At We The People, the strength of public searchability is impressive. Today, an anti-death penalty petition finally reached 150 signatures. For most of yesterday it had 148. Early this morning it had 149. A few hours later it has 282. I think almost any petition which reaches 150 signatures within a reasonable period of time will reach 5000 quite easily.
Members of the new group, Kossack Initiated White House Petitions have posted diaries listing petitions which still haven't gotten the 150 signatures necessary to become publicly searchable on the We The People website here, here, and my own here.
Along with the others, I've been promoting my own petition to abolish the death penalty all over the place (diary here). Unfortunately, I'm not well connected online -- and I don't feel comfortable doing much of anything on facebook anymore. So my petition still has 100 signatures to go. I'm thrilled that the other death penalty petition finally broke the 150 mark. However, I worry that it is more passionate than strong. My petition is somewhat passionate. But it seeks to appeal to the common sense of those who consider themselves in favor of the death penalty. It reads as follows:
We petition the Obama administration to:
Abolish the death penalty.
Our criminal justice system is not perfect. Prosecutors, attorneys, defendants, judges and juries make mistakes. Since 1973, there have been 138 cases of prisoners who were exonerated and freed from death row. It stands to reason that there are other innocent people currently on death row awaiting execution.
Regardless of whether capital punishment is right or wrong, it is often applied unfairly, it cannot be applied with 100% accuracy and it is an irreversible sentence. The risk of killing an innocent person is far too great to risk employing capital punishment at all.
We urge you to abolish the death penalty. You should do it right away.
It's not perfect, but it gets the message across clearly and simply, without worrying about whether capital punishment is right or wrong. I adapted the last line from Obama's speech about the jobs bill.
It saddens me, but the American people are still mostly in favor of the death penalty. I think the only way to appeal to those who agree with the death penalty is to convince them that since the possibility exists to execute innocent people, we must "err" on the side of caution in order to protect the wrongly convicted. After all, there have been many people wrongly convicted of murder, and at least one innocent man we know of (Cameron Todd Willingham) who was put to death in Texas. You also can read about two men who spent a decade in prison after pleading guilty to a 2nd degree murder they didn't commit in order to avoid the possibility of being executed, who were recently exonerated. It's likely that we have executed other innocent people and also that innocent people are currently incarcerated on death row, awaiting execution for crimes they didn't commit.
Then there's this diary about a 14 year old boy who was executed in South Carolina in 1944. Please read it and weep. I did.
I disagree with those who think this is a states rights issue. Capital punishment is a federal constitutional issue. Regardless of whether or not this crooked supreme court agrees, it is cruel and unusual punishment, and it isn't applied fairly or with 100% certainty. Because of this, states should not have the right to kill people. Abolishing the death penalty is an appropriate national issue to bring up at any time, but in light of the recent execution of Troy Davis, now is an especially appropriate time.
More about We The People and a list of petitions needing your signature below the squiggly.
The We The People petitions are a small, but potentially meaningful way for the all but voiceless to collectively get the attention of the administration. They will likely have some influence on the agenda for Obama's reelection campaign, and all the petitions which reach 5000 signatures or more will be there on the virtual table, visible to all.
Many of the petitions are about issues which are near and dear to the hearts of progressives. The one thing the administration can't control is which issues get enough signatures to pass the threshold required to get a response. So if people petition the administration to investigate bush and cheney for war crimes, or to call the New Orleans flooding a man-made disaster created by the failure of the federal government's levees, or Abolish Abstinence-Only Education From US Public Schools, it will be there on the White House website for all to see. That also goes for conservative petitions to repeal the ACA, and the one to Support H.R. 822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, or the petition to Create American jobs by approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. These three already have over 150 signatures and will surely cruise to 5000 and beyond within the allotted 30 days. Regardless of whether we get our act together or not, the teabaggers are already well along the way.
Perhaps we should be creating petitions which will anticipate the petitions the teabaggers are likely to create. It's good that the anti-keystone pipeline petition got out of the gate before the pro-keystone petition. I bet the anti-abortion crowd is working on one to recommend repealing Roe vs. Wade. The rich conservative PACs can easily employ 150 people to create and sign a huge number of petitions. Shouldn't we try to head them off at the pass?
It amazes me (in a good way) that when someone posts a call for donations, people who can afford it hit that paypal button and the goal is usually met quickly. But it's frustrating that when asked to sign a petition, send an email, or make some phone calls, many people just won't do it, despite the fact that they already spend hours surfing and posting online.
Whether or not you think the We The People campaign will amount to anything, it is the first direct offer by any White House administration in history to consider the people's collective opinions without censorship (at least not of the ideas themselves -- I think hatemailapalooza style petitions can be deleted). It may not be the best opportunity, but it is our opportunity. We should take advantage of it, if for no other reason than to be able to say, "we participated, but you still ignored us." We certainly wouldn't want the administration saying that due to the lack of progressive petitions, it has decided that there aren't many progressives out here.
Even though there are millions of brainwashed people who consider themselves conservative and regularly vote against their own best interests, they aren't the majority. But unfortunately, they are often the majority of those who vote. That has to change. If a mere 150 of us Kossacks can't get together to do something so simple as signing petitions which will receive consideration from the administration in order to advance our liberal agenda (I love that term!), it doesn't bode well for the future.
I hope anybody who hasn't signed up at We The People yet will do so now. It takes just a minute to sign up, and once you're signed in, you can sign petitions as fast as you can click on them. Whether or not the administration takes any action or not, it can't hurt to sign them, and you never know what they will lead to. Please do it today.
Now here is a list of petitions which still need 150 signatures. The list contains Kossack initiated petitions whether I endorse them or not, as well as a few others I found around the web which I heartily endorse. Most of the list is shamelessly lifted from jpmassar's fine diary pleading for more particiation in We The People. A few other petitions I found elsewhere. Many of them just have a few signatures.
• Stop all military operations and withdraw all combat forces from Afghanistan by October 1, 2012.
• Make Social Security solvent without cutting benefits or raising the retirement age.
• abolish the death penalty (mine).
• Issue an Executive Order barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation for federal contractors.
• Ask Congress to increase the age limit to 30 for young adults to stay on their parents' health insurance.
• Create a program to assume the mortgage debt of homeowners who are underwater, allowing them to sell their homes.
• Create a Victory Garden 2.0 Initiative to tour the USA and showcase home veggie gardens and community gardens.
• Demand that Congress identify all legislative text that was drafted by industry lobbyists rather than elected officials.
• Adopt the Progressive Caucus Peoples' Budget
• Save the Postal Service
• Listen to educators & parents not billionaires who stand to profit from education "reform"
• Propose and initiate a financial transaction tax
• Increase the minimum wage.
• Investigate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes.
• Use the EPA to crack down on CO2. Utilities will borrow from banks (with $ trillions of QE cash) to create green jobs.
• Get out of Iraq completely
• Allow every American Citizen the right to directly purchase Medicare or Medicaid health care coverage as a public option
• Introduce a constitutional amendment protecting the rights of citizens to observe and film, document, and record Police.
• Create clean energy jobs in coal mining communities.
• Enact policies that encourage the hiring of constitutionally responsible, citizen-friendly police officers.
• Petition to grant waivers to the No Child Left Behind act to without using standardized test scores for teacher evaluation.
Please take a minute to register for the We The People site. It can be a little slow and buggy. If you have trouble registering, try another browser. If you have trouble signing petitions once you're signed in, sign out, then in again using the sign in link below the language of the petition. Once you're signed in, it goes very quickly.
BTW, in the time it took me to write this long winded diary, the death penalty petition that had 282 signatures now has 423! Please sign mine too!
Thanks for reading this far and participating in the We The People petition drive!