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Suggested Activities

This list is just a starting point to help generate ideas. If you would like more ideas or help putting an idea into action, contact us. Also, let us know what you are doing so we can support and connect you with others in your area!

Bring a speaker to your class or school and ask students to respond in journal entry, poem or painting. Here is a short list of ideas for people or organizations to contact if you need help finding a speaker.

Show a movie such as Dead Man Walking and lead a discussion afterwards. The AFSC has a Dead Man Walking study guide that can help you frame a discussion.

Do a clothesline project. Collect t-shirts and art supplies and have students decorate t-shirts with their thoughts on peace, violence, justice and capital punishment.

Host a poetry slam at the school during lunch or after school one day. Students can read poetry, create poetry or just share poetic thoughts. Periodically interject facts and information on the death penalty, peace, non-violence or justice to ensure that the theme stays on topic.

Decorate cards of hope and peace directed to politicians, murder victim family members, death row inmates or their families. (These can then be mailed at the end of the project.)

Create postcards calling for the abolition of, or moratorium on, the death penalty for students to sign and send to their elected officials.

Have the school devote a story, page or edition of the school newspaper to understanding capital punishment. Columns could focus on general information, the morality of capital punishment, the story of one person whose life was affected by murder or the death penalty, survey responses to a question about the death penalty and more.

Utilize the award-winning death penalty curriculum created by the University of Michigan and Death Penalty Information Center, available at http://teacher.deathpenaltyinfo.msu.edu.

Join Amnesty International's Weekend of Faith in Action by devoting some time during the weekend of October 21-23 to the death penalty, using your own faith traditions as a starting point. Visit www.amnestyusa.org/faithinaction for more information and free resources to help you organize.

Ideas for Speakers

A starting list of ideas for people or organizations that can speak from a variety of perspectives of the death penalty.

• Former death row prisoner

• Public Defenders' Office

• Local coalition or activist working to abolish the death penalty, find your local coalition by visiting the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty online.

• Murder victim family member, visit Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, Inc. or Murder Victims' Families For Human Rights

• Family member of someone on death row

• Minister, pastor or other religious leader

Please write to idream@afsc.org if you have any questions or would like additional suggestions.

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