2,000 in LA View Stanley Tookie Williams
2,000 people in Los Angeles paid their respects yesterday to Stanley Tookie Williams, executed last week in California.
"Many of the people who lined up today for a last look at the man didn't know him; never met him," Ali said. "But they came to pay their respects because they have a Tookie in their family, or identify with his struggle."
Who were they? Here's one example:
When elementary schoolteacher Macella Hibbler, 34, heard that Williams' body was on public view, she threw sweaters on her three young children and hurried to the mortuary to see the man whose life story had saturated the news media only a week ago. "My only thought has been this: How can I get my children to understand, I mean really understand, why we're here?" she said. "I'm telling them, 'Watch the road you take and make wise decisions. That way you won't wind up in a coffin.' "
Another said:
Standing outside the mortuary, watching the spectacle in the street, Wanda Smith, 42, shook her head and said, "I feel sorry for Tookie. It could have been my own brother, or my son. "I hope that his death will make gangbangers stop killing each other," she said. "I've been to so many funerals, it's heartbreaking."
I think that is the legacy Williams hoped for.
His body will be cremated, his ashes scattered in South Africa. Rest in peace, Stanley Tookie Williams. You made a difference, and a positive contribution, whether Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks so or not.
San Francisco Chronicle reporter Leslie Fulbright wrote Sunday about her recent interview with Williams on death row. During the interview, a storm outside caused the electricity to fail and the lights to go out.
My first reaction was to look at the door.... I looked for a prison guard who could bust open the door and pull me out should anything go wrong. Williams sensed my apprehension.
"Don't panic," he told me. "I'm here, I can protect you. I've got your back." He calmed me down. The lights returned within seconds. A prison guard then appeared and looked in. "I'm fine," I mouthed to him.
Fulbright and Tookie continued on with the interview..
....In that moment, the convicted murderer became a man to me. I was no longer apprehensive. I asked my questions.
.....Near the close of our talk, I again asked Williams how he was feeling. "I am excellent," he said. "I have a sense of halcyon." I couldn't say the same; I was a composed wreck. Now that the murderer had become a man to me, I couldn't help but wonder how it would feel to know you would soon die. I would be afraid.
She asked other reporters if they had tried to interview Tookie. Most said they had not. She ends with,
Asked whether I faced an ethical dilemma by becoming too close to this case, I would say no. Yes, I shed a few tears on my own time. But, to me, the reporter who didn't even try to talk to Williams is the one with the ethical dilemma. His voice was essential.
Danny Glover, [correction: a journalist with the same name as ]the actor and anti-death penalty activist, wrote this article yesterday for the National Journal's Beltway Blogroll, comparing Williams with Corey Maye, who sits on death row in Mississippi, convicted of a cop killing which many in the blogosphere believe was self-defense.
Glover notes that bloggers can have a tremendous impact on the death penalty debate. It's a debate that is going to grow louder in the coming months and years.
Blogging about the death penalty, and particularly against it, is not a new idea. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has been at it for 18 months, and Amnesty International launched Death Penalty Blog in July. Some state affiliates of NCADP, including those in Alabama, Missouri and Tennessee, also publish blogs.
Glover notes the increase in bloggers who are now participating in the debate, particularly due to Williams and Corey Maye.
However American views of the death penalty evolve, blogs are sure to be a factor in that intellectual shift. And bloggers' musings over the execution of Tookie Williams and the death sentence of Cory Maye could prove to be the catalyst for that shift.
TalkLeft will continue to blog about Maye, as well as the others either now on death row or executed in the past, the guilty as well as the innocent. We've been blogging about them and the death penalty for three and half years, and welcome the blogswarm. It's time for the U.S. to end the barbaric practice of state-sanctioned killings.
| < Analog vs. Digital Snooping: Is This Bush's Distinction? | More FBI Spying on American Citizens > |
