One of the best pieces of
political wisdom I have ever received, and that from an old communist, is that
a left political militant must make sure to protect the gains of the past
political fights after going on to fight new battles. The nature of capitalist
politics is such that no hard-fought political gain comes with an automatic guarantee
that it is not reversible. Additionally, I was told that if the political tide
is running against you and you cannot hold on to those hard fought gains then
you must keep up the propaganda fight and not give into the reactionary flow. Enduring
a seemingly never-ending stream of political and social reversals in the
‘culture wars’ over the last few decades that advice has kept my head above
water.
In my ‘flaming’ at first
liberal, then radical youth three issues formed the core of my political
beliefs: the fight for black civil right in the South (and later in the North);
the fight for nuclear disarmament; and, the fight against the barbaric death
penalty. A look at the current political landscape confirms that those
struggles are still in dire need of completion. One need only look at the
current fight for freedom for the Jena Six down in Louisiana, the overflowing
American nuclear arsenal and the fact that 37 states and the federal government
still have the death penalty on their books. This last fact is what I am
interested in commenting on today.
On Thursday December 14, 2007
the New Jersey Assembly voted, apparently mainly along party lines, to abolish
the death penalty in that state. As a result it only awaits the governor’s
signature to become law and thus become the first state in forty years to take
such action. The governor has indicated that he will sign the legislation. What
is more, other states are in various stages of taking the same action. And, of
course, there is an unofficial moratorium in place while the United States
Supreme Court decides whether lethal injection in the administration of the
death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. So the worm turns, perhaps.
During the past decade there
has been more than enough evidence from such sources as DNA testing to the
results of the various Innocent Projects to convince any rationale person that
the administration of the death penalty and even the idea of that ultimate act as
a penalty is ‘arbitrary and capricious’, as the language of the legal decisions
would have it. In the New Jersey debate one Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo
Caraballo was quoted by Tom Hester, Jr. of the Associated Press as saying “It’s
time New Jersey got out of the execution business. Capital punishment is
costly, discriminatory, immoral, and barbaric. We’re a better state that one
that puts people to death.” Well put. I would only add that from my leftist
perspective we do not want to concede to this government the power over life
and death for the guilty or the innocent. Put concretely in today’s political
terms we do not want the George W. Bushes of the world to have that power.
Coming from Massachusetts,
the state that sent the framed-up and martyred Sacco and Vanzetti to their
executions, in my youth I was strongly aware of the injustice of the death
penalty. One of my early political acts in high school was to attend the annual
memorial meeting here in their honor. Moreover, in my household at least, there
were always whispers about the injustice done to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Not
out of any political sympathy but from the traditional Catholic antipathy to
the death penalty. Those were the days when we had the death penalty advocates
somewhat on the run but the spirit of the Sixties barely outlasted the decade
as the yahoos went on a rampart for reintroduction. Pardon me then if I see
just a little glimmer of light that we may have turned the corner on this issue
again. But, as noted above, we better keep fighting like hell just the same.
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