Explication texte : The journey of hope, from violence to healing 6654

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The Journey of Hope, from violence to healing

Introduction

This document is an article which comes from Speakeasy. it was published on January-February 2008 and is entitle ?The Journey ...?.

This article deals with Bill Pelke and his fight against the death penalty.

It is composed of 2 text : at the left a text about the Bill Pelke’s loss in his family and an interview of Bill about the death penalty in the US.

In a first part I’m going to explain the Bills Pelke’s way from violence to healing and then, in a second part, I’m going to wonder if the US will abolish the death penalty ?

I ? Bill Pelke : from violence to healing

In 1985, he brutally lost a family member. Indeed his grand-mother was a Bible teacher so she let four teenage girls come in her house but they was just pretexting and they violently killed her. The leader of the group, Paula Cooper was condemned to the death penalty. Bill went through different feelings :

- First he agreed with the sentence, he had a desire for revenge (a human normal feeling)

- But then he changed his point of view because he understood that his grand-mother would have never supported this for Paula Cooper and her family.

Bill says ?it was a weigh on my shoulders? (l...) because he had to forgive to Paula Cooper. He felt obliged to ?show? and not to ?feel? ?love and compassion?. Religion preaches forgiveness but is it easy for someone to a murdered ? So Bill get in (c’est enfermer) the prayer.

According to him, seeing someone die makes it worse, the murder victims’ families need compassion.

He fought a lot to have Paul Cooper’s sentence can called. And since this affair, he’s been fighting against the Death Penalty.

Now he is Chairman of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and president of the Journey of Hope, an organisation of people who have had a family member murdered and who are opposed to the death penalty.

II ? Will America abolish the death penalty ?

The death penalty is deeply rooted in the American religious culture ( talion law ?eye for eye, tooth for tooth?).

However (cependant), there is positive and optimistic changes :

• 37 states abolished the death penalty

• it’s due to the DNA tests which permitted to reveal that some were executed whereas they were actually innocent.

• Bill quotes the example of Illinois where the governor took all prisoner off the Death Row (quartier des condamnés a mort) and revoked/cancelled their sentences to a life sentence because innocent people might be put to death.