Post by CCADP on May 6, 2005 6:30:12 GMT -5
Walking for a cause
Shannon Brennan / sbrennan@newsadvance.com
May 6, 2005
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Lisa Thomas doesn’t believe a civilized society should execute people or let them go hungry, so the 52-year-old Alabama woman is personally carrying that message to Washington, D.C. - on foot.
She marched into Lynchburg about noon Thursday on U.S. 29 with an orange vest and a swing in her step as she listened to a local radio station on her headphones.
“I feel so good,” she said.
Thomas started her 925-mile, six-state journey on March 28 with no preconditioning. She started walking 20 miles a day on the “big feet and big legs” she said God blessed her with to spread a message dear to her heart.
“We all know who won American Idol 2004, but do we know if our neighbors are hungry?” reads the rear placard on the van accompanying her on her trek. The van, driven by friend Frank Mason, doubles as sleeping space when they have no homes or churches open to them.
She hasn’t gotten any argument about the message on hunger; it’s the one on the side that provokes a certain amount of ire.
“Walk for hunger and a moratorium on the death penalty,” it reads.
Thomas, who runs a food bank in Brewton, Ala., said she didn’t set out to protest capital punishment. She only had the hungry people she feeds on her mind. But at a meeting in Birmingham about a month before she planned to leave, someone mentioned that the state was getting ready to execute Mario Centobie. The lack of response from those in attendance produced some ire in Thomas.
“People cannot be that nonchalant about a date coming up for a person on death row,” she said. “… Why do we have to execute people?
“If there’s a 1 percent chance an innocent person is going to die, you shouldn’t do it.”<br>
People who kill others, or condone their deaths, have “God complexes,” she said.
Thomas said it made her mad when President Bush and Congress tried to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case by saying we should err on the side of life.
“The only erring Mr. Bush did in Texas was cleaning out the death chambers,” she said.
Thomas wrote Bush saying she would like to meet with him, but the White House told her his schedule would make that impossible. Instead, she will deliver a letter to U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Ala.
She did get to visit with Bob Riley, the governor of Alabama, on her way to Washington, but said she had no luck persuading him to place a moratorium on executions.
Thomas has run into some people who were less cordial.
“A truck tried to run me off the road in South Carolina,” she said.
Thomas said she has gotten a much better response in Virginia. Jack Payden-Travers, a Lynchburg resident and director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, greeted her at the North Carolina/Virginia line May 2.
Payden-Travers walked with her during part of her pilgrimage, and hosted her both Wednesday and Thursday night. He said Thomas is an unusual and dedicated activist.
“Here’s a woman who’s involved because she’s part of a minority community,” he said.
Thomas told him she opened a restaurant when she first returned to her native Alabama from California. She gave away so much food to hungry people that she closed the restaurant and opened a food bank.
Last summer, she walked to Birmingham on her first visit to Gov. Riley to talk about hunger.
“Hunger is getting worse,” she said as she stood on Wards Road Thursday with traffic whizzing by. “The middle class in being pushed down.”<br>
Thomas said the food stamp program is not reaching those who need it most, particularly the elderly and working poor.
Thomas is footing the bill for this trip herself, though she says donations are welcome. This is likely not her last walk.
“I’m thinking about taking a year off and doing the other 44 states,” she said.