Skip to Content
Home

Step 5: Pack the room for the vote

Step 5: Pack the room for the vote

Councilmembers rarely get mailboxes of letters on a particular resolution, nor do they see packed council rooms for many of their votes. They will pay more attention if it is clear that the community is behind the resolution.

Ask local residents fill the hearing room when the resolution is debated. Find out how many people can speak in favor of the resolution and make sure you have speakers ready. Let your sponsor know that you are lining up support.

Encourage people to focus their remarks on the issues of basic fairness that underlie the need for a moratorium. Remember, you are not asking people to vote against the death penalty in theory, but rather to pause and take a hard look at how it is working in practice.

Make sure at least one speaker is ready to talk about why the death penalty is an appropriate issue for the council to vote on. See The Death Penalty: Whose Business is it? for talking points on this topic.

Success story: 

Organizers in El Paso, TX knew they had a tough road ahead of them when they asked the El Paso County Commission to pass a moratorium resolution. The El Paso Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty circulated an action alert with the date and time of the vote, saying "A packed courthouse passed the resolution in other cities and counties in the U.S. It is the most important activity for EPADP of the year, or perhaps the decade!" Several speakers gave powerful testimony, including a death row inmate who was exonerated and several family members whose loved ones were murdered. Another local citizen read a letter to the council from a prosecutor in another part of the state. The fanfare caught the attention of the councilmembers, who voted 4-1 to pass the resolution!

Syndicate content