Seeking justice for Sean Kennedy

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by Elke Kennedy
Sean’s Last Wish

I was told yesterday that Sean’s murderer, Stephen Andrew Moller, will be eligible for parole as of 12/28/08! He has served less then 7 months. Most likely the parole hearing will be in February 2009. They are currently doing the pre-parole investigation, and now would be the best time to for them to receive as many handwritten letters as possible to ask the parole board to deny his parole, you need to add what happened and why you believe he should not get parole. I will send out call for a letter campaign to all of my supporters to stop this from happening.

You all had always said if there is anything you can do for me to let you know – well this is one thing I need your help – without these letters (hundreds) I think he might just get parole. The juditional system is not fair and has lots of gaps. But let’s make a statement as a community to say enough is enough.

I know you agree that he certainly did not get a high enough sentence and to allow him to get out of jail already is ridiculous. It would be awesome and certainly very much appreciated from me and my family if you could help by taking a few minutes and writing a letter to the Parole board in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you in advance for your time and support to help me keep Sean’s murderer in jail.

Here is the information you will need:

Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole Services
2221 Devine Street, Suite 600,
PO Box 50666
Columbia SC 29250

Please add this information as a reference on your letter as the topic: Parole for Stephen Andrew Moller – SCDC ID # 00328891;
(eligible for parole after 12/28/08).

If you decide to send a letter, please let me know – I would like to know how many letters were sent so I can make sure that it is known (just in case). E-mail me at elke@seanslastwish.org.

Again, I want to thank all of you for your support and caring in these last 19 months.

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For background on Sean’s case, read an earlier post here.

Obama needs to include women for true diversity

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By Linda Tarr-Whelan

President-elect Obama has now moved swiftly to name talented and creative people to Cabinet-level offices and the key members of the White House team. But a nagging thought keeps coming back to me: Why isn’t he naming more women to bring our experience, creativity and energy to address the problems that face us?

Until only recently it looked like Obama’s Cabinet-level composition held only three women. But the announcement that Gov. Bill Richardson will not be taking the Commerce Secretary slot leaves an open position to fill, and one more chance for diversity.

Whereas the presidents of Chile and Spain, also elected as change candidates, appointed women to one-half of their Cabinet seats, Obama has named (including Richardson), 12 men to the 15 Cabinet-level department head positions. Leaving his team very diverse in terms of race and ethnicity — but not in gender. This is a diminished representation from both Bush presidencies and the Clinton administration.

More important than numbers is the talent that is missing and how out-of-step we are compared to the rest of the world in terms of who leads and why it matters. Since 1995 the global standard has been at least one-third women at power tables to revitalize economies and advance democratic participation.

Here we are stuck or moving backwards compared to the rest of the world. The U.S. is ranked 27th on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report and 71st in terms of women’s representation in Congress. Outside of government representation at the current rate increase it will take women 73 years to reach parity on corporate boards.

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Tribute to Harriet McBryde Johnson

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Today’s New York Times Magazine ran a piece by Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer to honor Charleston lawyer Harriet McBryde Johnson, who died in June. Singer, a leader in the animal rights movement, and Johnson, an activist with a national profile in the disability community, sparred over the years in public forums and in private emails, all the while maintaining a mutual respect.

Johnson was a longtime member of the SC Progressive Network, and was honored with the organization’s Thunder and Lightning Award in 2004. To read an earlier post recognizing Johnson’s death, click here.

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By PETER SINGER
New York Times Magazine

I met Harriet McBryde Johnson in the spring of 2001, when I was giving a lecture at the College of Charleston. Her brand of Southern etiquette prescribed that if you’re not prepared to shoot on sight, you have to be prepared to shake hands, so when I held out mine, she reached up from her powered wheelchair and took it with the three working fingers on her right hand. She added that she was attending my lecture as a supporter of Not Dead Yet, the disability rights organization that a year and a half earlier blockaded Princeton University’s Nassau Hall in protest against my appointment as a professor of bioethics. I told her I looked forward to an interesting exchange.

My lecture, “Rethinking Life and Death,” was a defense of the position that had aroused such vehement opposition. I pointed out that physicians routinely withdraw life support from severely disabled newborns, and I argued that this is not very different from allowing parents to decide, in consultation with their doctors, to end the life of a baby when the child has disabilities so serious that the family believes this will be best for the child or for the family as a whole.

When I finished, Johnson, who was born with a muscle-wasting disease, spoke up. I was saying, she pointed out, that her parents should have been permitted to kill her shortly after her birth. But she was now a lawyer, enjoying her life as much as anyone. It is a mistake, she said, to believe that having a disability makes life less worth living.

Our exchange of views continued for a few minutes in the lecture theater, and by e-mail afterward. Years later, when I read her autobiographical book, “Too Late to Die Young,” I wasn’t surprised to see “arguing hard” listed among the pleasures of her life.

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Happy holy days

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This morning I got an e-mail from Jeff, whose son died this year after being in a coma since July 2005, when he was hit by a drunk driver while cycling home. I’ve never met Jeff, an LA screenwriter, but he feels like a friend. Since the accident, he has recorded his family’s experience through a listserv for followers of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, a community from around the globe to which we both belong. His posts have been devastating in their honesty, intimate and beautiful.

Jeff’s letters are a gift, a regular reminder to live well, love hard, and keep the faith. Here’s today’s e-mail.

Becci Robbins

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Dear friends and family,

We’re enjoying a bittersweet holiday season, our first without Danny. We often find ourselves shedding tears in unexpected times and places, as when I heard “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in the produce section the other day. Thankfully, we’re still receiving vast amounts of love from family and friends.

Initially, we decided not to get a tree or deck the house in the old, familiar ways, feeling that each ornament or mantle dressing would be too reminiscent of Danny spreading seasonal cheer to one and all with his music and humor. But our reluctance slowly diminished: Lynn went out and got a small tree which she and Katie trimmed. And one-by-one the boxes came in from the garage and decorations found their way to the usual places.

We also planned to forego our traditional trip the day after Christmas to New Hampshire, where we have a house alongside my mother’s place on a frozen pond in idyllic woods. The first day of every winter trip was spent shoveling snow and grooming a most excellent hockey rink. Each year, we’d drag a pair of small hockey goals out of the basement and spend days and nights on the ice. We’d play marathon hockey games with local friends or with whatever family members we could persuade to come out in the cold. But more often we played one-on-one, Danny and me, for hours and hours. Long after dark, we’d be out there using a clear plastic puck illuminated by a tiny glow-stick. In a good year, we’d enjoy moonlight as well. On more than one New Year’s Eve Lynn had to call us in at midnight for the family celebration.  It was the best.

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Warren Invocation Causing Rift With Progressives

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This piece quotes longtime SC Progressive Network member Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor at Garden of Grace United Church of Christ in Columbia and author of Bulletproof Faith, A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians.

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By Sam Stein

Huffingtonpost.com

Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, the media has been pining to write a story about liberal dissatisfaction with his transition efforts. By and large, the meme has been blown out of proportion, as the press overestimated how divisive Obama’s cabinet choices were for progressives.

The press may now have its conflict moment. And it comes in the form of the spiritual leader chosen to launch Obama’s inauguration.

On Wednesday, the transition team and Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced that Rick Warren, pastor of the powerful Saddleback Church, would give the invocation on January 20th. The selection may not have been incredibly surprising. Obama and Warren are reportedly close — Obama praised the Megachurch leader in his second book “The Audacity of Hope.” Warren, meanwhile, hosted a values forum between Obama and McCain during the general election. Nevertheless, the announcement is being greeted with deep skepticism in progressive religious and political circles.

“My blood pressure is really high right now,” said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. “Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures… but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women’s rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day.”

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The wisdom of pardons

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By Kemba Smith

The nomination of Eric Holder as the next U.S. attorney general has renewed concerns about the end-of-term clemencies granted by President Clinton.

High-profile names such as Marc Rich grabbed headlines at the time, but many other people with no political influence benefited from the president’s mercy.

I am one of those people. If I had not received a commutation, my first-time conviction for a non-violent offense would have kept me in prison until 2016 (with good behavior) because of the harsh mandatory sentencing laws for crack cocaine. My 1994 prison sentence grew out of my boyfriend’s trafficking in crack. After he was murdered, the government charged me with conspiracy to distribute the crack that his drug ring distributed. During my court hearings, prosecutors acknowledged that I never sold, handled or used any of the drugs involved in the conspiracy.

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Congratulations, Donna!

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On Dec. 6, friends, family and colleagues gathered at ILA Hall in Charleston to honor SC AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt for her years of service to the labor community in South Carolina. The event was also a fundraiser, with the $30,000 raised going toward a new building, which will be named for Donna. 

Donna is Co-chair of the SC Progressive Network. We couldn’t be more proud of her accomplishments nor more grateful for our long association.

SC Professional Firefighters President Mike Parrotta and SC AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt. To see more photos of the event, click here.

Women in unions earn more, get better benefits

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A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research documents a large wage and benefit advantage for women workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts.

The report found that unionized women workers earned, on average, 11.2 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, women in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.

“For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college,” said John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and the author of the study. “All else equal, joining a union raises a woman’s wage as much as a full-year of college, and a union raises the chances a woman has health insurance by more than earning a four-year college degree.”

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