Biography

Biography of Warren Gamaliel Lilly, Jr.

Warren Gamaliel Lilly, Jr. Is the son of Warren Gamaliel Lilly, Sr. and Carrie Louise Dixon Lilly Akins. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama on January 16, 1951. His family consists of five brothers, five sisters, two daughters, and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins.

He served in the U.S. Air Force, has a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and Computer Science, and credits towards his Masters in Computer Science. For nearly twenty years he was the sole proprietor of Lilly Consulting and System Services in Milwaukee, WIsconsin.

He is a secular humanist who believes that the humanity of a person arises not from externally applied laws but from intrinsic values universally shared by all people, and that the primary duty of government is to enhance the value, capacity and worth of all its citizens.

Since 2003 he has been imprisoned on a domestic violence charge, and since 2004 he has been hunger striking to protest his illegal imprisonment and the abusive overuse of imprisonment, particularly as it has been applied to nonviolent Americans. In protest he does not eat, wear clothing or recognize the authority of the state to hold him without fair trial. He is chained and force-fed thrice daily Monday through Saturday.

Warren Lilly’s hunger strike objectives

The five objectives of his hunger strike are:

1. The release from prison of all Americans held for nonviolent social conflict, and the prohibition of the imprisonment of the nonviolent. It is both a moral and fiscal irresponsibility to imprison nonviolent Americans when community-based options would better serve the individual and the nation.

2. A constitutional limit on the number of Americans that can be held by any authority (federal, state, county, city) to 1 in 1250 per U.S. census count, and the planned quadrennially downward revision of this limit as a spur to improving the delivery of educational and social services.

3. A consolidation of state laws which govern imprisonment into national (non-federal) laws. We are a nation of people not a nation of states, the laws which govern our freedoms must be uniform in order to remove regional biases.

4. The prohibition of the practices of parole and probation. As imprisonment has a negligibly positive effect in changing the behavior of individuals even less is that behavior changed by parole and probation. They serve no purpose other than to extend imprisonment and to entrap those least likely to obey excessive restrictions on their freedoms.

5. The prohibition of the practice of disenfranchisement and the re-enfranchisement of all disenfranchised Americans. There must be an end to retribution, to perpetually punish an individual who has served time for a wrong done is a wrong in itself. The intrusion of government into an individual’s life should always be minimal and done to restore him to society not to permanently alienate him.

Fiscally Responsible Humanism

Fiscally Responsible Humanism is a philosophy of government that when applied to the creation of laws sets the enhancement of the values, capacities, and worth of its citizens as government’s primary law making goal, and requires that this goal be achieved in a fiscally responsible manner.

Laws created under this philosophy must pass through four filters:

1. It must make sense: The proposed law must be logically and morally sound, the reasoning supporting its implementation must be logically irrefutable, and its resulting effect morally consistent with the nation's ethical standards;

2. It must do no harm: No law passed must harm the individuals it will affect and especially it must do no harm to those indirectly affected who have no recourse, the focus of government must always be toward the enhancement of its citizens lives;

3. It must solve the problem: The law must do what it was designed to do, laws targeted to specific issues must effectively and narrowly address those issues and timely bring about a diminution of the problem, and;

4. It must be fiscally responsible: A cost versus benefit analysis must be part of every proposed law, that analysis must include: 1) the demographics of the affected population, 2) the cost to implement and enforce the law, 3) the cost of the projected custodial and/or rehabilitative services, and 4) a comparison of alternate, less expensive solutions.