STUDENTS ENVISION A GENTLER WORLD

Brooke Matschek, Program Assistant, Criminal Justice/Anti-Death Penalty Program, Philadelphia, PA

Humanity "must evolve for all human conflict a message which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

You say you're nonviolent

But you're putting people to death.

You say you're nonviolent

But you think justice is watching
people taking their last breath.

You say I'm violent if I kill someone

But then you kill me-what will that
make you?

You say you're nonviolent.

You need to practice what you preach.

- Sharee Brazier

Students at colleges and universities around the country have begun and continue organizing around the problem of capital punishment with help from AFSC's "I Dream a World" materials. The "I Dream a World" Student Organizing Packet, complete with action ideas, resource information, and background facts about the death penalty, is available on request from AFSC's National Office. To galvanize support from even younger members of our community, representatives from the National Criminal Justice Program have visited both Friends and public high schools around the Philadelphia area to talk with students about the death penalty and encourage them to respond to the issue with art. During one of these sessions, Sharee Brazier, a student in a high school diploma program at Youth Build Charter School, wrote the poem to the right.

The AFSC is excited about our work with youth. They will contribute vital energy and enthusiasm to the anti-death penalty movement. Additionally, youth have access to great organizing resources and large, often tight-knit, communities of other youth, including students and academics. The AFSC believes working with youth organizers can help to fundamentally alter the way capital punishment is understood in the United States today.

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