BY SIMONE BERG
DES MOINES, Iowa - More than 75 people turned out in
freezing temperatures to demonstrate against reinstating the
death penalty here February 4.
After the protest, there was a public hearing on the death penalty in the chambers of the Iowa House of Representatives. Over 70 people signed up to speak, with the overwhelming majority voicing opposition to capital punishment.
The speakers included Laurel Eckhouse, a young activist and leader of Students against the Death Penalty, who pointed to the 23 people who were exonerated after their executions; Attorney General Tom Miller; Dubuque Archbishop Jerome Hanus; and Ben Stone, the executive director of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union.
In part as a result of the public hearing, proponents of the death penalty dropped their attempts to get it reinstated in the state legislature this year. Governor Terry Branstad has had a long-standing proposal to introduce the death penalty for some cases.
The bill has failed completely in the last three years. Capital punishment was repealed 33 years ago in Iowa, and replaced with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Socialist Workers candidate for governor Thomas Alter, a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1149 and a meatpacker in Perry, Iowa, announced his campaign at the public hearing.
Alter explained, "The attempt to reinstate the death penalty is a part of a broader attack on workers and farmers at home and abroad." After hearing him speak, one of the young people there signed up to help Alter campaign.
There have been other protests against the death penalty as well. About 30 students from area high schools demonstrated on February 3, marching inside the capitol rotunda with signs.
A contingent of the youth had handmade T-shirts that they had worn to their high school because the school administration had stopped them from putting up leaflets to publicize the day's event.
An interfaith prayer meeting against the death penalty took place February 8, and about 25 people turned out to a demonstration called by Students against the Death Penalty on February 14.