Do something: I'm writing a letter

September 22, 2011

Dear Southern Governors:

I am a daughter of the south, born in North Carolina, raised in South Carolina. I attended grade school and college in the south and spent my life working and living in the southeast. I’d call myself a GRIT if I didn’t think grits were the most disgusting food item in the world.

But I digress.

I’m writing to you about 11:08 p.m. Sept. 21, 2011. The night that Georgia possibly killed an innocent man,  Troy Davis. There was too much doubt surrounding his case, too many questions and not enough evidence. If this doesn’t spur us to review the death penalty, then nothing will.

Let’s be honest, the south has a bloody history of racism. My beloved state of North Carolina has played god with her citizens through the eugenics program that stopped hundreds of people for exercising their God given right to have children.

South Carolina celebrates the losing side of the civil war by flying the confederate battle flag—still in 2011. And Georgia added to her bloody racist past with the current killing of a potentially innocent man.

I’m asking you as a citizen, a voter, a taxpayer and an auntie—End the state sponsored killing of men and women. Stop the death penalty.

In North Carolina, 157 men and women sit on Death Row and more than half of them are African American. Yet,  black people only make up 12 to 13 percent of the entire US population. We’re not seeing a problem here?

In Texas, the family of James Byrd, the man murdered in a most heinous way, didn’t want to see his killers executed.

In fact, "You can't fight murder with murder," Ross Byrd, 32, told Reuters late Tuesday, the night before Wednesday's scheduled execution of Lawrence Russell Brewer for one of the most notorious hate crimes in modern times.

If the victim’s son feels this way, what does this say about the state of Texas and any other state that forces a prison worker to inject a person with a killing cocktail? State sponsored murder doesn’t bring the crime rate down. It serves no purpose.

The time to act is now. The death penalty is unfair, unjust and has no place in America and no place in the South. Don’t ignore your citizens cries for justice.

Signed,

Cheris Hodges

And I do vote.