Please Call to Save Tookie Williams
This is a long entry, and the suggested action comes at the end. Here it is in brief: Call Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at (916)445-2841 to ask that he grant Stan Tookie Williams clemency. I’d meant to trim this down, but this is pressing business, and I have a lot on my plate. I hope to come back to clean this up later.
I came out of that meeting of the Food Security Task Force (held in City Hall) into a rally to save Stanley Tookie Williams. Most of the speakers were members of the United Playaz, but the Nation of Islam and the Revolutionary Communist Party were also present. Those of y’all outside of California might not know this story.
The most prominent gangs in Los Angeles history are the Bloods and the Crips. These are messy alliances, more than well-defined kingdoms, but the historic enmity between the two has been of great importance in street politics throughout the state, reaching across ethnic and racial borders: Even in San Francisco — the only city in the country (except New Orleans?) where the black population is shrinking — the Blood-Crip rivalry has been felt through alliances with the Mexican Sureños and Norteños, themselves statewide gangs.
Tookie Williams co-founded the Crips in 1969. Twelve years later, Williams was convicted of four cold robbery murders: those of Albert Owens, Yen-Yi Yang, Tsai-Shai Yang, and Yee-Chen Lin. Williams was sentenced to death. That sentence is set to be carried through on 13 December. Williams professes innocence. I’m not sure whether or not to believe him, but the evidence does seem to point to his having had an unfair trial. (See the Save Tookie Website.)
Whether or not Williams is guilty of those four crimes, he has ruined many lives: National media have given less attention to the Crips’ reign of terror in the poorer parts of Los Angeles (which perhaps says something about the comparative value we place on white, Asian, and black lives in America). Jervey Tervalon has a great op-ed in the LA Times about what it was like growing up in Williams’ LA. Williams is not unaware of the evil he has done. A Friday New York Times article:
“I have a despicable background… I was a criminal. I was a co-founder of the Crips. I was a nihilist.”
“But people forget,” he added, chewing on a turkey sandwich, “that redemption is tailor-made for the wretched.”
Redemption redemption redemption is a key theme in the debates, out here, surrounding Williams’ impending execution. It is even the title of a made-for-TV film about Williams’ life, staring Jamie Foxx. The story goes like this: In the 1980s, following assaults on guards and fellow inmates, Williams was placed in solitary confinement for six and a half years. During this time, Williams remade himself. In the ’90s, he published a series of books directed toward children, warning them away from gang violence. In 2004, Williams helped to effect a peace treaty between the Crips and the Bloods that has either ended or reduced violence between the two gangs.
So has Williams been redeemed? There are folks out here — plenty of folks — who say No. They point out that, while he’s expressed regret at his history, he has never renounced his Crips membership. He has refused to inform on others in the gang, characterising such activity as ’snitching’. He has never admitted to the four murders for which he was convicted. He’s no C-walking Jean Valjean.
Redemption is far from the only theme, here — There are folks who wonder if Williams is actually guilty (as stated above, he claims innocence of these four crimes). There’s the argument that the death penalty is barbarous. But redemption and its sister mercy keep recurring in article after article, debate after debate.
These are weirdly religious terms for what is purportedly a matter of human justice. But let one thing be clear: This is not about justice, if justice has anything to do with fairness. Stan Tookie Williams cannot die four times. He will not witness or hear the murders of loved ones moments before his own death. If he is executed, death will not come by surprise; he will wake up that morning knowing that that will be his final day. As a religious man, he will have the opportunity to come to peace with his soul and its maker. Neither will the octogenarian lawmakers, bureaucrats, and developers who benefited from the unequal growth of LA in the 1960s be granted second childhoods in ghettos and slums; they will not, cannot understand the individually and institutionally racist conditions that created the man who created the Crips. When it comes to matters of the destruction — physical or psycho-social — of human lives, justice isn’t even a tenable concept.
This is not about justice. This is not even about revenge. This is about cleansing. The State of California will, in fact, go out of its way to wash the earth of Stanley Williams. Williams has been in prison as long as I have been alive. Why? Because of a phenomenally expensive appeals process that creates an image (perhaps an illusion) of fairness: There is no question that the Universe has balanced out — there is no residue of doubt. Check out the lethal injection procedures described by the state Department of Corrections: Throughout Williams’ final days, he will be under suicide watch, as if to stress, even at the end, that his life belongs to the State. Three psychiatrists will twice examine his sanity. A chaplain will report on his ’spiritual and emotional well-being’ — even God reports to the State. All things will be settled so as to eliminate desires, and dehumanised to preclude anger — probably most symbolically through a last meal, prepared to Williams’ specifications. Half an hour before execution, he will be dressed in new clothing, and then strapped to a table. Finally, while we could have spent pocket change to shoot the man in the head, the state will instead go through a somewhat complicated chemical ruse: First, Williams will be injected with five grams of sodium pentothal, an anaesthetic and sedative which will make him appear at peace. Next, he will be injected with fifty cubic centimetres of pancuronium bromide, which will paralyse all muscles but the heart. Finally, fifty cubic centimetres of potassium chloride will stop Stan Tookie Williams’ heart from beating.
This isn’t about killing the man: If we just wanted him dead, we’d allow him to commit suicide. If we wanted simple revenge, he’d be shot or hanged. It’s tempting to call this kind of execution more humane than the guillotine or firing squad, but the best one can really say is that it’s probably less painful — it probably dehumanises more. Look at the things we try to eliminate: perceived injustice, desire, anger, suicide, violence in death. These are all themes in American and British ghost movies! They are the causes that may lead a soul to linger, to have some continuing claim on this domain. This is an exorcism.
This worries me on multiple levels. First, the whole process sacralises the State, and makes Arnold Schwarzenegger a stand-in for God. But more importantly, we aren’t serving justice or even vengeance — we’re performing a ritual to erase a fluke which has challenged the State’s monopoly on — not violence — life and death. If the governor grants clemency, the State maintains its control over life and death — it is, after all, granting life. But clemency also recognises humanity and exception, while execution serves only to prop up a religious view of the State. In a case like Williams’ this is especially important if the people force the State’s hand (as a large portion of the state’s population is trying to do because of Williams’ anti-gang work) — the State doesn’t admit defeat, as it still plays by rules of its own design, but common people can claim a victory.
Most of the political matter I post in this blog falls into either the you-should-know category or the hand-wringing category. But this time there is something you can do. Call Governor Schwarzenegger: (916)445-2841. We have no idea, yet, what — or even how the governor will make his clemency decision: “I really don’t have any guidelines set for that… It’s a case-by-case situation.” Let me translate that from Prussian to English: This is a game of Realpolitik. Mr. Schwarzenegger has high political aspirations. He is running for re-election as governor of California, next year, and has set his sights on the (unobtainable — forget it) presidency. As California and US voters (sorry, Ontario!), we are very, very Real. If you oppose the killing of Tookie Williams, please make that call.
You can stay informed at the Stop the Execution of Stan Tookie Williams blog.
11 December 2005 at 16:30
I oppose the state using death as a legal penalty … for anyone … anywhere … any time.
I will not list all the reasons as these arguments are articulated very well elsewhere. But I agree with those arguments and support them.
I am ambivalent about Tookie
He is the poster child for those who do support the death penalty.
If he’s a murderer, he probably doesn’t shy away from lying nor would he blush much while he lied. His own statements about himself are obviously suspect.
Actions talk louder than words but neither his words nor his actions give me much faith that he has reformed. If you are still being bound by the strictures of gang membership and talking about “snitches” then you still buy into all that sub-culture and you are still caught up in all that entails (and that ain’t a Sunday afternoon Ladies’ tea party in a summer garden).
Tookie, heed this: “You are part of the solution or you are part of the problem.”
I suppose if I was at all equivocal about the death penalty, I would gladly see the state exercise Tookie’s sentence.
But I don’t.
Redemption is not extended by “others”. It has to be sought out by the person himself. There is no use in others granting forgiveness when it has not even been sought or has only been sought half-heartedly.
But, in a case like this, just as much as redemption comes from inside “him”, mercy can come from inside me (and millions of other “me’s”)
And I give it gladly.
It may or may not make him better. Who knows?
I know it makes me better.
I don’t think we should show mercy to Tookie any more than anyone else facing the death penalty.
But we should show mercy to all those facing the death penalty.
We don’t show him mercy because he has risen to some level of redemption … because he now deserves it.
We show him mercy because: we deserve it.
We deserve to be better than the person who murdered those 4 people (whether that person was Tookie or someone else). I oppose putting him to death today just as much as I would have opposed it on the very day the 4th of those people was murdered. My mercy has nothing whatsoever with what he did or did not do at the time of the murders. My mercy has nothing whatsoever with what he did or did not achieve in the intervening years … whether the good things he is reported to have done were done … or –if they were done– whether they were done in a genuine way.
His redemption probably does have to do with him actually doing good, him actually doing good in a genuine way.
But that’s him, not me.