A 13-year veteran of the fight against the death penalty closed Human Rights Awareness Week with a somber address condemning the practice on Friday.
Jotaka Eaddy, 27, domestic coordinator for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, portrayed the death penalty as unjust, discriminatory and increasingly outdated before an audience of about a dozen students and activists at Stiteler Hall.
According to Eaddy, a majority of Western societies have already abolished capital punishment, and an increasing number of South American, African and Central Asian nations are following suit.
Eaddy also brought broader social issues into her speech.
"The death penalty can not be viewed in an isolated social construct," Eaddy said. " It is intertwined with other gross injustices: police brutality, racial profiling, lack of housing."
She also said the vast majority of death row inmates are poor and members of minority groups. In Philadelphia, for instance, a black person is 38 percent more likely than average to be sentenced to death, Eaddy added.
She opened the presentation by showing several clips of documentaries dealing with the death penalty. The clips touched on topics ranging from individuals who have been proven innocent while on death row to the question of why many Americans want the death penalty.
Eaddy cited a number of statistics to bolster her case, including a study showing that it's five to 10 times as expensive to keep people on death row than to incarcerate them for life.
Eaddy said she hopes that her work now will eventually put her out of a job.
"I don't want to be doing this work 25 years from now," Eaddy began. "It's time to take back our streets ... control our society."
Eaddy ended her presentation with a direct appeal to the audience.
"It is important that we take a critical look at this issue," she said. "We must personalize the abstract, put a human face and story behind every case."
The event was interactive, with questions tossed back and forth between the speaker and the audience.
Some, such as College sophomore Sarah Yanes, were enthusiastic about the overall tone and content of Eaddy's speech.
Others were more skeptical.
"I found the documentaries interesting, with pretty classic arguments," Wharton and College sophomore Stefan Sabo said. "But you can prove anything with statistics. ... One has to be critical."
