Why people like me stand outside Central Prison in Raleigh every Monday

Three of us stood vigil at Central Prison in Raleigh last Monday, protesting the death penalty in punishing heat.

Propped in the bushes behind us on the prison grounds were signs saying things like “Why do we execute people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong?” We display additional signs in our hands so that passing motorists on Western Boulevard can see them.

One or more of us have been there every Monday for many years, from 5 to 6 p.m.

Prior to 2006, when a series of lawsuits created a de facto moratorium on executions, hundreds of us thronged the prison on execution nights in full-throated protest that at 2 a.m., unless the governor intervened, our state would commit a murder in our names. Sometimes, family members of the condemned came out of the prison to join us and shared stories about the inmate they loved.

In those days, the holly bushes in which we now nest our signs were kept short, reaching just to the top of a low fence along the back of the sidewalk. Death row faced Western Boulevard on the front side of the prison. When we lifted our candles we would sometimes see a light shining back at us from the narrow window of a prison cell.

Today, death row has been moved to the side of the prison and the bushes in front have been allowed to grow talI. Inmates can no longer see or hear us. We can no longer see their lights.

Public sentiment about the death penalty is evolving. Today, motorists passing by on Western Boulevard honk, wave, give us a thumbs up or a shouted “Thank you!”

It may not seem like much to stand for an hour on a city street once a week, but we of scrappy spirits and crabby joints are not young. There is no shade in front of Central Prison. There is nowhere to sit or to lean, even when a poorly cut toenail is digging into the toe next to it and there are still 20 minutes to go.

We stand on a black asphalt sidewalk which burns our feet in summer and freezes them in winter. We stand even when the skies drench or pelt us, even when the merciless sun is unmitigated by a breeze. Even when we dearly want to leave, we stay, honoring a contract with ourselves best explained by Frederick Douglass, the former slave who became a leader in the abolitionist movement:

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”

We who vigil against the death penalty are not saints, martyrs or masochists, and we resent those characterizations. We are citizens aware that we are privileged to live in freedom, the preservation of which demands our close attention to our government’s policies. We practice concerted action on behalf of values we believe our flag should represent.

On Monday, as sure as the sun, we will stand vigil in its heat, each of us a peaceful, awful roar.

Margaret Toman lives in Garner.