We're A Very Young Country-Sabertooth Swing/Sister Helen Prejean/Weedie Braimah

We’re a very young country And violence has worked for us in the past It began with the settling of this continent and the genocide against Native Americans Then continued when we brought slaves over Now we tend to blame the poor and see them as a criminal element And use coercion and violence to control them It’s part of a cultural understanding That says the only way to subdue evil is with violence But it’s not part of human nature Look at all the countries in the world that don’t have the death penalty To some extent violence is part of our nature, but compassion is too Seeking justice for everybody is also part of human nature The death penalty is the most important civil-rights issue of our time It’s a politically symbolic issue Because it says that the way we’re going to solve problems is by violence It says that some among us are such a danger to who we are and what we stand for That they must be eliminated To arrive at this mind-set, human beings have to flip a moral switch inside that says “The Other is not human like us” And so we can do whatever we want to them And of course, the execution must be removed from the public eye The chamber is behind prison walls And we don’t hear about what goes on inside it