"Tennessee and the New South: Organizing for Abolition"

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's National Conference

October 16-19, 2003, Nashville, Tennessee

Are you looking for an opportunity to learn about the controversies surrounding the death penalty and gain valuable grassroots activist training skill? Here's a great opportunity.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is proud to bring its national conference to Nashville, Tennessee, gateway to the new South. Our state affiliate, the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing, is more than ready to build upon the national momentum generated by Illinois Governor George Ryan in January of this year. These are exciting times!

In many ways Tennessee is at the forefront of the debate over capital punishment in the United States. Increasingly, the death penalty is becoming a southern phenomenon. In fact, last year, 86 percent of the 71 people executed in the United States were put to death in the South.

The conference, scheduled for Oct. 16-19, is titled Tennessee and the New South: Organizing for Abolition. "Tennessee is the gateway to the New South and also is the gateway to abolition," said Steven W. Hawkins, NCADP's executive director. "On the one hand, Tennessee has demonstrated an ambivalence toward use of the death penalty that other southern states have not. On the other hand, the same problems exist with the death penalty system in Tennessee that exist in states such as Texas and Florida that routinely carry out executions. Tennessee's system is marred by wrongful death penalty convictions, bias, lack of quality defense counsel and prosecutorial misconduct."

The conference has been redesigned adding more workshops that have been created along "training tracks" helping participants decide where and how to strengthen their skill set. The workshops will cover such topics as creative mechanisms to maximize community outreach and organizing, building a successful moratorium movement, effective media advocacy, using art as a political tool, how to address the needs of people on death row and their loved ones, and how to build a diverse movement that includes people from all backgrounds, including those who have lost family members to murder.

For additional information or to make travel plans from Mid-Missouri email Jeff Stack or call him at 449-4585. You can contact the NCADP directly at nationalconference@ncadp.org, tcask@earthlink.net, or call TCASK at 615-329-0048, or visit the NCADP web site where you can register on-line.