It’s hard to beat a town like LA – between the glam and the grunge, beaches and deserts, if it exists on earth you can probably find it in LA (or at least a good knock off). That’s why it was a tough pill to swallow when we found out that in 2009, or lovely little hamlet was the capital punishment capital of the United States, sentencing more people to death than any other county in the country. But it gets worse: not only did we beat out every county, we beat out every state, including our friends in Texas (who we usually don’t like to mess with). There were 13 Angelinos sentences to die in 2009, compared to 9 in the entire state of Texas. You can read all about it in this report, Death in Decline ’09 by the ACLU of Northern California.
So as much as we love LA, there are times when you’ve just got to roll up your sleeves and fix things, and this is one of those times. We’ve partnered with the LA County Coalition for Death Penalty Alternatives, a local grassroots coalition working to end death sentencing in LA County, and we need your help!
We’ll be meeting in our office this weekend, Sunday, January 9 from 3 to 5 p.m. to lay out a new structure for the coalition and re-focus our efforts to end the county’s broken death machine, and we need volunteers and activists more than ever! All across the county, we’ll need activists setting up tables to educate the public, meeting with elected officials, and planning events to help us spread the word about LA’s death penalty. Come join us this Sunday and learn how you can make a concrete difference in the criminal justice system.