'Don't kill for me'

By Jason Hathaway

Tribune-Star

Hand drums thumped out a melancholy beat Sunday on the south end of Terre Haute, providing a cadence for about 100 spirited anti-death penalty demonstrators in a 3-mile protest march from St. Margaret Mary Church to the U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute.

Followed by nearly as many news reporters and photographers, the protesters wound west along Voorhees Street, south on U.S. 41 to Margaret Avenue, which led them to Indiana 63 and then to the penitentiary where Timothy McVeigh awaited his execution.

Demonstrators sang anti-death penalty songs, chanted anti-death penalty chants and carried signs with such slogans as "Don't Kill For Me" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill."

Members of the Bloomington Unitarian Universalist Church provided two towering papier-mache puppets for the march - one of Uncle Sam, the other of Jesus. Each homemade puppet, requiring one person to stand inside and two to hold up the arms, bore several anti-death penalty messages written on the outside.

Demonstrators came from all over the country to participate in the march, peacefully expressing their grievances with the death penalty. Terre Haute Abolition Network president Suzanne Carter couldn't help but have mixed feelings about the event, though, in regards to the execution that was scheduled this morning.

"There's mixed feelings," she said. "I wish we weren't doing this. I wish this wasn't happening. I wish we were getting together to celebrate abolition [of the death penalty]. There's just a lot of good people coming to Terre Haute for a lot of bad things."

Carolyn Gray came all the way from Jupiter, Fla., to express her support for the anti-death penalty cause.

"I came from Florida to speak out against my government, not because I don't love my country, but because my government has committed a wrong," she said. "If people knew the truth about the death penalty, they wouldn't support it and the reason they don't know the truth is that the politicians have done a good job covering it up.

"When the government sets an example by killing its own citizens, it sends out a message that it's OK to kill. It shows a lack of respect for life and it copies the act of the killer."

Disagreement with this message taken from the government's actions is also what drew St. Louis couple Gary and Mary Mifflin to the march.

"It feels good to be around fellow abolitionists," she said. "It makes you feel like you're not a voice in the wilderness I'm basically here because I have two small children, age 3 and 5, and I don't like the lessons that the death penalty teaches. The government is teaching them that the death penalty is OK."

Indiana State University criminology professor Mark Hamm, who wrote the Oklahoma City bombing book "Apocalypse In Oklahoma: Waco and Ruby Ridge Revenged," expressed his anti-death penalty stance at the march. He doesn't want to see the penitentiary become a place of mass execution as other penitentiaries have in the past.

"It's just an important thing to do," he said. "There's 24 men on death row there right now and eventually, the government's going to line them all up and kill them. I don't like the town of Terre Haute to be known as the death factory of the federal government, and unfortunately, that's what's going to happen. This is just the beginning.

"A lot of people support the death penalty and they support it without understanding that there are alternatives, such as lifetime imprisonment."

As the demonstrators marched, they were joined by "peacekeepers," clad in yellow shirts, whose duty was to take an unbiased stance and focus on maintaining peace on both sides. Most came from the renowned Michigan Peace Team, which uses the principles of non-violent demonstration taught by Mahatma Gandhi to keep a peaceful atmosphere at potentially violent demonstrations.

Michigan Peace Team member Mark Mattison, of Grand Rapids, Mich., didn't expect any violence on the march or other demonstrations.

"We don't really anticipate any problems," he said. "We're extremely impressed with the amount of organization the local groups have put into this. There's some great people here."

Along the march, police-escorted demonstrators met with little opposition from onlookers, aside from the occasional shaking head or jeer from the driver of a passing car. Some honked their horns and shouted encouragement at the demonstrators for their effort.

"That is the most important thing about the abolition movement - educating people and making them think about the death penalty," Gary Mifflin said. "I think that's the only good thing to come of this, the attention. People are talking about the death penalty and thinking about it. I mean, if you're going to be pro-death penalty, at least do some research on it."