queeranarchism:
gnetophyte:solarpunkwitchcraft:The point of getting rid of the death penalty isn’t...
The point of getting rid of the death penalty isn’t that there are some innocent people on it. The point of prison abolition isn’t that there are some innocent people in prison.
The point is that the state shouldn’t have the power to kill people. The point is that the prison system commits systemic abuses of human rights, doesn’t reduce crime, is deeply racist, and doesn’t take the desires of the victims into account. To argue about whether one individual on death row or with a life sentence is innocent or guilty is just a distraction from the central issues, which is that these institutions are unjust and should not exist
brian stevenson phrased this really well when he said that “The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit[…] The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do[es the state] deserve to kill?”
There are a LOT of issues where “is there a circumstance where this is the right thing to do?” is not the question we should be asking, but “can we trust the state with the power to do this?” is. And the answer is almost always FUCK NO.
