Founded in 1988, Death Penalty Focus is a non-profit organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment through grassroots organizing, research, and the dissemination of information about the death penalty and its alternatives.
With over 35,000 members nationwide, Death Penalty Focus is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors composed of renowned political, religious, and civic leaders, along with legal scholars and attorneys involved in death penalty litigation. The President of Death Penalty Focus is actor and activist Mike Farrell. In addition, DPF has an Advisory Board composed of community and religious leaders, celebrities, writers, and representatives of labor and human rights organizations who support anti-death penalty work. DPF conducts research on behalf of lawyers, educators, and the general public, and sponsors a variety of public education and media campaigns. DPF also serves as a support network for its ten chapters throughout California and as a liaison among anti-death penalty groups nationwide. The organization played a leading role in organizing opposition protests to the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams and was described as "the strongest voice in California’s abolition movement" by San Francisco Magazine.
Read more about Death Penalty Focus: Mission
Famous quotes containing the words death, penalty and/or focus:
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The Reverend Samuel Peters ... exaggerated the Blue Laws, but they did include “Capital Lawes” providing a death penalty for any child over sixteen who was found guilty of cursing or striking his natural parents; a death penalty for an incorrigible son; a law forbidding smoking except in a room in a private house; another law declaring smoking illegal except on a journey five miles away from home,...”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)