Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 12, 2006 20:33:56 GMT -5
Human rights speaker draws capacity crowd
The Elliott University Center Auditorium was filled to capacity at
Thursday's Office of Multicultural Affairs event.
Brought on as a guest speaker for Human Rights week, Sister Helen Prejean,
author of books Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death
Penalty in the United States and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness
Account of Wrongful Executions, captured listeners' attention for an hour
with her Southern, Louisiana drawl and potent humor, making the evening an
intimate affair for all, regardless of predisposition.
Prejean is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. Her work as
spiritual advisor to a prisoner in Louisiana's Angola Prison moved her to
write the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Dead Man Walking, a book that also
inspired Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins to adapt the story for film in
1995, starring Sarandon and Sean Penn and directed by Robbins.
It took Prejean 2 years to write Dead Man Walking, which was published in
1993, and the work did not see a huge success among readers.
"Everybody and their cat thought it was a great idea to execute people,"
joked Prejean. "So the book was just bumpin' along, bumpin' along."
Sarandon, after reading the memoir, was the one who contacted Prejean and,
over a meal, discussed the possibility of making the book into a film. The
opportunity was one that Prejean calls "a miracle."
Prejean entertained listeners with her anecdote of having to rent Thelma
and Louise in order to know Sarandon's face prior to meeting her. After
spending the days before the meeting convinced Sarandon was actually
Thelma's Gena Davis, upon meeting all Prejean could think was, "Thank
Jesus, she's [Sarandon] Louise."
But before her notorious work against the death penalty, Prejean admits to
not having always understood human rights and "the connection with
justice."
At age 40, though she had never stepped foot into any project housing
areas, she began living in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans
and started her work with a public housing assistance center called Hope
House.
"How can we have this other America, side by side, and never meet each
other?" questioned Prejean. "It's possible to live our whole lives and not
see the other America. How long did I not see it?"
In 1982, Prejean was asked to be a pen pal for a prisoner on death row.
She agreed, never dreaming that the person would actually be killed. "So I
wrote the man," she said.
When her position shifted from pen pal to spiritual advisor and she had to
come face to face with the convicted, Prejean was taken aback.
"When I looked into his face, I was shocked at how human his face was."
Prejean called her first work at Angola Prison her "passport into this
country" and key to "understanding how it works."
"People in prison have almost no civil rights," criticized Prejean. "Human
rights mean its something inalienable in us just because we're human
beings."
Prejean condemned the state of today's prisons, declaring over half of the
people in prison are there for non-violent crimes, namely drugs.
"Do we have a problem?" Prejean questioned. "How come we're not dealin'
with clinics?... If you're poor, you don't have the money to shake [the
habit]. Why aren't we dealing with healing?"
"We are a very young country and we came to power very early," Prejean
said as she criticized the Supreme Court's criteria for executions.
According to Prejean, over 80 % of people executed in the U.S. are in the
former 'slave states.'
"You think that's a fluke?" demanded Prejean, who says that these
statistics are a result stemming from slavery to keep blacks under control
after they were liberated.
Prejean spoke of how, especially in the South, the death penalty is seldom
sought for black people who have killed black people. She told of how in
Louisiana police notebooks, it's not uncommon to see "NON" or "black person on
black person" written involving crimes where a black person has killed another
black person.
Prejean proposed the question of if the death penalty helped to curtail
other murders, following up with remarks from studies of polled police
chiefs who say that the threat of execution does not stop violent crimes
from happening.
"People doing the thinking [and] people doing the murdering, 2 separate
people."
Prejean was very careful to add that the crimes committed by her spiritual
advisees were horrible things, stating that she is not making anyone into
a hero, but that the legal representation given was "a circus."
"It was just a travesty."
Prejean, who called the father of one victim from Dead Man Walking the
real hero of the story, also works with victim's families in a group
called Survive. She continues her work against the death penalty with the
Death Penalty Discourse Center, the Moratorium Campaign, and the Dead Man
Walking Play Project.
Prejean is now engaging herself more heavily in environmental work and
increasing "earth literacy" as well as working on a book about her time
with impoverished citizens of Latin America.
(source: The Carolinian Online)
The Elliott University Center Auditorium was filled to capacity at
Thursday's Office of Multicultural Affairs event.
Brought on as a guest speaker for Human Rights week, Sister Helen Prejean,
author of books Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death
Penalty in the United States and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness
Account of Wrongful Executions, captured listeners' attention for an hour
with her Southern, Louisiana drawl and potent humor, making the evening an
intimate affair for all, regardless of predisposition.
Prejean is a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. Her work as
spiritual advisor to a prisoner in Louisiana's Angola Prison moved her to
write the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Dead Man Walking, a book that also
inspired Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins to adapt the story for film in
1995, starring Sarandon and Sean Penn and directed by Robbins.
It took Prejean 2 years to write Dead Man Walking, which was published in
1993, and the work did not see a huge success among readers.
"Everybody and their cat thought it was a great idea to execute people,"
joked Prejean. "So the book was just bumpin' along, bumpin' along."
Sarandon, after reading the memoir, was the one who contacted Prejean and,
over a meal, discussed the possibility of making the book into a film. The
opportunity was one that Prejean calls "a miracle."
Prejean entertained listeners with her anecdote of having to rent Thelma
and Louise in order to know Sarandon's face prior to meeting her. After
spending the days before the meeting convinced Sarandon was actually
Thelma's Gena Davis, upon meeting all Prejean could think was, "Thank
Jesus, she's [Sarandon] Louise."
But before her notorious work against the death penalty, Prejean admits to
not having always understood human rights and "the connection with
justice."
At age 40, though she had never stepped foot into any project housing
areas, she began living in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans
and started her work with a public housing assistance center called Hope
House.
"How can we have this other America, side by side, and never meet each
other?" questioned Prejean. "It's possible to live our whole lives and not
see the other America. How long did I not see it?"
In 1982, Prejean was asked to be a pen pal for a prisoner on death row.
She agreed, never dreaming that the person would actually be killed. "So I
wrote the man," she said.
When her position shifted from pen pal to spiritual advisor and she had to
come face to face with the convicted, Prejean was taken aback.
"When I looked into his face, I was shocked at how human his face was."
Prejean called her first work at Angola Prison her "passport into this
country" and key to "understanding how it works."
"People in prison have almost no civil rights," criticized Prejean. "Human
rights mean its something inalienable in us just because we're human
beings."
Prejean condemned the state of today's prisons, declaring over half of the
people in prison are there for non-violent crimes, namely drugs.
"Do we have a problem?" Prejean questioned. "How come we're not dealin'
with clinics?... If you're poor, you don't have the money to shake [the
habit]. Why aren't we dealing with healing?"
"We are a very young country and we came to power very early," Prejean
said as she criticized the Supreme Court's criteria for executions.
According to Prejean, over 80 % of people executed in the U.S. are in the
former 'slave states.'
"You think that's a fluke?" demanded Prejean, who says that these
statistics are a result stemming from slavery to keep blacks under control
after they were liberated.
Prejean spoke of how, especially in the South, the death penalty is seldom
sought for black people who have killed black people. She told of how in
Louisiana police notebooks, it's not uncommon to see "NON" or "black person on
black person" written involving crimes where a black person has killed another
black person.
Prejean proposed the question of if the death penalty helped to curtail
other murders, following up with remarks from studies of polled police
chiefs who say that the threat of execution does not stop violent crimes
from happening.
"People doing the thinking [and] people doing the murdering, 2 separate
people."
Prejean was very careful to add that the crimes committed by her spiritual
advisees were horrible things, stating that she is not making anyone into
a hero, but that the legal representation given was "a circus."
"It was just a travesty."
Prejean, who called the father of one victim from Dead Man Walking the
real hero of the story, also works with victim's families in a group
called Survive. She continues her work against the death penalty with the
Death Penalty Discourse Center, the Moratorium Campaign, and the Dead Man
Walking Play Project.
Prejean is now engaging herself more heavily in environmental work and
increasing "earth literacy" as well as working on a book about her time
with impoverished citizens of Latin America.
(source: The Carolinian Online)