Marin Interfaith Council Considers Death Row

See guest post at California Correctional Crisis blog.

Dazed, Confused & ODed

I've been thinking more about capital punishment, Tookie Williams' execution, the execution a year ago of Donald Beardslee, and the scheduled execution of the unappealing Charles Ray Allen. Beardslee was executed on my mother's birthday, and she's now failing and about to turn 95 the day after Allen's execution, which is, ironically, the day before Allen's own birthday. Somehow in my mind I'm seeing a vague, peculiar connection, one I'm as yet unable to analyze and articulate.

All this craziness has come at the end of the secular year and the beginning of the next, in the midst of miners dying in underground darkness in West Virginia and the Prime Minister of Israel lingering near death. I've always wondered at his etherial-sounding name, Ariel. It must mean something quite different in Hebrew or whatever language it is than its English connotations. Ariel is a mountain gazelle and a satellite of Uranus. Another irony: the Ariel Ministries appears to be a Jews-for-Jesus group.

Still Confused

Just to see if I was crazy or what, I listened to the KPFA broadcast cited in my previous post. I remembered most of it, including the speaking and singing after Tookie's death was announced. But we never heard that! The crowd way up front turned slowly and began oozing towards the road out. We three were puzzled and grumbling. Corby was crabbing about what cowards the prison authorities were for not issuing an announcement. Patrick asked a nearby newswoman presumably waiting for the same bulletin we were, and she said she'd heard no word. Then when I listened to the archive of the broadcast, you could hear it, just kinda slipped in there.

Usually when death is announced, there is a moment of silence or a collective groan or sigh or some wailing. This time there wasn't. There were some isolated cries of outrage, as there'd been all night, so it didn't seem especially significant this time. A man at the mike lead another singing of "We Shall Overcome," hideously off key and badly phrased. Still, who cares at a time like that? You just sing because it's the togetherness of the voices and collective resolve that counts, not the musicality. We heard some of the words. We sang the song.

I wonder why the sound system was so inadequate? Were the organizers not expecting such a crowd? I'd estimate there were at least 2,000 of us. Were they not allowed to mount more speakers because it's a usually quiet residential street and they can only amplify in the immediate area around the East Gate? Did they not have enough money for more mikes?

I counted at least three helicopters circling the area all night. They had those piercing white lights scanning the crowd. When I was standing next to Sean Penn, I was reminded of reports of his wedding to Madonna when the helicopters were so low and numerous they completely drowned out the words of their vows. Still, this time the helicopters were far enough away that they didn't really out-volume the sound system, such as it was. That is if you could get close enough to the mikes to hear anything.

"They" got 'em lined up now, one execution after the other. Next month, on Monday, January 16, his 76th birthday, Clarence Ray Allen is scheduled to die. Well, technically, at 12:01 a.m. on January 17th. Ironically, this is the weekend the birth of another advocate for non-violence, Martin Luther King, Jr., is celebrated. Allen is not a sympathetic character. He has done nothing of note by way of contributing to society. He's just a sick old man convicted of triple homicide who was probably a pretty unpleasant fellow when he was out in society. I don't want to see him out and about. But killing him in the name of justice just reduces society, us, the people of this state, to his level. We'll be there.

Aftermath

I knew there was a reason I was feeling so incomplete! Why we all were so confused when we left. That's because they didn't really announce Tookie's death until after we left, and we left around 12:45 a.m.

Patrick phoned yesterday, saying that Barbara had been watching the TV coverage while we were there and learned that it took more than ten minutes for the killers to get a proper needle into Tookie's veins. So basically, in my opinion, he was tortured. This is obscene! This is hideous, horrifying, immoral!

Driving home from Petaluma yesterday, I turned on KPFA only to hear a long description not only of the circumstances of Tookie's execution, but also of all the various 'humane' ways humans have devised to kill other humans in the name of the state. When the state was still executing by lethal gas, birds flying over San Quentin dropped dead from the sky. The lethal injection method was first used by the Nazis in Germany.

Then it all came up for me. I sobbed the whole way home. I stomped in the house in a state of mixed grief and outrage and turned on the network news, and ranted futily at the newscasters. It seems that, among other things, there was no announcement to the crowd that Tookie was gone until around 1:30 when most vigilers had gone home. Had we known, we would have stayed.

Here's a broadcast from KPFA's coverage of the execution. My sister Catherine sent this interview with Angela Davis by Amy Goodman for Democracy Now that was done yesterday morning, as well as this:

Sneering at Redemption: Why Arnold Killed Tookie
By Dave Zirin

In the end, we can only assume the decision wasn't so "agonizing" after all. Last night Stan Tookie Williams was legally lynched by the state of California, at the behest of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who denied Williams' appeal for clemency. The Governor deemed that a man who had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times and brokered gang truces from Newark to South Central was not worthy to walk and breathe among us. Stan's case for clemency was so compelling it was articulated by people from Desmond Tutu to Snoop Dogg, and yet, watching Schwarzenegger in action has been to observe the nexus of cold-hearted political calculation and cowardice.

Williams' Attorney John Harris challenged the governor to meet with Tookie, saying to the San Francisco Chronicle, "It's impossible to me to believe that if you had met Stanley Williams and spent time with him, that you would not believe in his personal redemption." But that would require a courage the Governor has never demonstrated. Unlike the movie tough guy always ready to look his victims in the eye – a quip at the ready -- before shooting, stabbing, or beheading them, Arnold made his decision at safe remove, hanging out this weekend at his son's soccer game, his face a waxy mask of carefree detachment, while Tookie's supporters organized, marched, chanted
nd prayed themselves hoarse.

When it finally came time for Arnold to announce his personal judgment that Stan Williams should die, tragedy became farce. The Governor's office released an ugly scandalous diatribe that qualifies as nothing less than hate-speech.

As he - or his script doctor - wrote, "The dedication of Williams' book Life in Prison casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998 several years after Williams' redemptive experience. Specifically the book is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the countless other men, women, and youths, who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars. The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders including the killing of law enforcement. But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems."

For Tookie, all of these folks, from Mandela, to Malcolm, to Assata, are one and the same: people of color who strove for liberation in the darkest of circumstances. For Schwarzenegger, the whole lot is the same as well: people who are his political enemies because they refused to be broken. Notice the singling out of George Jackson, author of Soledad Brother, a book for which there is no evidence Schwarzenegger has so much as skimmed. Jackson was someone who despite being framed for his political activism never stopped organizing. That is the person Schwarzenegger wants to kill by executing Tookie.

Later, Arnold passes judgment on Williams' very redemption, writing, "Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise? . . . Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings there can be no redemption." In other words, because Williams has consistently defended his own innocence, he should die. But as Tookie once said, "Many people expect me to apologize for crimes I didn't commit--just to save my life. Of course I want to live, but not by having to lie."

While not surprising Arnold did not have the courage to face Tookie and spew this nonsense to his face, it certainly would have been incredible theatre. In fact, it would have been something of a reunion. In the late 1970s, Arnold and Tookie, about fifty life times ago, admired each other's biceps on Muscle Beach in Venice, California. "Your arms are like thighs!" Arnold grinned. Amazing the difference thirty years makes. In that time, Arnold rode his muscles and Teutonic good looks from Hollywood stardom to the Governor's mansion. Yes, he had a spotty past including many allegations of sexual assault and drug abuse. But he passed that off as youthful indiscretion, claimed that he had changed, and a pliant media were happy to believe that Arnold was worthy of forgiveness and redemption.

Tookie, like Arnold, also fashioned an unlikely political career. But his began not with Hollywood riches but as the target of the tough-on-crime laws of the Clinton-Bush years which saw the nation's prison population balloon from more than one to two million. He was convicted of murder in a manner that would make Strom Thurmond proud, called a "Bengal tiger" by a prosecutor who engineered an all-white jury to make sure the "Crip founder" found San Quentin. While Arnold cozied up to the Bush and Kennedy clans, Tookie read dictionaries in solitary, wrote letters to gang kids in LA, and became that most dangerous of political beings: a Black leader in racist America.

In one of his final interviews he said, "So, as long as I have breath, I will continue to do what I can to proliferate a positive message throughout this country and abroad to youths everywhere, of all colors or gender and geographical area, and I will continue to do what I can to help. I want to be a part of the, you know, the solution."

Now another tragedy, along with the murders of Albert Owens, Yen-I Yang, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, has taken place because Stan Tookie has been put to death. But the tragedy is not theirs to bear alone.

Tonight children are being born to mothers without health insurance, in neighborhoods politicians don’t enter without SWAT teams, news cameras, and latex gloves. The political class has already branded these kids as human waste. But many of them could have found another path, because Stanley Tookie Williams would have been there to intervene in their lives and show another way.

Now it's up to those of us who stood with Tookie to keep on pushing. This is Schwarzenegger's "mission accomplished" moment for his right wing, pro-death base. But his "mission" will fail. He is part of a 21st century set of rulers who have repeatedly shown, whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, that they are unfit to rule. Their brutality will be met with resistance in the tradition of Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Leonard Peltier, George Jackson... and Stanley Tookie Williams.

[Dave Zirin is the author of "'What's My Name Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States" (Haymarket Books). He is a regular writer for the Nation and a columnist for Slam Magazine. You can reach him by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com and you can get his column every week by sending a blank email to edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com]

I hope this tragedy mobilizes the anti-capital punishment movement.

Tookie Williams and Capital Punishment

Not surprisingly, our illustrious Guvernator has rejected Tookie Williams' appeals for clemency. That means Corby and I will be standing vigil outside the gates of San Quentin in the cold (well, cold by California standards) tonight. We are firm in our opposition to state-sanctioned murder. We live only about four miles from SQ so we feel obligated to honor the lives of each person who's executed -- may there be no more! -- by standing vigil with others who feel as we do. We go even when the person being executed doesn't have much popular support, because we believe every life has value and to kill someone in revenge only brings 'us' (the people, the state) down to the level of just another killer. However, in the case of Tookie, a man who has demonstrated his redemption, we know there will be a huge crowd. In fact, there are rallies going on all over the country today and tonight (see TW website).

What more can we ask from a convicted murderer than redemption? He cannot undo what has been done and bring back the dead. I don't understand how killing the killer can bring sorrowing family and friends of a homicide victim any solace. And in the case of Tookie, even though he was convicted, we don't really know if he committed the crime for which he is to pay with his life.

Where there are crowds, especially emotional ones, there are media. Usually the TV camerapeople and reporters stand on a nearby roof and shoot photos down at the crowd. I know that this time it's gonna be a real mob scene. I hope some of them will be doing one-on-one interviews with vigilers.

Buddhists sit in meditation up near the speakers' area. I usually sit a spell with them. There will be speakers and musicians and various kinds of testimony, as well as people leafletting and pushing petitions.

This will be a big night, and a very sad one. Standing in silence and waiting for a prison spokesperson to announce the dastardly deed has been accomplished is really moving and spooky. I wish I could return to this blog and report that the execution had not taken place. I'm not hopeful that that will be the case.