[Mitai-announce] Amnesty International Update

[Emily C Havens]

Hello everyone,

We haven't had an official AI meeting in quite some time so I decided to
send an update just to let everyone know what's happening.

We are currently working on organizing an event about the death penalty.
On 23 September 2003, Mitt Romney (MA Governor) announced the formation
of a state commission that would review the possibility of reinstating
the death penalty in Massachusetts.  The results of this commission are
expected to be released soon.  Thus, we would like to have our event
coincide with the release of this report.

**An excellent article regarding the death penalty in MA can be found at:

http://www.02133.org/issue.cfm?ID=115

It reports on the creation of the commission by Governor Romney and provides 
a list of the people appointed to the commission.  It then has a detailed 
background of the history of the death penalty in Massachusetts dating back 
to 1900.

Officially, Amnesty International is against use of the death penalty.
Charlie Wilton, Amnesty's State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator for 
MA, suggests reading the following articles from the MA Bar Lawyers Journal
and the Washington Post:

https://www.massbar.org/publications/lawyersjournal/article.php?c_id=5550&vt=2

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38366-2003Oct29.html

(The discussion of the death penalty in the article from the MA Bar Lawyers
journal begins approximately halfway into the article.)

**If you wish to take immediate action against the death penalty, please 
visit the following link to the AI USA website where you can contact your 
U.S. Representative to support the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=10152

On a different note:

A campaigner for the human rights of transvestites in Chile has reportedly
been shot at in the street and has received death threats.  He needs our 
help!  To fill out an urgent action on his behalf, please visit:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/exe.do?action=ua.actions

For a list of other actions you can take, visit:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/index.asp?ms=T1

Hope to see you all at our next meeting (whenever that may be...)

That is all.

Emily--Your friendly local MIT AI Secretary