What You Should Really Be Doing
I’ve just come from a talk given by Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve.
Reprieve is an organisation that helps impoverished people who are facing the death penalty and promotes the ideas of human rights in general.
I don’t think I can do justice in this medium to the bravery, intelligence and goodness of this man and his organisation.
He has saved hundreds of lives and engineered the release of hundreds of people from an anonymous hell of illegal imprisonment and torture.
And he’s funny. Really funny. he started off telling us about a man who was serving six years in a maximum security prison in Georgia for committing the act of oral sex with his wife (it’s illegal in 26 US states. You do it three times, you get life in prison without parole). In the end, Clive got him off (ha ha).
But then he makes brilliant points about the corruption and hypocrisy that goes on in the British and American governments as far as their human rights records go.
Check out the website or YouTube channel and do something to contribute to this cause.
You know it’s going to be roughly a million times better than absolutely anything else you’ve got planned.
UPDATE: The talk was held at This Is Real Art, and this is their blog post about it. Thanks to Paul, George, Kate and all the good people at TIRA.