Mike Farrell, activist, humanitarian, actor, author, and president of Death Penalty Focus is appealing to Jerry Brown as he is getting ready to leave office at the end of December 2018. Farrell's petition asks Brown to declare a moratorium on executions and to commute all death sentences to life in prison.
Today California has the largest population on death row of any US State. Of 747 condemned, 60% are people of color. Twenty US states have already abandoned the death penalty - why not California?
I heard Mike Farrell's appeal on Thom Hartmann's program on December 4 and got permission to quote from their conversation. I explained to the Hartmann's that I had a rare recording of Jerry Brown from 1998, when he was presenting himself as a recovering politician, that I wanted to run along side the appeal to remove California from the list of Killing States. In his critique of politicians in 1998 Brown even chided his own father, Pat Brown, when he used being tough on crime to get elected in 1943.
Brown spoke to organic farmers at their annual Eco-Farm conference in Asilomar, CA on Jan. 21, 1998. A few months after this talk, when Brown began his campaign for mayor of Oakland, he followed his father's lead and took a tough on crime position.
After holding political office from 1999 to 2018 - as mayor and Attorney General of CA, ending on a third and fourth term as governor of CA, Jerry Brown has termed and timed out of politics and has an opportunity to take action on principles he clearly once held.
This program includes part of Jerry Brown's keynote to organic farmers in January 1998 - which then earned him a standing ovation. The petition to Jerry Brown is posted on the web site of deathpenalty.org -
Thom Hartmann gave permission to quote from his conversation with Mike Farrell from the December 4, 2018, program.
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