USA - Kush's death row campaign (CA)

USA - California. More un Lush’s campaign to commute California’s death row

January 20, 2026:

January 20, 2026 - California. Inside Lush’s ‘bat signal’ call for Gov. Newsom to commute California’s death row

How many petition signatures resulted from Lush’s 9-day regional campaign to end the death penalty in California?

Lush, the cosmetics company known for its Intergalactic and Snow Fairy bath bombs, shone a “bat signal” near California’s State Capitol building last week, encouraging Gov. Gavin Newsom to commute the death penalty.

The light projection, which was displayed across 5 floors of windows on the Sacramento high-rise, declared: “Calling Governor Newsom. Time to commute death row.”

To further “shine a light” on California’s death row, Lush plastered anti-death penalty signage in the windows of its 35 California locations and urged customers to sign a petition calling on Newsom to commute death sentences to life-in-prison sentences. California-based nonprofits U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Responsible Business Initiative for Justice and Clemency California teamed up with Lush for the campaign.

“We’re off to an unbelievable start to 2026 when it comes to politics,” Lush North America’s advocacy and activism campaigner Seth Laxman explained. “It would be a huge deal for California, the state with the largest death row population, to wipe the death penalty out, to not have the death penalty be the status quo in the state anymore and to push back against the Trump administration.”

Around 560 of those incarcerated in California have death sentences, which Newsom has the power to commute to life-in-prison sentences, Laxman said. Although the state hasn’t held an execution in 20 years, the U.S. recorded its highest capital punishment levels in 16 years in 2025, following President Trump’s order last January to restore the death penalty.

The 9-day, in-house regional campaign may seem out of left field, but Lush has run human rights-focused projects since its start in 1995. This May, Lush shuttered its 113 U.K. locations to bring awareness to starvation rates in Gaza. In the past, it suspended product supplies to all 48 Russian locations to support Ukraine and partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to fundraise for trans-led organizations.

“Whenever we do something like this, there’s always a thought in the back of our minds saying, ‘What if there’s a huge blowback? What if it’s a huge controversy?’” Laxman explained. “With an issue as delicate as the death penalty, the reception has been incredibly positive.”

From January 9 through January 20, Lush reported 414 signatures from customers to commute California’s death row.

This month’s campaign pulls from Lush’s 2017 Death ≠ Justice campaign, which premiered a documentary about Ohio death row exoneree Kwame Ajamu titled Exonerated; and released a 31 States bath bomb spotlighting the 31 states with the death penalty at the time. All of the bath bomb’s proceeds were donated to organizations including Witness to Innocence, Death Penalty Focus and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The Death ≠ Justice’s national petition, which called for all members of Congress to abolish the death penalty, collected 23,737 total online and in-store signatures.

“The death penalty is one of the untouchable issues. For us to take that stance in 2017, it was quite controversial and one of the campaigns where our staff saw more pushback than normal,” Laxman explained. “But it also sparked some of the most impactful conversations. It created a space for people to talk about something we’re ‘not supposed to’ talk about because it’s too hard, too raw or too difficult.”

This time around, Lush’s strategy was “focused on the call to action,” as the partnering organizations didn’t list fundraising as their No. 1 priority, Laxman explained. Instead of selling death penalty abolitionist bath bombs or premiering a documentary, Lush’s “main focus was for staff to invite customers to take action” with in-store petitions from January 9 through January 20, Laxman said, adding the projected call to action near California’s State Capitol building was in an effort to meet Newsom “on his own physical turf.”

Newsom has historically condemned the death penalty and signed an executive moratorium on executions in California in 2019. Most of Lush’s campaign assets use “quotes from the governor himself — because in a lot of ways, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves,” Laxman said.

“It’s urgent for Gov. Newsom to do this now. He’s always had a clear and strong stance in opposition to capital punishment, and it’s important to make sure that whoever comes into power next cannot undo the progress California has made,” Laxman said. He added that this campaign shows “there are opportunities for companies to take actions that really make a difference, that aren’t performative and that their customers want to see.”

https://www.campaignlive.com/article/inside-lushs-bat-signal-call-gov-newsom-commute-californias-death-row/1945770