From Death Row to Guantánamo

It is no secret that the United States of America has long been involved – both directly and indirectly – in the use of torture. Prisoners shocked with electricity, gassed, injected with lethal chemical cocktails, hung from ropes and wires… all while being beaten, sedated, starved, deprived of human contact, kept in cages, and denied medical care.

This is clearly torture, at all levels. And this is what goes on right here on North American soil.

To date, over 1,000 U.S. prisoners have been murdered while in custody of our “corrections” departments. Over 1,000 U.S. prisoners have been hung, shot, electrocuted, gassed, and lethally injected since 1977. And over 3,500 more await the same fate in over 40 death rows across the country.

I live only a few blocks from one of our country’s busiest death rows, in Raleigh, North Carolina. I correspond regularly with prisoners who await their execution. I sit and eat with their families as they come to visit on death row. I stand vigil outside the prison in the dead of night as prisoners are strapped to gurneys and injected with chemicals that kill. I watch as prisoners are murdered behind prison walls, and as the surviving families on the outside bear the burden of this torture – the deathly torture of their loved ones and the emotional and psychological torture that they experience themselves.

This is the reality of capital punishment and of capital prisons in the United States. Torture is judicially allowed, state sponsored, and federally upheld. So, it is not a surprise, but a continuation of my horror to see what transpires under the sickening guise of government torture policy abroad, which is made painfully evident by the situation at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

For over six years I have been working against the death penalty as a volunteer with Amnesty International USA. This work is grounded in the mandate that human rights apply to all people, regardless of who they are, whom they associate with, or what they have done. Within this mandate is the call for all nations, governments, and citizens to abandon and condemn prisoner torture, “disappearances” and executions.

At the same time, I have also been a person of faith inspired by the tradition of the Catholic Worker Movement. Within this theology, I operate out of a belief that all people are created in God’s image and it is our collective responsibility to nurture love and compassion for all people, including the so-called enemy. It is my duty (a work of mercy) to stem violence both at its roots and its reaching branches. This means eliminating torture, war, and the death penalty.

In learning about the military torture seen in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and other prisons around the world, I have felt called to bear witness at the prison itself, in the same spirit that I stand witness outside of the prison here in my own North Carolina backyard.

Since I live in the United States, Guantánamo is the closest-to-home location of some of these detentions and alleged abuses. Because I feel led to the power of personal witness, there is no reason to not go there to bear witness to the torture taking place in my name as a program of the U.S. military.

I choose to put my body on the line, literally, for human rights, mercy and compassion because I believe that an ocean, or a border, or a travel restriction should not stop us from standing up for what is right.

So, in that disarming spirit that calls each one of us to speak out against the inhumanity of torture, I make my way to the gates of Guantánamo. It is the same gate that hides the true face of torture all across the world: from Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Cuba, to American Death Rows. I go to let the gates down, and to expose the evil show for what it really is.