Dear Fellow Worker--
Many thanks--I will check this out--
it is almost time for the execution--
it is on all the morning news as the crows are cawing madly here
I am a Roman Catholic--as Mcveigh--
at Mass the Priest talked a long time about the execution--
it has been turned into a kind of bizarre circus--
I want to read the article as I don't believe in it having been in prison in
many places around the world and also I don't understand any of it--but I did
think of the film DEAD MAN WALKING with Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon--maybe
you know it?--it is about the idea of Redemption--and yesterday was a Holy
Day of Mystery--
I have a friend now on death row so I think a lot about it--
I think it is wrong to turn death into this kind of spectacle--yet did remind
me of the book DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH by Michel Foucault--
do you know that?
he has a very interesting thesis about the change from executions being
public in the Middle Ages to becoming private and solitary in the Age of
Reason-the era of surveillance and so on--the infamous--totalizing eye of a
power within the prison--
I think it is remarkable in a way that this has resurfaced--
in part DEAD MAN WALKING was about this--
many people I know think that this execution is indeed a drama that McVeigh
has planned--to be a kind of martyr--
it is a very complex question--
what really was his motivation? around the world there is violence of the
individual or disenfranchised against violence of the state--
but was that so in this case?
I have participated for years now in mail art and visual poetry against death
penalty and trying to examine these questions, which are very profound--
in this case it is very very hard to know what the truth is any more--
it has moved from being something which may be fathomed in a way and moved
into the realm of what Guy Debord called his book and thesis--THE SOCIETY OF
THE SPECTACLE--
it has moved into a realm which is very difficult to grasp--
and perhaps that is the deep sadness of it--
all my best and thank you for yr. note
david baptiste
