Mario Marazziti: 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty

KPFA Radio 94.1FM , with American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California,

Amnesty International USA/SF, Death Penalty Focus and California People of Faith

Working Against the Death Penalty, present

MARIO MARAZZITI

“13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty”

Hosted by Matt Cherry

Wednesday, April 15, 7:30 PM

The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Streeet, Berkeley

$12 advance tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1337463 :: 800-838-3006 or Pegasus (3 sites), Moe’s Books, Walden Pond Bookstore, Diesel a Bookstore, Mrs. Dalloway’s Books SF: Modern Times, $15 door, KPFA benefit www.kpfa.org/events

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In Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty, Italian journalist and legislator Mario Marazziti achieves what might sound impossible: a book about the death penalty that takes on this weightiest of subjects in a charming and intimate way, bringing home the vast numbers of people impacted and why the stakes are high not only for those on Death Row but for us all.

To understand the death penalty, Mario Marazziti says, you have to go to Texas. In 2000, having seen San Quentin in California, Marazziti went to Texas, and that has made a tremendous difference. After that trip came his friendships with many men sentenced to death. After that came the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the moratorium on executions in individual countries, the growing movement for abolition of the death penalty worldwide, the presentation of 3.2 million signatures to the United Nations’ Secretary General, the UN General Assembly’s statement against the inhumanity of capital punishment, and the pledges of several dozen countries to abolish the death penalty or suspend its use. And out of it came the thirteen ways of looking at the death penalty presented in Marazziti’s new book.

“...a deeply moving and cogently argued account of what an abominable practice, the death penalty, should be abolished. It dehumanizes those who use it. Its mistakes cannot be corrected.” — Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Mario Marazziti co-founded the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in 2002. He is the longtime spokesperson for the Community of Sant’Egidio, a progressive Catholic NGO based in Rome, in Trastevere.

In 2012 he was elected to the lower house of the Italian parliament, where he pursues a broad human-rights portfolio. He lives in Rome.

Matt Cherry is the Executive Director of Death Penalty Focus, a San Francisco-based non-profit working for alternatives to the death penalty.