Voices for Death Row Inmates Banner of Hope

Voices for Death Row inmates got together with London artist Carrie Riechadrt and came up with the idea of a Hankies for Hope banner ... this banner is made from cotton hankies .. hankies being something we wipe tears of sadness away with. During the time the death penalty was in practice in the United Kingdom, the judge when passing a death sentence would place a black hankie on his head as he did so .
Each hankie represents a soul , a soul awaiting their fate or already executed . The name, prison ID number and State is written on the hankie. There are also birds flying free. Bird cages ,hearts , angels , candl
es , leaves and flowers painted onto the banner, again all symbolic.
They have been stitched together with orange ribbons between each one , orange being the colour of oppression and the colour of the jumpsuit a death row inmate wears when being moved from one place to another ... so this banner is very symbolic in everyway
This banner has grown over the last few months …but we want people to add the names of their loved ones and pen pals to the Banner of Hope.

If you would like to add a name of an inmate who has been executed or is on death row please contact us via our facebook page or via our website
Below see our Banner of Hope SO FAR!! More names will be added soon


The Banner of Hope So far

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Wednesday 11 July 2012

The Eye & Tooth Project: Confronting Capital Punishment in Texas by John Sullivan

Call it the ultimate deterrent; call it retribution, or closure, or simply an “eye for an eye,” Americans have historically supported capital punishment with strong resolve and a clear national conscience. Recently, however, this mandate has weakened as pressures for reappraisal and change kick against the goad of tradition. A national wave of death row exonerations, sparked by nonprofit watchdogs such as The Innocence Project, and former governor George Ryan’s mass commutation of all pending death sentences in Illinois, caused the nation to pause and wonder: How many innocents are housed on death row, how many have already been executed, how many more will die by mistake? Or worse yet, through malfeasance? Horror stories — of blatant racism in jury selection, shoddy, underfunded legal counsel and mentally ill inmates medicated merely to better comprehend their fate and legally qualify for execution — have eroded public confidence in this allegedly objective system that collects, organizes and weighs evidence, convicts perpetrators and puts them to death, all so very righteously.


read more
http://wayback.archive-it.org/2077/20100906202807/http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2009/08/the_eye_tooth_p.php
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1 comment:

  1. Unknown11 July 2012 at 10:46

    If anyone would like to write something for our blog, on why they are against the death penalty or why they write to a death row inmate please contact us via pm or the site. Also if your penpal or loved one would like to write something for our blog then please either scan what they have written or retype it and send that too. All contributions welcomed. Let YOUR Voices and THEIR Voices be heard!!

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