The Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement was founded in 1994. We are a grassroots action and political education group. TDPAM's purposes are twofold: to abolish the racist, anti poor death penalty and to end the illegal, barbaric, torturous conditions of super max housing to which Texas is subjecting prisoners. While TDPAM has been productive in providing material assistance to prisoners and their families our greatest accomplishment is creating the opportunities to meet with prisoners and their family members as well as the community at large. We forge alliances with those who may well become impacted by the death penalty.  Our premier accomplishment(s) are those of shining the light into the dark places where deliberate malfeasance of officials and the deliberate - ness which these malefactors hide the knowledge of what they do from those who would fight for change.

Since 1994 we supported families and organized around the cases of Clarence Brandley, Ricardo Aldape Guerra, Shaka Sankofa/Gary Graham, Howard Guidry, Robert Acuna, Frances Newton and Jeff Wood, among others. We organized demonstrations at HPD headquarters to highlight crime lab atrocities; we organized to provide prisoners with fans while interned at the OB Ellis Unit; we sponsored bus trips to Austin for the annual March to Stop Executions. In addition, we have assisted family efforts to get relief for their loved one on death row, organized activists to become connected with prisoners on death row at the Ellis unit, organized bus/car caravan to raise the issues of abuse of prisoners at the board meetings of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, protested executions in Huntsville and in Houston, forged close supportive relationships with politicized death row inmates. After the escape attempt in 1998, we held public education events about the conditions of abuse, injustice and hopelessness leading to those events and assisted in the safe release in hostage taking.