Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights

03/08/2022

Our founder and leader has died. The work he envisioned, led, inspired, and tirelessly pursued will live on in each of us who joined him in this work of raising up the voices of murder victims family members and families of people who were executed. We are heartbroken, leaders wirh Renny’s combination of heart, brains, vision, determination, and bravery are the rarest of all. 💔

CONCORD, N.H. — State Representative Robert “Renny’’ Cushing, who staged a massive sit-in against nuclear power in the 1970s and spent later decades standing up for social justice at the State House, died Monday at his home. He was 69.

05/20/2021

Last year, Rep. Renny Cushing got the diagnosis no one wants to hear: stage four prostate cancer. He continues to lead the House Democrats and do his life's work.

07/17/2020

New Hampshire’s Republican governor on Thursday signed into law a bill on criminal justice reform that comes almost two months after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked widespread protests. The bill would prohibit the use of chokeholds by law enforcement, ban private prisons ...

07/10/2020

State Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, spoke about his father’s murder at the hands of an off-duty Hampton police officer in 1988.

10/27/2019

We are proud to give the Peter Hoe Burling Legislative Award to the Honorable Renny Cushing!

Renny Cushing is a seven-term progressive state legislator. His involvement in New Hampshire politics dates back a half century, when, as a student at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, he organized and lobbied the legislature to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, and volunteered on the campaign of Eugene McCarthy. A lifelong advocate for social justice, and the survivor of two homicide victims, he works at the state, national, and international levels to promote human rights and support for victims of crime.

Rep. Cushing is recognized as a pioneer in the effort to build bridges between the death penalty abolition movement and the victims rights movement, and led the decades-long fight against capital punishment in New Hampshire — which culminated in May when the legislature overrode Governor Sununu’s veto of the bill repealing the death penalty. He is a founder of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights and the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and is a former member of the Board of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Renny Cushing is known for being a tireless champion of survivors. His service and advocacy at the New Hampshire State House is why he's being honored with this award, and why he’s also received the NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence’s Hall of Fame Award, the ACLU-NH’s Bill of Rights Champion Award, and was named Legislator of the Year by the National Alliance on Mental Illness-NH.

You are invited to attend the NHDP's 2019 Eleanor Roosevelt Awards this Saturday in Concord, where all of this year's awardees will be celebrated at a special evening reception. Don't wait — reserve your ticket today: https://buff.ly/2P4W8Pk

06/11/2019

The New Hampshire Legislature saw the light and was guided by it this spring in overriding Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto and finally repealing the state’s death penalty.Given that the passionate arguments for and against repeal have been rehearsed...