The speak-out included the participation of members of the National Committee and other leaders of the Young Socialists who were meeting in Chicago.

The first panelist was Joann Patterson. Her son, Aaron, has spent 10 years on death row, locked up with 10 others sentenced to die because of convictions obtained through torture and brutality. "Is this justice to torture someone almost to death to get a conviction?" said Patterson, "No it's not."

Panelist Shawn Armbrust is involved in a project based on students and professors at Northwestern University that scrutinizes various capital case trial proceedings, some of which have led to the exoneration of nine death row inmates. She was part of the successful effort to free Anthony Porter, who at one point last year was less than 48 hours away from being executed. Armbrust said what was really unsettling to her was that Porter "was not railroaded by anyone acting with particular malice but just by the way the system works."

Mary Johnson, an activist against police brutality and member of the Coalition Against the Death Penalty, called for strengthening the fight in defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Johnson explained she got involved in the struggle first by defending her own children against police brutality and frame up.

The final speaker was Jake Perasso, a packinghouse worker and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 100A and the organizer of the Young Socialists in Chicago. One of Perasso's co-workers who had spent three years in maximum security co-worker commented to him, "There are a lot of innocent people in jail even if they confessed. You get less time if you confess, and everyone knows that, so you do it."

The increased use of the death penalty in recent years has gone hand in hand with the intensified attacks on working people, including the labor movement, said Perasso. It was the civil rights and other struggles of the 50s and 60s that forced the capitalist class in this country to temporarily overturn the legality of the death penalty, he said. "This was a gain for the working class."

The discussion addressed the questions posed by the death sentences for the racist lynchers of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas. Young Socialists leader Roberto Guerrero, who was living in Texas at the time Byrd was dragged to death, explained how many liberals there supported the use of capital punishment in this case, citing the horror of the crime, but that conscious workers stuck to their opposition to the capitalist rulers having and using this weapon.  
 
 
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