Fault Lines

An Executioner's Task

By Josh Rushing in Fault Lines on February 22nd, 2012

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Michael Selsor will soon die by homicide.

The US Supreme Court this week declined to hear the Oklahoma death row inmate's case. When I interviewed Selsor in 2010, he seemed resigned to his execution. This week's decision removed its final legal hurdle.

If calling Selsor's death by lethal injection homicide sounds loaded, then I suggest you complain to the State of Oklahoma.

Upon Selsor's passing, the state will issue a death certificate as it does for every person who dies in Oklahoma. For Micheal Selsor the cause of death will be listed as homicide, a fact that the head of the Oklahoma prison system, Justin Jones, admitted was "ironic" when I interviewed him for this episode of Fault Lines.

I plan to attend Selsor's execution if I'm in the country, a decision that has stirred quite a debate among my colleagues.

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#OWS: The human mic

By Andrea Schmidt in Fault Lines on October 10th, 2011

You can hear it blocks away from Liberty Plaza near Wall Street, where an ever growing number of protesters have occupied the square for the past three weeks.

Thousands of voices, conversing, debating, speechifying, united in a kind of call and response cadence that crescendos in waves.

The New York Police Department prohibits the use of electronic sound amplifiers - megaphones, microphones and loudspeakers - without a permit. The occupiers do not have one.

So they are using what they call the human mic.

It works like this; the person addressing the crowd in the shadow of the large angular sculpture that stands at the corner of Broadway and Cedar and is universally referred to as 'the red thing' shouts:

“It’s a beautiful night...”

Those seated around her respond by repeating:

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