Renny Cushing, one of the founders of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, has passed away this year, which precisely marks the 20th anniversary of that foundation. Renny was always present to witness the presence of children of anti-capital murder victims. His testimony was always very impressive and others were adding to his. He was a Democratic deputy in the New Hampshire congress and managed to abolish capital punishment there On the occasion of his death Mario Marazziti, founder of the NGO San Egidio that deals with poverty and solidarity and also with the abolition of the death penalty and maintains the annual initiative of the night of the illuminated cities against capital punishment has written the following text that we reproduce:
Mario Marazziti.
Meet the amazing Renny!
“It was bitterly cold outside the Glass Palace in New York on December 17, 2000. We were a small demonstration after three million signatures collected from around the world by Sant'Egidio were handed over to Kofi Annan, calling for an end to the death penalty. We were there Susan Sarandon, Helen Préjean, Tim Robbins, others, Renny Cushing, who I didn't know very well, a human rights activist.
Seven years later, in 2007, at a key moment for the historic adoption of the first resolution for a universal moratorium by the UN General Assembly, there were five million signatures from 152 countries, from all cultures and religions, that we delivered the day before the vote to the President of the Assembly. These petitions radically rejected the argument that had blocked everything for 15 years, namely that the moratorium was an imposition of the European vision of human rights, a “cultural imperialism”.
The day before, we had dinner in New York with Sister Helen Prejean and Renny, who had meanwhile founded the MVFHR association, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, along with others in 2004: “When a death row inmate is killed, other victims are created, who are certainly innocent: the children, the wives, the parents, the friends of those who are premeditatedly killed by the State”Renny declared. “Eliminating the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator only adds one more death and has nothing to do with healing the victims' pain.”.
He knew whereof he spoke. On June 1, 1988, a neighbor, a retired police officer, knocked on the door as on other occasions. But when he opened the door Mr. Cushing, a professor “progressive” of Irish origin, who had questioned the beating given by the police to a detained girl when she was going to a party, opened the door, the former policeman had become a murderer. Two shots to the chest, blood in the hallway and on the walls. In his way, a “political assassination”, a “lesson”. Renny is the one who cleaned his house of the marks of this hate. “Before my father's murder, I had already developed a framework of values that included respect for life and rejection of the death penalty. For me to change these values and beliefs because my father had been assassinated would only have given more power to his assassins, who would not only take away his life, but also what he transmitted to me. This is also true for society, because the death penalty turns us all into murderers: it turns us into what we are horrified and abhorred.
Death was not satisfied: a few years later, her brother's husband was also murdered. But it wasn't easy to break Renny. He was then captain of the high school football team, when he had long sideburns, a restless boy, committed Christian and curious about the world who, at 16, had bought a travel card to cross the United States by road. Wanting to go to New Orleans, he ended up in California. “I'm a hopeless romantic, an aging revolutionary”he joked.
A human fighter. One of those who want to change the world since they were children and who would not stop until his last day, at 69 years old. Generation of gospel Y beat. In a provincial world I already had a passport at the age of 18. He visited Latin America and eventually Louisiana, where he saw the same latent hatred that had murdered M.L. King in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968: he always kept the picture of him in his office as the leader of the New Hampshire Democrats. He was once arrested when he and the Clamshell Alliance marched down the train tracks to stop the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.
But in his life accompanying the families of the victims, telling them that only forgiveness can begin to heal and that only life can repair what has been shattered, he did not stray far from this house green as penicillin. “Staying in that house was the way to get my life back. My roots could not be taken from me. And it was transformed. The ground where my father's blood pools were is where my daughters learned to crawl and walk. “A tenacious, Renny.
Thus, New Hampshire, a Republican state whose motto is “Live free or die”, abolished the death penalty on the fourth attempt. It had already been abolished by a majority, but the governor vetoed it. A year later, in 2019, the Senate approved it by more than two-thirds of the vote, making the governor's veto impossible. Senator Ward, a Republican whose family member had also been killed, also voted with Renny. A man with a cult of friendship and a global vision, respected even by his opponents. He also spoke of the harmfulness of his cancer. He was afraid that he would not be able to finish what he had started. However, the abolition of the death penalty and life are stronger because Renny no longer has the limitations of time and space and the final fatigue of his body and, as they say in these cases, he continues to fight with us. . “
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