Upsetting Ms. Malkin: Why Death Row Inmates Should Have Blogs
Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin criticizes my enthusiasm for Meet Vernon, the first blog by a death row inmate.
Probably, she would not appreciate that I sometimes speak to students as young as those in middle school about the humanity of death row inmates, showing them blown-up images of several of those included in the 2000 Benneton campaign, "We on Death Row" and reading parts of their interviews. Nor would Ms. Malkin appreciate the "thank you" letters I've received from the teachers and students who've listened to my talk and were moved by the experience of viewing the actual faces of those of death row and hearing their words.
Ms. Malkin quips that she doesn't want to hear the condemned talk about their IPods or their razors or cameras. Of course, that's not what they talk about. They talk about their hopes, their fears, their lost dreams, their remorse, their nightmares. They talk about what it's like to know with certainty that the state is going to kill you, how they've messed up their lives, the things they miss, the people they've loved, their religion, their mothers, their children...and more.
Sears Roebuck didn't appreciate the Benneton campaign at the time and pulled the clothing line from their stores. My response to Sears was to call for a boycott of their stores. Crime victims didn't like that Benneton bought billboard space to display the campaign and ultimately, Benneton took them down. The Attorney General of Missouri sued. When the campaign began, all 96 pages of it was on the Internet. Now, you can't find the campaign online anywhere. It is as if it's been censored out of existence. I still have several copies, and this site still carries the press release to the campaign. Here's a portion:
Leaving aside any social, political, judicial or moral consideration, this project aims at showing to the public the reality of capital punishment, so that no one around the world, will consider the death penalty neither as a distant problem nor as news that occasionally appears on TV. Toscani's images aim at giving back a human face to the prisoners on death row, to remind those "respectable ppeople (who) are always so sure they're right..."(1) that the debate conerns men and women in flesh and blood, not virtual characters eliminated or spared with a simple click as with a videogame.
The campaign will appear on billboards and on the pages of the major news publications in Europe, America and Asia in January 2000. ... With this new initiative, Benetton has once again chosen to look reality in the face by tackling a social issue, as it did in previous campaigns that focused on war, Aids, discrimination and racism. Bitterly attacked by some and internationally acclaimed by others, Benetton's campaigns have managed to tear down the wall of indifference contributing at raising the awareness of universal problems among world's citizens. At the same time, they have paved the way for innovative modes of corporate communication
Here is one of the few places you can still read about the campaign.
Another consideration is the way capital punishment is routinely applied anonymously, quietly, by men in white coats, in some prison basement, away from public view. Few people ever witness the event, and photos and cameras are banned. The net impact is that the public gets off easy they can support capital punishment, without ever having to confront its effect: the state taking an individual's life.
Benetton's genius is that they turn the entire situation around. By focusing on the inmate's faces, his prison clothes, the bars in his cell, as well as most other indications of his social status are cropped out of the picture. The viewer no longer "knows" that he is looking at a guilty criminal, he is left to confront the man, as well as the question: why is he going to die?
Complaints that the ad campaign is unsympathetic to the murder victims are exaggerated. Asking society to change a death sentence to life imprisonment, is a perfectly valid request and need not have a bearing on the victim's loved ones. It is also disingenuous to imply, as many did, that Benetton was under obligation to mention the inmate's crimes, as well as their victims in the ads. This is advocacy advertising -- after all, when a car company runs an ad campaign, they don't show the car accidents.
The faces and stories of those on death row show what the present is like for those without a future. When a death row inmate has a blog, it brings the reality of the death penalty right to the American public. If every death row inmate had a blog, people would no longer be able to view the death penalty as somebody else's problem, as merely something that makes the news once in a while. These blogs would be googled and spidered the same as mine and Ms. Malkin's, and the public would see that death row inmates are human too.
TalkLeft has endorsed pen pal efforts for those awaiting execution. Providing death row inmates with blogs takes it one step further, as Benneton did so courageously five years ago. If every death row inmate had a blog, perhaps the wall of indifference would come tumbling down. Perhaps we would engage in more meaningful dialogue about whether the death penalty is ever justified. Perhaps public opinion would turn against the death penalty more quickly, and we would hasten the day when America is no longer the only civilized nation in the world to continue to kill its citizens in the name of justice, while hypocritically asserting it promotes a culture of life.
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