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The Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) in Austin was founded in 1999 on the University of Texas campus as one of many local chapters of CEDP’s national organization. As a whole, CEDP is modeled after the civil rights movement in its commitment to grassroots activism and education, multiracial organizing, and building public pressure from below to stop the death penalty. To this end, we work closely with current and exonerated death row inmates and their families to involve them directly in abolitionist work. In Austin, the CEDP helped found and build the first March to Stop Executions in Texas in 2000, now an annual event involving abolitionists, prisoners’ and victims’ families, and participants from throughout the state (and from Europe). The march itself came on the heels of intense activism throughout late 1999 and early 2000, in which CEDP and others staged a number of highly visible public events. That activism, combined with the first march, contributed to the introduction of moratorium legislation in 2001. Since 2000 CEDP has worked with other anti-death penalty organizations from around the state to conduct joint campaigns and events including the Anti-Death Penalty Alternative Spring Break. We worked with the family of Michael Scott, a defendant in Austin’s high-profile Yogurt Shop Murder case whose confession was coerced, to prevent a death sentence in 2002. Michael’s wife continues to be an activist with CEDP. Since 2002 we have been working with the family of Texas Death Row prisoner Rodney Reed to pressure officials to grant him a new trial. By petitioning, demonstrating, and working with other activists and the media, CEDP has helped bring Rodney’s case to public attention. Since our work began, a documentary film (State vs. Reed) has been made about his case, and public attention has continued to grow. Rodney’s mother Sandra now serves on CEDP’s national board, speaking out regularly for her son and against the death penalty. Most recently, CEDP led the creation of a statewide campaign on behalf of Kenneth Foster, Jr, who had an execution date of August 30, 2007. On July 24, 2007, CEDP organized a march and rally in Austin for Foster that was probably the most successful public demonstration on behalf of one death row inmate since the protests for Gary Graham in 2000.Foster's sentence was commuted to life in prison by GovernorPerry on August 30, 2007. The Austin CEDP holds regular public events, Live from Death Row events, during which a Death Row prisoner calls in and speaks about her or his experiences. Our chapter has organized demonstrations ranging from a few to a few hundred people around particular cases and events in Austin and in Bastrop, Rodney Reed’s hometown. In 2003 we hosted a stop on the Free at Last! national speaking tour featuring pardoned Death Row Ten member Madison Hobley. In 2005 we organized classroom speaking visits on the University of Texas campus for the Journey of Hope tour, featuring murder victims’ families against the death penalty, and exonerated death row prisoners. In 2005 we hosted Voices from Death Row, a national speaking tour featuring exonerated California prisoner Shujaa Graham, CEDP National Director Marlene Martin, Sandra Reed, and others.
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