Michale Graves tours in support of Damien Echols

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

 

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