#599 - Peace & Life: Project Successes - February 18, 2022
Spotlight on Projects: Action Fund and the Florida Death Penalty
CLN, through its Consistent Life Action Foundation, provides small grants (up to $2,000) for projects that exemplify our ethic.
A recent grant recipient, Floridians for Alternative to the Death Penalty (FADP) has made great progress in its work against capital punishment. With the assistance of grant funds, they designed--for print and online access – three fact sheets:
Why Florida Should Exclude People with Serious Mental Illness from the Death Penalty
The False Promise: How the Death Penalty Fails Murder Victims’ Families
Race and the Death Penalty in Florida
FADP printed and distributed 300 fact sheets, and 50 booklets containing all three. Using these for outreach and organizing, FDAP added more than 50 groups to their list of organizations that support ending the death penalty! They also educated many more groups and key individuals.
The fact sheet on mental illness was designed to help organize an alliance of mental health groups and practitioners: The Alliance to Protect People with Serious Mental Illness (aka SMI Alliance). This alliance emphasizes execution exemptions for people with serious mental illness in Florida. Grant funds were used to create a logo for this alliance.
Updates: Peace & Life Referendums
The deadline for signatures having passed, we report that neither of the Florida referendums will be on the ballot – a Human Life Protection Amendment, nor Medicaid expansion.
The Vermont legislature has now put on two measures for November 8. One we like: a state constitutional amendment entirely abolishing slavery - in most states, this means removing the exception for those convicted of a crime, but for Vermont they’re removing the exception for indentured servitude due to debt.
Vermont’s other measure, however, is repulsive: a state constitutional amendment for a “Right to Personal Reproductive Autonomy.” This uses a common euphemism for the violence of abortion.
Unfortunately, this approach is likely to be a trend due to the upcoming fate of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, likely to come from the US Supreme Court in late June. Michigan has a group gathering signatures for a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. Maryland has a legislator introducing a bill for that purpose.
We know about Michigan because of Ballotpedia, but about Maryland because someone sent in an article link. Information on possible referendums of interest can be sent to CLNeditors@gmail.com.
Our Latest Blog Post
John Whitehead notes that this month is the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-China dramatic improvement in relationships, and reflects on this and current news in Achieving Diplomatic Breakthroughs in the Past and Future: The “Opening to China” After 50 Years.
Quotation of the Week
Pope Francis
We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide. Remember that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritised, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never rejected. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers.
I would like to underline a real social problem. That “planning” — I don’t know if it is the right word — but accelerating the death of the elderly. Very often we see in a certain social class that the elderly, since they do not have means, are given fewer medicines than they need, and this is inhuman . . . The elderly should be cared for as a treasure of humanity: they are our wisdom.