By By RUTH ANDREWS
The Journey of Hope includes family members of murder victims, family members of death row inmates, family members of someone who has been executed, exonorees and activists.
For 17 days, from Oct. 14 to 31, they journied through Texas, speaking to groups who had invited them, in on ongoing effort to abolish the death penalty.
Early this year they received e-mail from Bill Pelke, saying the Journey would be in Texas.
I invited my sisters to come on the Journey with me, promising a life-changing event.
My sister Bess Klassen-Landis, from Vermont, accepted. She shared her perspective of our mother's murder for the first time.
Mom was murdered 36 years ago, when Bessie was 13 and I was 16.
People in Michiana will remember Bill Pelke's grandmother, Ruth Pelke, who was killed by a gang of teenage girls during a robbery in Gary.
Fifteen-year-old Paula Cooper was convicted of the murder and became the youngest female on death row in America. Bill eventually forgave Paula, and began corresponding with her. He worked to overturn her death sentence and has visited with her. Bill founded the Journey of Hope in Indiana thirteen years ago.
On Friday the 14th we were met at the Houston airport by George White, the Journey's co-founder. In 1985 an armed robber shot George and his wife at their place of business. Sixteen months later, George was charged with murdering his wife. Following a capital murder trial, George was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction was overturned in 1989 and he was released from prison, but George remained in legal limbo until 1992, when proof of his innocence was finally brought forward.
On Saturday the 15th, fifty of us traveled to Huntsville, to conduct a rally outside the Walls Unit, which houses Texas' execution chamber. Texas has executed 12 people so far this year, and 9 more are scheduled to die before the end of the year. Many of us wondered how such a brutal and environment would impact the people who worked within the system. We soon found out.
One of our speakers that afternoon was Ray Krone. In April 2002, Ray became the 100th innocent person released from prison after having been sentenced to death. Ray described spending ten years in prison, including two years on Arizona's death row, for the murder of a female bartender. He was freed when DNA testing proved he was not the killer. As Ray was speaking, a uniformed prison official left the prison, got into his SUV truck, and pulled it up to the curb just in back of where Ray was speaking. He left his motor running and cranked up some rock and roll to full volume. Because Ray used a bullhorn, we were able to hear him over the music. But we felt insulted, spat upon. The prison official continued to sit in his truck with his music blaring. Wearing the badge of Texas, he felt authorized to limit our free speech. The journalists who were with us began taking his picture. When the video cameras were trained on him, he drove away.
A better representative of Texas is Dave Atwood, founder and former president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Dave, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, served as local coordinator for the Texas Journey. In November 2004, Dave committed civil disobedience at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas, to protest the execution of Anthony Fuentes. He subsequently spent five days in jail.
When it was time for Bessie and I to leave the Journey, Anthony Fuentes' stepmother Ursula drove us to the airport. Ursula is a native of Germany, a country that does not seek retribution for murder. She described how the U.S. adversarial system slowly vilified and destroyed her family. The hugs we exchanged when we said goodbye were hugs of love, forgiveness and understanding. These hugs are our route to healing.
The Journey of Hope leads from violence to healing. For more information, please visit journeyofhope.org