that's a horrible view point.
keep the law, but don't live with the mistakes. fix the mistakes.
that said, I'm not really for the death penalty at this time.
right or wrong, great thing about America is that you can dissect every single issue that a politician talks about or you can just flip a switch and vote all Republican.
I'm guessing that a very small minority of voters actually do intensive research on a candidate before they vote.
I believe I answered that already.
When it came to Bush, I was against his views on the death penalty and the war.
But far as I could discern from his platform in 2004, Kerry was for the death penalty and for the war too, so in a sense those were moot points.
Because both candidates spoke in support of the death penalty and continuing the war ( or at least could not assure me that they had serious intentions otherwise), I had to accept that my vote was not going to affect immediate change in either of those areas.
Therefore, I cast my vote according to a cause which mattered greatly to me and on which the candidates definitely differed.
I already answered such a issue.
Something else on it though. If I were wrongfully found guilty, I would rather be executed than spend my life in prison. Wouldn't you?
I didn't think someone would take it that far but I'm not surprised it was you.
I think you underestimate peoples ability to think for themselves. I'm sure you would get a very broad range of answers on such a debated issues as "pro-life." So no, I don't think if you surveyed people you would get abortion, abortion, abortion 95 times.
sure, because your viewpoint = everyone else's
but let's strap you down, get the needles ready, start the drip and then ask you again if you would still rather die or spend the rest of your life in prison. Easy to say that while sitting there typing on a Spurs basketball board.
Your mind is your prison, Wild Cobra. So please kill yourself. With a spoon preferably.
Fair enough. Thanks for your response.
This was the first site and options that came up when I searched for pro life on Yahoo
Also try:pro life vs pro choice,pro life march washington dc,More...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-life
Pro-life is a term representing a variety of perspectives and activist movements in medical ethics. It most commonly used, especially in the media and popular discourse, to refer to opposition to abortion. More generally, the term describes a political and ethical view which maintains that fetuses and embryos are persons and therefore have a right to live. Less commonly, it can be used to indicate opposition to practices such as euthanasia, the death penalty, human cloning, and research involving human embryonic stem cells.
And on Google:
News results for pro life
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...VmOGRjNmRkZDg=
And Aol:The pro-life movement is despondent. During the recent election cycle, pro-lifers incurred a series of disappointing political defeats, culminating in the election of a president who steadfastly supports keeping abortion legal. Furthermore, some pundits suggest that the Republican party’s pro-life stance hurt its candidates, and thus the party should take a more moderate position.
Also Try - pro life vs. pro choice, pro life images, pro life facts
http://www.donateacar.com/charity-Am...FRwpawod7GZ_UA
The American Life League is a national, 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity. ALL exists to serve God by helping to build a society that respects and protects innocent human life from fertilization to natural death - without compromise, without exception, without apology. The distinguishing mark of ALL, by which we will be recognized, is our absolute commitment to the sacredness of human life. DONATE NOW.
The first two articles are much more extensive. I just posted the first paragraph of all three.
Last edited by angel_luv; 01-27-2009 at 01:19 PM. Reason: Links added
blake.
If you go to the USCCB webpage on pro-life activities, it includes the following issues, among others:
abortion
assisted suicide
capital punishment
euthanasia
cloning
"The right to life implies and is linked to other human rights—to the basic goods that every human person needs to live and thrive. All the life issues are connected, for erosion of respect for the life of any individual or group in society necessarily diminishes respect for all life."
Fair enough.
not sure what we are toasting...
back at ya any way
Thanks, you're right, I missed that. A question. To you, is support for/against abortion more important than support for/against torture, or war? Or are none of them 'more important'?
I can see the point of abortion and capital punishment, but why assisted suicide and cloning? (Technically, I think assisted suicide=euthanasia)
Curious to hear why you think there are included.
Additionally, is there a 'hierarchy' of life? Is human life more important than other species?
Yes I can. Can you prove otherwise?
They are equally important since they all concern the well being of people.
War is hard since it has been a necessary evil at different points in history- World War 2 always sticks out in my mind as an example of that.
Even so, I am always grieved whenever people are wounded or killed.
And I am one hundred percent against torture.
I also take issue with the way people are penned up like animals in our prison system.
Again, I understand jail has become a necessary evil in our society. But still it grieves me.
On the jail topic though, I saw the following great story the other day.
http://www.insidetennis.com/0807_san_quentin.html
The 357 footsteps between the East Gate and the Front Count Gate at San Quentin State Prison can make for a lonely walk. A single yellow stripe marks the route, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge arcing over San Francisco Bay to the east. Set amidst bucolic Marin County, where the median home price now eclipses the $1 million mark, California’s oldest and most renowned correctional facility sits on some prime waterfront real estate. But this isn’t exactly my idea of a gated community.
As I head toward Watchtower One, I sink into a claustrophobic inertia. This is the same route taken on Saturday mornings by the stoic women who come to see their husbands, their sons; the same route taken each week by visiting groups of juvies headed for a scared-straight wakeup call. It’s a walk I took on numerous occasions during a three-year stretch beginning in September 2004. But I never did get used to it.
It’s a bit unsettling on my first visit when, after being ushered through no fewer than three security checkpoints, I’m informed that, in the unlikely event that I’m taken hostage, the State of California will not negotiate my release. The thought reverberates along with the sound of the last steel door slamming shut behind me. Some 30 yards past the brick façade of the prison’s circa 1885 hospital, I round a corner and descend into San Quentin’s Lower Yard.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Bogart and Bacall in Dark Passage? Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke? The hushed hues of The Shawshank Redemption? But Hollywood this is not. Rows of men in orange jump suits file by — mostly repeat offenders and parole-violators — on their way to the Reception Center. A tight-knit gang of Mexican-American inmates, Norteños, strum guitars, sing folk songs and play dominoes, their tattoos gleaming in the white-flash sun. Behind them, a group of whites are doing pull-ups in a penned-off area. The blacks are on the basketball court, running from end to end. A diminutive Asian man — whom his fellow inmates have nicknamed Ho Chi Minh — plays a solitary game of ping-pong, apparently unable to corral an opponent. Perhaps it’s his reputation. They say the day he first arrived at San Quentin, he warned jeering onlookers, “Don’t touch me, or I kill you.” And from the looks of him, he meant it.
My guide is Don DeNevi, 69, the supervisor of recreation at San Quentin. Which begs the question: How is it possible that a man who once wrote about how to escape from one of the world’s most fortified prisons could end up determining how an overcrowded population of convicts spends its “free” time? Actually, DeNevi has authored/co-authored more than 30 books, including Into the Minds of Madmen, Mob Nemesis and Riddle of the Rock: The Only Successful Escape from Alcatraz. The self-confessed tennis nut has written about his favorite sport, too, teaming up with Tony Trabert on Tennis Past 50.
DeNevi is solely responsible for kick-starting San Quentin’s burgeoning tennis program, aptly nicknamed the Inside Tennis Club — a cultural cross section of 15 or so inmates who, with almost religious devotion, faithfully haul their gear out of the recreation shack every Saturday at 7 a.m. and play until last count, around 4 p.m. The majority of them are serving life sentences for first- or second-degree murder, with the possibility of parole; men who got caught up in gang life, made disastrous decisions and are now paying the price.
Until recently, their court in the Lower Yard doubled as the parking lot where buses unload new inmates each weekday. The primitive court’s pockmarked pavement was cracked and sloped. Their net was a five-foot chicken-wire fence, the net cord a steel pipe. When an errant forehand sent a ball onto the roof, the players had to wait for a gun-toting guard to retrieve it.
“Playing on that court sharpened your focus,” quips DeNevi, who formerly taught in the Criminal Justice Department at San Francisco State.
It’s here that I first come face to face with Juan Arevalo, the Peruvian-born 57-year-old whom I had known previously only through his letters. He first wrote to me in July 2004, inviting me to come to San Quentin to get a firsthand glimpse of how tennis was playing an integral role in the rehabilitation of himself and his confined counterparts. He had also sent a few examples of his writings. One poem, en led “The Family,” begins:
Oh, that I would be so lucky
As the baby chimpanzee, who crawls
All over the camp, where he feels
So protected, so nurtured, so free!
At the time, Arevalo was serving a life sentence for the Christmas Eve 1978 murder of his girlfriend. He’d been locked up for more than 25 years. A quarter century of incarceration. He was transferred from Solano State Prison to San Quentin in 1993. He had been found suitable for parole as far back as 2001, but the decision was reversed by then-Governor Gray Davis. Arnold Schwarzenegger quashed two more Parole Board decisions in the coming years. But the letters of support — from ministers, teachers, prison guards — kept pouring in. I’ve read through a stack of them. They all insist he’s a changed man and ready for release. There seems to be an aura around Arevalo. It’s clear that those around him hold him in high regard and he treats them with a mutual respect.
“In prison, where love is not available, anybody who extends a hand to you is going to be welcomed,” he tells me. “That’s the reason why the guys look up to me.”
Perhaps. But it also may be that he’s undergone an against-all-odds, Hyde-to-Jekyll transformation from young, angry, machismo drug addict to spiritual mentor. For them, he represents hope. He has survived the system. And in doing so, he’s done everything by the book. He’s stayed disciplinary-free and has consistently charted clean psych reports. He was first a student and then a trainee in a substance-abuse counseling program. In prison, he completed his PhD in marriage counseling and was a sponsor in a 12-step recovery program. He counseled young offenders through Project Last Chance, led Christian Fellowship Bible studies, participated in anger management seminars. He is a member of Men Against Domestic Violence, regularly met with a victim-offender reconciliation group, served as an ESL teaching aid. He received certification from Marin Abused Women’s Services. And then there is the tennis.
“We’ve been able to do so many things with tennis,” says Arevalo.
San Quentin’s Lower Yard is an exercise in racial divisiveness. On any given day, the inmates are scattered across the yard in groups according to ethnicity. They stick to their own kind. But somehow the tennis court is the exception to the rule. Here, racial and religious lines are blurred.
“The racial thing was just the beginning of it,” reflects Arevalo. “The indoctrination that started with tennis, that carried from the older guys to the younger guys — that was the amazing thing. There’s a lot of angry people in prison, and when they played tennis, they brought all that anger, all that animosity. Then, after two or three weeks of hanging out with us, you could see the miracle happening in front of your eyes. The guys just mellowed out. They realized, ‘Hey, people are not fighting here. These people are different.’ We were indoctrinating people without even opening our mouths.”
Arevalo introduces me to some of his crew. There’s Squirrel, Mac, Curly Joe, Mohamed, Bone and Bert. The muscle-bound Bert Boatman drove the getaway car in a robbery gone bad. In a white tank T and gray sweats, the skullcapped and goateed Boatman is an intimidating presence. But he’s nearly as quick with a handshake and a smile as he is with his booming first serve. The 41-year-old didn’t pick up a racket until he was on the inside. His strokes are a little rough-hewn, but this guy can flat-out play. He’s got the discipline, the desire. You can see it in his eyes.
Mac McCartney, 55, killed his ex-wife. Twenty-nine years and nine unsuccessful parole hearings later, he stands on a tennis court in the Lower Yard in San Quentin, California, a changed man whose newfound Buddhist philosophy tells him he can’t change the past, he can only live in the moment and prepare for a more positive future.
“When I’m on the court, nothing else outside of these fences exists,” he says.
The words “we’re going to find you unsuitable today” have become all too familiar to McCartney. He heard them yet again in January, during an emotional, three-hour parole hearing that was attended by a pair of unexpected guests. His son and daughter, whom he had neither seen nor heard from in the three decades since his murder conviction, appeared from a remote location via a two-way monitor. There were no introductions, but none were needed. He knew good and well who they were. His daughter was the spitting image of his former wife.
Raphael Calix is no newcomer to the game. He grew up on the west side of L.A. watching the likes of Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe in their days at UCLA. He says he used to swing his trusty Wilson T2000 seven days a week on public courts before a cocaine addiction derailed any promise of a professional tennis career. He had even received an athletic scholarship offer from Cal State-L.A.
“I didn’t get a chance to fulfill those aspirations,” he says.
A man of few words, Squirrel Johnson is a lefty with unorthodox but effective strokes. He doesn’t like to warm up. He just steps onto the court when it’s time to play. He’s all business between the lines.
Compared with the other lifers, Malik Harris is a relative newcomer. He has only been in the system for nine years. Now 36, he won’t see the outside of San Quentin’s walls before 2018. Before arriving here, he had bounced around the CDC system, doing time in Folsom, Centinela and the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. At first glance, it just doesn’t add up. Clean-shaven and donning wire-rimmed glasses, he seems better suited to a college campus than a prison yard. Turns out, he was once enrolled at Santa Monica College and even took a few classes at UCLA. But by the time he had entered college, the aspiring screenwriter had already fallen in with the wrong crowd, a cir stance, he says, for which he has only himself to blame. He was attending one of L.A.’s most notoriously violent educational ins utions, Grover Cleveland High School in the San Fernando Valley’s Reseda district, the first time he got shot. In a world of gangbanging, he says he often carried a gun for protection. Home invasion, burglary and sexual assault were among the charges that landed him jail.
Harris grew up with hoop dreams. But when he got to prison, he discovered that a different brand of basketball is played on the inside, a physical brand that often leads to violent confrontations. And if there was one thing he doesn’t need any more of in his life, it’s violence. For Harris, who was welcomed into the Inside Tennis Club about a year and a half ago, the tennis court was a safe haven. He says that what he likes most about the sport is that it enables you to focus on the moment, and how playing doubles can help you learn about relationships, about dealing with others. It’s those lessons, he says, that he’s now applying to his everyday behavior.
“This is an opportunity to change my life,” says Harris, his eyes steering toward Mt. Tamalpais in the distance. “For me, life starts right now. Actually, it started yesterday. I’m behind. I’ve got some catching up to do.”
The product of a single-parent household, Harris speaks of how his mother did the best she could raising him and how she used to encourage him to meditate, to do yoga, in order to curb his angst. But he wasn’t ready. Ironically, it’s here in the joint that, in addition to playing tennis, he’s both meditating and doing yoga now — finally heeding his mother’s advice. It’s what keeps him going.
Towering over the court is a sprawling, Depression-era structure known as North Block, home to more than 800 men, including the majority of the tennis players, who live in a hive of cramped cells stacked five tiers high. North Block is also home to the largest population of condemned prisoners in the nation, who live on the sixth floor, San Quentin’s fabled Death Row. Despite being considered low-risk, Level II inmates, DeNevi’s lifers live among those who await the gas chamber or lethal injection. Scott Peterson lives here. Tookie Williams lived here before his December 2005 execution. Every man sentenced to death in California passes through here.
During each of my visits, we’re paired into teams and shuttled on and off the court, playing best-of-five-game sets. Winners stay on the court. On Saturdays it’s all doubles in order to maximize court time. I’m struck by the irony when told not to wear white (in fact, I’m told to avoid blue, gray and orange, too, to keep from blending in with the inmates). I’ve spent a good part of my life steering clear of the kind of club that mandates tennis whites, only to find myself at San Quentin being told I can’t wear white. Between points, we bump fists, exchange high-fives. A mix of encouragement and some benign ribbing comes from those on the bench. Others in San Quentin’s mainline population stop to watch, their hands clinging to the chain-link fence that surrounds the court. There are baseball and basketball games in progress nearby, but the scene on the tennis court is different.
As you might expect, life in the Lower Yard does not come without its tensions, even on the tennis court. After all, there is only one court and the guys want their playing time, which has led to some arguments. Some of the regulars are upset by a recent regulation that denies them the right to keep rackets in their cells. On one occasion, I’m pulled aside by a pair of correctional officers who not so stealthily proceed to warn me to keep the body contact to a minimum. Cut the high-fives, all the familiarity. It sends the wrong message across the yard, they say; and it’s for my own safety. The inmates pick up on the vibe and don’t seem to appreciate the sentiment.
Occasionally, an alarm sounds and a voice crackles through a loudspeaker, instructing everyone to assume the prone position in the spot where they are now sitting or standing. Indiscernible figures loom in the guard towers above. I never know if it’s a drill or if there’s been an “incident” in the yard. I grow accustomed it, but the first time it happens I’m not quite sure what to do. Besides the green-uniformed COs, I’m the only man standing amidst a sea of convicts. When I somewhat awkwardly begin to take a knee, an inmate prompts me, “No, you don’t have to do that. This is just for us.”
According to DeNevi, whose pale blue ballcap boasts “San Quentin State Prison Tennis Coach,” I needn’t worry. “If anybody gets out of line, there’ll be to pay,” he assures me. “My guys would lay their lives down to protect you.”
What’s remarkable is that DeNevi has managed to recruit volunteers who, on a regular basis, come into this hostile environment to hit with and give on-court instruction to the inmates on Saturdays. Surprisingly, many of them are women.
e Viragh is one of DeNevi’s brown-card holders, meaning she can come and go through the prison gates as she pleases. To acquire the status, she attended special certification sessions, where she was briefed on the dos and don’ts of dealing with the inmates. She was warned never to discuss her personal life, and to avoid any correspondence or outside contact with them. She was even lectured on how to dress (be covered from head to toe, don’t show any skin). The 51-year-old Viragh is the head pro at Scott Valley Swimming and Tennis Club in Mill Valley. The woman who San Quentin’s lifers have affectionately dubbed “ a Cool” says she doesn’t feel threatened, even though she’s often the only woman in the prison yard.
“Somehow, on a tennis court, that’s my safest place to be,” says Viragh, her accent hinting at her Danish roots. “I forget about where I am.”
Viragh represented her homeland in Fed Cup play between '74 and '78, and has since penned the how-to book Dynamite Doubles. The men relish her expertise.
“The depth and insight in the conversations that we have when we’re not on the court is very stimulating,” says Viragh. “There is no small talk, per se. It’s all quite soul-seeking. I love that. They talk recovery, about becoming a better person. Tennis is such a wonderful tool.”
Viragh visits twice a month, weather permitting.
“Even if I don’t go, I’m kind of mentally there,” she explains. “There’s something about that Saturday morning that’s pretty incredible. You see prison differently than when you view it from the outside.”
Sophie Pouteau is another one of DeNevi’s card-carrying volunteers. She’s a compe ive league player at the exclusive Peninsula Tennis Club in nearby Tiburon, but when she’s on the court at San Quentin, she might as well be a world away. She says she didn’t hesitate when an acquaintance asked her to participate.
“What I’m providing is social interaction that could potentially be a bit of rehabilitation,” says the recently divorced mother of two. “The interaction between inmates is very different than the inmates interacting with somebody from the outside. I guess what I’m doing is exit rehabilitation, getting them ready to reenter society. It can only be a positive. I think they thrive on that.”
“Many of these guys are getting an education that they never would have gotten if they were out on the street. Many of them come from underprivileged communities, so they never had an opportunity to learn, to develop, to grow,” she adds.
When I ask her how her friends and family have responded to her unusual calling, Pouteau retorts, “People just basically think I’m crazy.”
DeNevi’s volunteers were so taken by the program that they spearheaded a fundraising effort to build a new court for the inmates. Others soon joined the cause. The USTA NorCal stepped in and provided a matching grant, simultaneously launching a tennis-education initiative in which DeNevi’s lifers shared life lessons with at-risk students. Santa Rosa-based Ghilotti Construction put down the asphalt, and Plexipave agreed to donate all the surfacing materials. A year later, thanks to some hard work from the inmates, the fence posts went up. Despite the fact that the new court is a foot or two short on each end, it’s a marked improvement. Raphael Calix calls it his “court of dreams.”
After experiencing that poor excuse for a court in my early visits to San Quentin, a new one certainly made sense. But I couldn’t help but wonder what the reaction might be on the outside. How would average, law-abiding nine-to-fivers feel about a new tennis court going up in a prison yard? In an era of rapidly eroding recreational space, when more and more courts are being bulldozed to make room for condos, why should a group of convicts be en led to a new facility? Is this really our idea of corporal punishment? But DeNevi’s face contorts at the idea that anyone would disapprove.
“If we keep our men busy and active in recreational programs, they’re not going to get in trouble, they’re not going to kill each other,” he says. “If they hit tennis balls, they don’t hit each other. Are we that punitive to men who killed when they were young — in their teens, primarily? All of them will acknowledge that what they did was utter stupidity. These aren’t cold-blooded, borderline personalities like you’ll find on Death Row.”
Denevi should know. In addition to supervising the rec program, he counsels two Death Row inmates once a week.
From the moment I first stepped inside the famed prison that Chronicle columnist Herb Caen used to call the “Bastille by the Bay,” I’ve struggled to wrap my mind around such a complex story. I’ve had to ask myself some tough questions. Fortunately, I’m not here to judge. The California courts have already done that for me. I know that if someone took the life of someone close to me, I would have a difficult time turning the other cheek. Yet here, in this unforgiving environment, where I’ve met men who have battled for decades to come to terms with their transgressions and have striven to become better people, I can’t help but feel that there is some humanity inside these walls. These inmates could be breaking rocks. But if hitting a yellow ball back and forth across a net, subs uting racket for pickax, can help them feel like they have some value, some purpose in life, then so be it.
• • • • •
February 16, 2007 is a day Juan Arevalo won’t soon forget. Governor Schwarzenegger had finally rubber-stamped his parole. After 28 years, this was to be his last day as prisoner C-04938, his last day behind bars. Or so he thought. He was supposed to walk out of prison for good that day. But at 9 a.m., he was led by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to an awaiting van, his arms and feet in shackles, and driven south to the ICE headquarters in San Francisco.
In another time, Arevalo might have been a free man, reunited with his wife Judy and his two daughters. But it’s a post-9/11 world now, and his Peruvian citizenship has suddenly become a big issue. Despite the fact that he has been in the U.S. since 1969, that he has several job offers lined up on the outside, that his family resides in the Bay Area and eagerly awaits his return, deportation is now a distinct possibility. To this day, he remains in custody at the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, California, awaiting word on whether he will be granted political asylum.
When I last connect with Juan on the phone, he speaks with his usual calm, but I can tell his nerves are frayed.
“This is not an easy pill to swallow, but I’m handling it just like I handled San Quentin,” he says. “My faith is strong that everything happens for a reason.”
He spends his days working in the jail’s kitchen and lives in a single-bed cell. He’s been issued three uniforms, consisting of khaki pants, a navy blue T-shirt and canvas shoes. His kitchen job affords him the occasional perk, like pizza on Friday nights. He’s allowed to watch a DVD movie once or twice a week. He’s teaching a Bible class again and has taken some of the younger detainees under his wing. But his purgatorial state is taking a toll.
“It’s dead time in here,” he says.
Arevalo is allotted 15 minutes for phone calls. During our conversation, a monitor periodically breaks in on the line, prompting us on how much time we have remaining. Five minutes left. He describes how his daughter Bonnie, whom he calls his “anchor,” is gathering support, how he had hoped to be released in time to see his daughter Olga graduate from college. Two minutes left. He laments how he’s not allowed any personal belongings, how he wishes he had a typewriter so he could get back to his writing, how he misses his tennis. And then the line goes dead.
Thanks for your replies Angel. Nice to see you're consistent. Can't complain with that.
I gotta say, they make a good point...
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
