WASHINGTON -- March 30 -- Shujaa Granham, Russell Neufeld, Robert Meerpool, Holly Richardson, with Moderator Annie Zirin, created a great panel on stopping the death penalty and jail expansion. A standing room only audience of 100 people ­ many activists ­ participated in this event.

Panelists and audience members discussed important issues on these topics, such as the utter inability of any government to come up with a foolproof death penalty statute, and the victimization of women (not to mention their families) and immigrants in incarceration and jail expansion plans.

We gratefully acknowledge the help of Ed Russell of Active Ingredients. Our recording device had a glitch and Ed came to the rescue. He provided edited audio files. We did some minor editing and formatted the files to mp3¹s ­ suitable for download and radio airplay. We also made RealAudio versions for our friends with slower dialup connections.

More Background (we thank whoever came up with these little bios)

Annie E. Zirin, International Socialist Organization - Western Massachusetts branch - did a wonderful job as moderator.

The expert panel, in order of speaking:

• Russ Neufeld was the founder of the Legal Aid Society Capital Division which was created when New York reintroduced the death penalty in 1995 and he tried the first capital case under the new statute. He has represented over 20 clients who faced capital punishment in state and federal court and supervised dozens more cases. Mr. Neufeld is currently in private practice in New York City and is starting the Atlantic Human Rights Project which will focus on human rights issues in the criminal justice system.
  
• Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States Government executed his parents for "conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb." For thirty years he has been a progressive activist, author and speaker. See The Rosenberg Fund for Children, which provides support for the children of targeted progressive activists and targeted activist youth.
  
• Holly Richardson is a local activist working with Out Now and the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition to stop the new Chicopee women's jail.
  

Shujaa Graham was the special guest of the evening. Mr. Graham is a former death row prisoner who spent 12 years behind bars in California before he was finally exonerated and set free. He is a former Black Panther and an activist with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty.

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