On March 31, 2006
Michale Graves will spearhead a two-month long national campaign to
promote Damien Echols new book called "Almost Home". The tour,
dubbed "Almost Home 2006" will hit 55 cities across the country
leading up to WM3 World Awareness Day on June 3, 2006.
Michale says, "It is my intent to reach out to as many people as I
can, as so many others have in the past, using the media, the
internet, spoken word, music and activism to give Damien's' words
and story a greater chance of being heard and continue this fight
for truth and justice where there has been none so far. I urge
everyone to help, contribute and get involved in this anyway that
they can."
For over 10 years Damien has been an inmate on death row for a crime
he did not commit. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie
Misskelley have become known as The West Memphis Three, and though
the story of their arrest and conviction is widely known, most
people don't know the real people behind the sound bites and the TV
news segment clips. Almost Home is a message to you from a faraway
place. It is a message from a 12-foot by 9-foot cell in a
cinderblock building surrounded by coils of razor wire in the middle
of a dirt field in Arkansas. A young man named Damien Echols wrote
it and it chronicles his life and his experiences in a way that
clearly illuminates him, not as a monster, but as a human being.
Damien has spent much of his time behind bars diligently maintaining
his integrity and his sanity by writing. Almost Home is the product
of that self-discipline, and in it you will meet someone who has
survived an ordeal many of us would find impossible to live through.
This is a fascinating and disturbing case, as complicated as it is
controversial.
Please take the time to review the facts of this case by starting
with this website: www.wm3.org.
Additional information can be found in two excellent documentary
films directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky: PARADISE LOST:
THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS and its sequel PARADISE LOST:
REVELATIONS and the book DEVIL'S KNOT by Arkansas journalist Mara
Leveritt.
This case, among many other things, represents the destructive power
of superstitious hysteria when it is allowed into a contemporary
American courtroom. This issue needs to be carefully examined fairly
reported and taken on by all of us.
Thanks to the CONSERVATORY for
hosting this event:
April Mon 24 OKC
@ the Conservatory in OKC
www.conservatoryokc.com/
8911 N. Western OKC, OK 73114
http://www.michalegraves.net
