My initial and searing first-hand experience with the death penalty in Illinois was as the spiritual advisor to Andrew Kokoraleis, who was the last person to be executed in Illinois, almost five years ago to the day I write this.

Ministering to Andrew at the hour of his greatest need showed me in the most personal way that the death penalty is a direct and brutal challenge to our very humanity and decency as a society. I made a commitment to rise up against this barbarity. I am so pleased to serve as President of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty at this historic time in the struggle for abolition of the death penalty. I urge all of us as members and supporters of abolition to rise up. When we rise up and cross the threshold of a new moral awakening, we realize that people cannot be divided into dehumanizing categories of any kind. We cannot characterize some lives as "innocent" and valuable, while others are "guilty" and dispensable. We cannot affirm the sophistry underlying a position that pretends to uphold the value of human life by imposing the death penalty on those we think may be guilty of killing.

When distinctions are made between which lives have value and which lives do not, some are relegated to a category which makes them less human than others. Some are deemed deserving of clemency; others are not. Some lives—so-called ‘innocent lives’—are found to be worth sparing, while so-called ‘guilty’ lives are treated as dispensable. Tragically and shamefully, this reality has come to fruition in the institutionalized bias, bigotry and racism that seems to pervade the application of the death penalty in our State of Illinois. And no amount of ‘reforms’ can fix those flaws either. All of us are today called to rise up anew and to tear down those deadly biases.

Together, we can return humanity and decency to our criminal justice system. In this newsletter, we share the results of the important work being performed by the Coalition. There are also details about exciting statewide events that you can participate in. All of us together can and will abolish the death penalty in Illinois.