In Response To The Legalized Murder Of Teresa Lewis

Wikipedia entry about Teresa Lewis.

Website dedicated to her.

This is my response to the execution of this woman (and to executions/value of life in general):

Thoughts on this execution--and on executions in general...

1.  Some people kill for money while other people kill for votes.
2.  If our government is trying to keep people believing that the death penalty is a just and wonderful thing, I don't think that they have exactly chosen the right executee to promote this sort of a mindset.
3.  Is Virginia better off tonight than it was 24 hours ago--or during the entire eight years when Teresa Lewis' comforting singing, listening heart, and spiritual support was helping troubled inmates to turn their lives around?
4.  Even though facts tell us the opposite, it costs a lot less to keep somebody alive for a lifelong prison term than it does to get them executed because every i must be dotted and every t must be crossed before an execution takes place in order to cut down on errors being made to where innocent people get executed--and notice that I said cut down on instead of totally cut out.
5.  Back during the time when people were fighting for the life of Terri Schiavo (which consisted of her right to food and fluids), those in favor of letting her die of starvation and dehydration often pointed out how "expensive" it was to keep her alive--bringing about an opinion I've held since the re-starting of executions here in the USA:  that the money/value of life issue would make its way upward from executions to mercy killing to a more contemporary version of the Holocaust.  We're closer to phase three than we'd like to admit...

Please Sign This Petition!!!

Online petition - Save Zeinab Jalalian (زینب جلالیان) from Execution

Thank God, It Gets Better Than This!!!

He/She Didn't Qualify

I'm now managing the online store for Invisible Youth and am creating products to sell there. Among the products are t-shirts that bear this original poem:

He Didn't Qualify

Society remained comfortable
with putting a child who needed major surgery
on his emotional well-being
into one program after another
that had only band-aids to offer.
There were places he could have gone
to get the help he needed,
but he didn't qualify.
He was always either
too bright or too slow;
too young or too old;
too financially well-off
or not financially well-off enough;
too this or too that.
He grew to be a man,
and his problems grew worse--
MUCH WORSE!
There was a cell on death-row
and an execution date--
He qualified.

Ainsley Jo Phillips

along with a version I wrote with a female as the main character instead of a male:

She Didn't Qualify

Society remained comfortable
with putting a child who needed major surgery
on her emotional well-being
into one program after another
that had only band-aids to offer.
There were places she could have gone
to get the help she needed,
but she didn't qualify.
She was always either
too bright or too slow;
too young or too old;
too financially well-off
or not financially well-off enough;
too this or too that.
She grew to be a woman,
and her problems grew worse--
MUCH WORSE!
There was a cell on death-row
and an execution date--
She qualified.

Ainsley Jo Phillips

Thanks, in advance, for visiting our store and website. Please noise us around...