the most rigorous and objective 
analysis, while a knowledge of its history 
heightens the wonder and awe of reading it. If 
that's a crime, let's just plead guilty and forge 
ahead. 

"Storm in June," the first novella of "Suite 
Francaise," opens as German artillery thunders 
on the outskirts of Paris and those residents 
who have trouble sleeping in the unusually warm 
weather hear the sound of an air-raid siren: "To 
them it began as a long breath, like air being 
forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before its 
wailing filled the sky." (Thomas Pynchon also 
hadn't heard of "Suite Francaise" while he was 
writing "Gravity's Rainbow," but compare his 
opening sentence, set in London, a few years 
later, same war: "A screaming comes across the 
sky.") The bombardment resumes: "A shell was 
fired, now so close to Paris that from the top of 
every monument birds rose into the sky. Great 
black birds, rarely seen at other times, stretched 
out their pink-tinged wings." With the utmost 
narrative economy, sharp, scattered images 
coalesce into an atmosphere of dread. 

Parisians wake up to the realization that 
nothing, particularly the gallant French Army 
they have read and heard so much about, 
stands between them and the Germans, and 
they decide, as one, to get out fast. To depict 
the widespread chaos that ensues - railroads 
hobbled by overcrowding or bombed tracks, 
shortages of gasoline and food - Nemirovsky 
concentrates on a few individuals caught up in 
the collective panic. 

While her husband, a government-appointed 
museum official, remains behind, Charlotte 
Pericand mobilizes four of her five children (her 
eldest son, Philippe, is a Roman Catholic 
priest), her senile father-in law and a retinue of 
servants into an escape party, burdened by as 
many possessions as she can salvage from her 
haut-bourgeois household. Gabriel Corte, a rich, 
successful and egotistical writer, views the loss 
of Paris as an insult to his refined sensibilities. 
On the road, stalled in the choking traffic, he 
complains to his mistress, "If events as painful 
as defeat and mass exodus cannot be dignified 
with some sort of nobility, some grandeur, then 
they shouldn't happen at all!" As usual, 
Nemirovsky offers no comment on this burst of 
folly; she allows her characters the liberty to 
display themselves on their own, for better and 
worse. 

Maurice and Jeanne Michaud, a middle-aged 
couple, both work in a bank that is moving its 
operations to Tours. Suitcases in hand, the 
Michauds learn from their employer at the last 
instant that the space he has promised them in 
his car, helping to transport bank records, has 
been pre-empted by his mistress and her dog. 
"Both of you must be in Tours the day after 
tomorrow at the latest," he tells them. "I must 
have all my staff." The Michauds laugh as they 
watch his car disappear; they expect little from 
life and so are rarely disappointed. 

Finding the Paris train stations shut down, the 
Michauds set off on foot: "In spite of the 
exhaustion, the hunger, the fear, Maurice 
Michaud was not really unhappy. He had a 
unique way of thinking: he didn't consider 
himself that important; in his own eyes, he was 
not that rare and irreplaceable creature most 
people imagine when they think about 
themselves." The Michauds are moral beacons 
among the rampaging selfishness all around 
them. Their only concern is their son, Jean-Marie, 
a soldier whose unit is in the path of the 
advancing German Army. A few chapters later, 
it is a relief for readers to learn what the 
Michauds have not: Jean-Marie, wounded in a 
bombardment, is recuperating in a farmhouse 
near Vendome. 

"Storm in June" is a tour de force of narrative 
distillation, using a handful of people to 
represent a multitude. Nemirovsky's shifts in 
tone and pace, sensitively rendered in Sandra 
Smith's graceful translation, are mesmerizing. 
There are lighthearted moments - one entire 
chapter is seen from the point of view of the 
Pericands' cat - followed by eruptions of 
terror, as when German planes strafe a mass of 
evacuees: "When the firing stopped, deep 
furrows were left in the crowd, like wheat after 
a storm when the fallen stems form close, deep 
trenches." And it all ends as the facts ordained. 
News of the armistice - that is, the French 
surrender - is greeted by the beleaguered 
homeless as an answered prayer. Survivors 
straggle back to Paris, where an occupying 
enemy and a harsh winter await them. 

"Dolce," the second novella, displays none of the 
tumults of its predecessor. It is bucolic, 
becalmed. The French people have lost the 
outward war, and the battle has shifted to the 
inner arena of their consciences and souls. The 
Germans, who seemed as spectral as invading 
space aliens in "Storm in June," now appear in 
person. A garrison of Wehrmacht troops is 
billeted in the village of Bussy. The local men of 
fighting age are all gone, either dead or prisoners 
of war; only old people, women and children 
remain, and they greet the conquerors with 
sullen apprehension. Conditioned by years of 
propaganda to fear the bestial, rapacious Huns, 
the villagers aren't prepared for these actual 
soldiers, some barely older than boys. The 
intruders smile, behave deferentially to their 
helpless hosts and give candy to the children. 
Yearning for a return to normalcy and the 
familiar rhythms of their lives, the people of 
Bussy grudgingly adapt to the new reality. 

Lucile Angellier lives with her widowed mother-
in-law in Bussy's most elegant house. She 
doesn't regret the absence of her loutish, 
philandering husband, Gaston, who is in a 
German prison camp, although she hides her 
feelings from his mother, who regards him as a 
saint. Bruno von Falk, a German officer, has 
been assigned to live in the house. Lucile tries to 
treat the intruder with the same icy disdain 
displayed by her mother-in-law, but she finds 
herself warming to him in spite of herself. He is 
handsome, he plays the piano beautifully - he 
tells her he had hoped to be a musician before 
his military obligations intervened - and he has 
read Balzac. Night after night, Lucile grows 
more sensitive to Bruno's presence in the next-
door bedroom, to the sounds of his pacing and 
to the ensuing silences suggesting his sleep. 

Nemirovsky deftly establishes the terms of this 
melodrama and its inevitable question - where 
will the attraction between Lucile and Bruno 
lead? - and then adds a dissonant note of 
reality. A local farmer has killed a German 
officer, and the fugitive's wife, who happens to 
be one of the women who nursed Jean-Marie 
Michaud back to health in "Storm in June," asks 
Lucile to hide her husband in the spacious 
Angellier house, which should be above 
suspicion because of its German boarder. The 
terms of the inevitable question alter 
significantly. Will Lucile choose love or honor? 

"Dolce" predates by nearly 30 years the 
explosive confessions of wartime collaboration 
in Marcel Ophuls's documentary "The Sorrow 
and the Pity," which French television declined 
to broadcast in 1970, even though it had partly 
paid for the project. Nemirovsky recorded the 
best and worst of those times while living in 
them. Her novella ends as the occupying troops 
leave Bussy on their mission to Moscow: "Soon 
the road was empty. All that remained of the 
German regiment was a little cloud of dust." 

But Nemirovsky had more plans for "Suite 
Francaise," as an appendix to this volume 
makes clear. In her notebook, she sketched the 
possibility of a work in five parts. "Storm in 
June" and "Dolce" were to be followed by: "3. 
Captivity; 4. Battles?; 5. Peace?" The question 
marks punctuate Nemirovsky's peculiar 
problem; she was trying to write a historical 
novel while the outcome of that history 
remained unknown. The fourth and fifth parts 
of the book "are in limbo," she observed, "and 
what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods 
since it depends on what happens." 

We now know what happened. Nemirovsky lost 
her life in what she foresaw as "Captivity." The 
improbable survival of her two novellas is a 
cause for celebration and also for grief at 
another reminder of the horrors of the 
Holocaust. She wrote what may be the first 
work of fiction about what we now call World 
War II. She also wrote, for all to read at last, 
some of the greatest, most humane and incisive 
fiction that conflict has produced. 

Paul Gray is a regular contributor to the Book 
Review.


        PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE
            GAO ZHISHENG

            By Joyce Wolf

Gao Zhisheng, Group 22's adopted prisoner of 
conscience, was one of the cases discussed by 
Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner 
during the annual human rights dialog between 
the USA and China on April 28.

The New York Times reported, "In the 
discussions, Mr. Posner said, American officials 
raised special concerns about a growing 
crackdown on lawyers who defend human rights 
advocates and dissidents. They included - Gao 
Zhisheng, an internationally recognized rights 
lawyer who vanished last April shortly after 
having been freed from a previous confinement."

 "Mr. Posner indicated that Chinese officials 
offered few if any concrete responses to 
American queries about the conditions of the 
human rights and legal activists who have been 
seized or imprisoned by Chinese authorities. 
And he said that the talks, while "respectful in 
tone," were colored with new seriousness on 
both sides by the perception that disagreements 
between the nations had widened." 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/world/asia/29china.html

It's good to know that our State Department has 
not forgotten about Gao Zhisheng. The case of 
world-famous artist Ai Weiwei, arrested at the 
Beijing airport April 3, continues to focus 
attention on human rights in China. Ai Weiwei 
was permitted to receive a visit from his wife in 
a secret location on May 15 and is reported to 
be in good health.  The Chinese government has 
said that Mr. Ai is suspected of economic 
crimes, although he has not yet been formally 
charged. There is a very disturbing unverified 
report that the chief of the Beijing Municipal 
Public Security Bureau forced Ai Weiwei to view 
a video of Gao Zhisheng being tortured. 
http://www.chinaaid.org/2011/04/tortured-
by-police-artist-ai-weiwei.html

Amnesty local groups featured the cases of both 
Ai Weiwei and Gao Zhisheng at the Human 
Rights Fair following Amnesty's presentation of 
an award to the Dalai Lama in Long Beach on 
May 4. Group 22 obtained 47 signatures on a 
petition for Gao, and 18 letters about Gao 
addressed to Premier Wen Jiabao were also 
signed. If you wish to send your own letter 
about Gao to Premier Wen or another China 
government official, you can find addresses and 
guidelines at 
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/GaoPOC/GaoZhisheng.html.


        VIOLATIONS AGAINST WOMEN
           By Cheri Dellelo

Harsh West Bank 'Honor Killing' Brings 
Tougher Law
(adapted from an Associated Press article  
5/19/11)

A 20-year-old Palestinian woman was thrown 
into a well and left to die in the name of "family 
honor." She disappeared on April 20, 2010, and 
was killed that same day, though her body was 
not discovered until 13 months later, on May 6, 
after her 37-year-old uncle, Iqab Baradiya, 
confessed to the crime. On the day of the killing, 
the uncle and two accomplices snatched the 
woman and tied her hands and feet before 
throwing her in the well. The water would have 
reached to her neck, so it is unclear whether she 
died immediately or if it took her a long time to 
die.

Palestine TV dedicated a program to Aya 
Baradiya last weekend, which Palestinian 
President Mahmoud Abbas president saw. The 
case saddened him and prompted him to voice 
his intentions to scrap the laws guaranteeing 
leniency for such "honor" killings. Under the old 
law, someone who killed for family honor would 
get a maximum of six months in prison. Now 
they could face the death penalty.

As the horrific details of Aya Baradya's murder 
emerged, Surif residents and students at Hebron 
University staged rallies, demanding the death 
penalty for the killers. They held up signs calling 
Aya Baradiya a "martyr," the ultimate badge of 
honor in Palestinian society. Aya Baradiya's 
family also wants the death penalty for her 
killers. Her 29-year-old brother, Rami, welcomed 
the promise of tougher punishment, saying he 
hoped it would serve as a deterrent. 


Honor Killing on U.S. Soil
(adapted from an Associated Press article 
05/13/11)

A Minnesota man who police say killed his 20-
year-old stepdaughter in Michigan because she 
left home and wasn't following Islam will get a 
mental evaluation. The Detroit News reports a 
judge on Thursday approved the evaluation to 
determine whether 45-year-old Rahim Alfetlawi 
is competent for trial. He is charged with first-
degree murder in the April 30 death of Jessica 
Mokdad at her grandmother's home in the 
Detroit suburb of Warren. The Coon Rapids 
man told a judge in Warren that he suffers from 
mental issues stemming from "humiliation and 
torture" in Iraq in the 1990s under Saddam 
Hussein's regime. Defense lawyer Richard 
Glanda says Alfetlawi claims the shooting was 
an accident. Macomb County Assistant 
Prosecutor Bill Cataldo says Alfetlawi seems to 
have a "religious obsession rather than a 
psychological issue."


South African Lesbian Brutally Raped and 
Murdered 
(adapted from an article from the International 
Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission- 
4/19/11)

The body of Noxolo Nogwaza, a 24 year old 
lesbian, was found lying in an alley in Kwa-
Thema at about 9am on Sunday, April 24 2011. 
Noxolo's head was completely deformed, her 
eyes out of the sockets, her brain spilt, her teeth 
scattered all around, and her face crushed 
beyond recognition. An empty beer bottle and 
used condoms were found pushed up inside her 
genitals, and parts of her body had been 
stabbed with glass. A large pavement brick that 
is believed to have been used to crush her head 
was found by her side.

Noxolo was raped and murdered in a similar 
manner as that in which another member of 
Ekurhuleni Pride Organising Committee (EPOC) 
was murdered three years ago. Eudy Simelane's 
body was also found in an open field in Kwa-
Thema. She had been raped and murdered, 
crimes that the perpetrators confessed to. And 
just last year, a gay man in the same township 
was attacked by eight men who attempted to 
rape him. Luckily, he escaped. The men, as they 
attempted to rape him, were heard saying, "We 
are determined to kill all gay people in this area 
and we will do it."

Please call, fax, or email the Tsakane Police 
Station and demand for a speedy and thorough 
investigation into the rape and murder of 
Noxolo Nogwaza and/or call, fax, or email the 
South African Government and demand that 
they openly speak out and take action against 
the increasing violence towards LGBT people in 
South Africa. Contact information for these 
actions can be found here - 
http://tinyurl.com/3lsgyhx. 


SlutWalk, Los Angeles
On January 24th, 2011, a representative of the 
Toronto Police, Michael Sanguinetti, gave a 
speech to women on a college campus in which 
he stated: "women should avoid dressing like 
sluts in order not to be victimized." Comments 
like this are all too common, reflecting beliefs 
ingrained in many people as part of a culture 
that jumps to blaming the victim, blaming 
alcohol, blaming loose morals, blaming anyone 
and anything but the actual rapist. And such a 
culture isn't just demeaning; it's dangerous 
because it focuses on the outfits and behavior of 
victims rather than the criminal behavior of 
perpetrators. This comment is also particularly 
alarming coming from an individual in a place of 
authority as it discourages victims/survivors to 
come forward for support.

Sanguinetti's comments spurred a group of 
women in Toronto to organize a "SlutWalk" to 
protest the statement and to hold those in 
positions of power, not just the police, 
accountable for the dangerous ideas they 
promote in the community. The SlutWalk idea 
has since spread like wildfire and hundreds of 
women have been participating in satellite 
protest marches across the continent. 

If you'd like to participate in the Los Angeles 
SlutWalk, it will be Saturday, June 4, from 
12:00p to 3:00p. The route starts at West 
Hollywood Park, 647 North San Vicente 
Boulevard, West Hollywood. You can find out 
more about the walk here  
http://tinyurl.com/3ke6wxf and more about 
the original SlutWalk in Toronto here  
http://www.slutwalktoronto.com.


        DEATH PENALTY NEWS
         By Stevi Carroll

Number of Executions as of May 17, 2011

Seventeen (17) nationwide

Ohio wins #1 for executions with four.  Texas, 
the state that's seemed like the logical #1 in the 
past, comes in second with three executions.  
Third place with two each ties among three 
states: Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.  
Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and South Carolina 
log in with one each.  Forty-one of the fifty 
states of the United States have not executed 
anyone during 2011. Sixteen of those states do 
not prosecute using the death penalty.  The 
District of Columbia, that entity that is neither 
state nor country - the seat of our Federal 
Government, also has no death penalty.  
Another bright thought: Twenty-five states' 
governors could have ordered the executions of 
many inmates on death rows across our country, 
and they haven't so far in 2011.

People continue to commit heinous crimes and 
our laws continue to harness in the criminals.  
Presently, I'm listening to Isabel Allende's 
ISLAND BENEATH THE SEA.  One thing 
becomes clear: what is considered a crime at one 
time is considered the unquestioned status quo 
at another.  The treatment of African people 
and their children in this book compares on my 
Humanity's Sinking into a Cesspool Meter with 
the treatment of the mentally and physically 
infirmed, homosexuals, Gypsies, sympathetic 
Germans, Jews, and others I don't know about 
during the Holocaust. 

With mass communication, we throughout the 
world know how we treat one another 
sometimes without that knowledge influencing 
how we treat one another to lessen the suffering 
of the world.  Now with that said, we do have 
16 states in these United States that have 
decided state-sponsored killing of incarcerated 
men and women is not the path they want to 
walk.  Of course, those states may also have 
decided they did not want to spend their shared 
tax money pursuing expensive death penalty 
cases; the money would be better used 
elsewhere.  

Late in April, Governor Jerry Brown canceled the 
state's plans for a $356-million death row at 
San Quentin prison.  Governor Brown was 
quoted as saying that at a time when the state is 
slashing funds to programs for children, the 
disabled and seniors it would be 
"unconscionable" to spend so much on this 
facility.   The California general fund would be 
putting out 28.5 million of our shared state tax 
dollars over 25 years for this new death row.  
That seems like a bundle of money to me, but 
what do I know?  I still consider a hundred 
dollar bill a big deal.  Just for a little FYI, the 
average amount of each inmate's incarceration is 
$44,500 per year.  How many folks out here in 
the real world work all year long, often at jobs 
that challenge our patients, even if we like them, 
and make that much or a few thousand more, 
and we're paying taxes on that money we make 
- to keep these folks in prison.  Of course, 
everyone along the prison-industrial-complex 
line pays taxes, too, to support the prison 
system.  My only concern about the cancellation 
of this plan is that Donald Specter, director of 
the Prison Law Office, said the conditions on 
death row are "just dismal".  That does need to 
be corrected.  James Clark, ACLU & 
LACCDPA, says a new facility at a different 
location may in the works because the property 
on which San Quentin is located is prime real 
estate, a moneymaker for the state.

Democratic Party State Convention

James Clark and some other members of the Los 
Angeles County Coalition for Death Penalty 
Alternatives went to the Democratic State 
Convention.  They asked for a resolution 
abolishing death penalty prosecutions be 
presented.  They were told they needed three 
hundred signatures to bring it to the floor.  After 
they gathered over 600, John Burton, California 
Democratic Party Chair, asked for the resolution 
to be withdrawn with his assurance he would 
support it at the executive board meeting, and 
he would personally speak with Jerry Brown.

Also at the convention, I think it was Death 
Penalty Focus that had multiple copies of 
Edmund "Pat" Brown's book PUBLIC JUSTICE 
PRIVATE MERCY, a book that deals with Jerry' 
dad former Governor Brown's struggle with the 
death penalty, for people to sign and send to 
Governor Jerry Brown.

Troy Davis

James Clark says all that's holding Georgia up 
from executing Troy Davis is a lack of the drug 
sodium thiopental.  California has about 500 
grams of it and has decided not to execute 
anyone for the remainder of 2011.  I hope we 
don't sell any to Georgia.  Texas is segueing into 
the use of pentobarbital.  I hope Georgia doesn't 
follow that lead.  I think because of what seems 
like such clear evidence that Troy's guilt is not 
100% certain - and some believe the evidence for 
his innocence has amassed an equal percentage, 
his execution will be a heartbreaking blow to 
many of those who have followed and worked 
on his case.  I don't know anything about 
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, but with all of 
the international attention Troy Davis' case has 
garnered, hubris comes to mind should he allow 
Mr. Davis' execution.  

To "Oppose the Death Penalty for Troy Davis" 
go to 
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/ad
vocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b
=6645049&aid=12970

2012 District Attorney Race for LA County
As you may know, Steve Cooley has decided 
not to run for DA in 2012.  That leaves the field 
open.  James Clark told us at the May meeting of 
Los Angeles County Coalition for Death Penalty 
Alternatives that six people have surfaced as 
viable candidates going into the election cycle: 
Danette Meyers, http://www.danetteforda.com/; 
Jackie Lacey, http://www.jackielacey.com/; 
Carmen Trutanich, (more on this later) 
http://www.drafttrutanich4da.com/; 
Alan Jackson, http://www.votealanjackson.com/; 
Bobby Grace, http://bobbygrace4da.com/;  
and Mario Trujillo, 
http://www.mariotrujilloforda.com/.  What this 
means for our coalition is that we will have to 
watch the positions each of these folks takes on 
the death penalty.  As the election draws nearer, 
we will have more information for each of them.  
Also, our resolution will be rewritten to reflect 
the changing DA with wording more generic 
addressing the LA County DA rather than 
specifically Steve Cooley.

Carmen Trutanich is an interesting guy because 
he said he would not seek another elected office 
while in the one he has - thus the 'draft' website.  
In 2008, Mr. Trutanich in a letter pledged 
"$100,000 to LA's Best After School Program" 
if he ran for another political office while serving 
in the one he holds now 
(http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/
25678-trutanich-pledge.html).  Alan Jackson is 
calling Mr. Trutanich out 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla
yer_embedded&v=mn-uDPaEKWM) so this 
might heat up into an interesting race to watch 
and be a part of.

Faith Rising: The Death Penalty and the 
Quest for Community Justice
 
A Look at Race and Class in the American 
Criminal Justice System 40 Years After the 
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

Sunday, June 5, 2011, Death Penalty Focus is 
sponsoring a discussion titled FAITH RISING: 
THE DEATH PENALTY AND THE QUEST 
FOR COMMUNITY JUSTICE.  Professor 
Charles Ogletree, the Jessee Climenko Professor 
of Law at Harvard Law School and Founding 
and executive Director of the Charles Hamilton 
Houston Institute for Race and Justice; Bishop 
Charles E. Blake, Pastor of West Angeles 
Church of God in Christ and member of 
President Obama's 25-person White House 
Advisory Council on Faith-Based and 
Neighborhood Partnerships; and Aqeela 
Sherrills, the California Outreach Coordinator 
for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to 
the Death Penalty, are the panel members.  This 
event will be held at the Robert F. Kennedy 
Community Schools Paul Schrade Library, 701 
South Catalina Street, Los Angeles CA, June 5, 
2011, form 3-5 PM.  This free event will coincide 
with anniversary of the assassination of Robert 
F. Kennedy and will be held at the site of his 
murder.  RSVP by June 3, 2011, at 
http://www.deathpenalty.org/june5 or call 
415-243-0143.  

Shawn Hawkins

For over half of his life, Shawn Hawkins, a 42-
year-old African American, has been on death 
row in Ohio.  The state parole board has voted 
to have his death sentence commuted but the 
governor, John Kasich, may not accept their 
recommendation.  To urge Governor Kasich to 
commute Shawn Hawkins execution, go to 
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/ad
vocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b
=6645049&aid=15933.
Stay of Execution

Frank Williams, Jr. 	Arkansas	
			date of execution: June 22 
                        two appeals in process

Executions

May 2011

3	Carry Kerr	46	 
	Ohio		Lethal Injection

6	Jeffrey Motts	36	 
	South Carolina	Lethal Injection

10	Benny Stevens 	52	 
	Mississippi	Lethal Injection

17	Daniel Bedford	63	 
	Ohio		Lethal Injection

17	Rodney Gray	39	 
	Mississippi	Lethal Injection


GROUP 22 MONTHLY LETTER COUNT

DP                   2                                                                             
Other UAs           32                                                                       
Gao Zhisheng        18
Total               52

To add your letters to the total contact 
lwkamp@gmail.com.                                                                                                      

Amnesty International Group 22
The Caltech Y
Mail Code 5-62
Pasadena, CA 91125
www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/
http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com