What about the victims?

Stanley "Tookie" Williams

The governator refused to give clemency to Stanley "Tookie" Williams tonight, which is not a surprise.

His advocates say he's changed his ways, which is easy to do isolated on death row. I heard one of his defenders say "it makes no sense to execute a children's book author".

True, if that author wasn't the founder of the Crips.

I think no one should be executed by any state. The death penalty doesn't work and is a violation of human rights.

But with that said, why are Williams defenders praising his books, but forgetting he refuses to be debriefed by the state about his criminal history. His argument "he refuses to be a rat".

Well, he's trying to have it both ways, claim he's clean, but still live by the gangster's code. You can't do both. If he's clean, he should have confessed. Because 'stop snitching" only helps those who have harmed black people.

But what no one is talking about, and they should, and it should color every discussion of Williams and his fate, is the horror unleashed by his fellow Crips. Sure, he tells kids not to be gangsters, but how many people died because of what he did. How many families ruined? How many kids led straight to jail emulating him?

A few books is not atonement for that.

Williams launched something akin to a genocidal war in black LA. He and his fellow Crips, with their killing and drug dealing, wreaked havoc and killed thousands of people, women, men, children in their cribs.

Who speaks for the dead his acts left behind?

While Williams may maintain his innocence in the crimes he was charged with, what about the other victims, the ones left behind from what he launched into the streets of LA, and later, across America.

I do not wish his death or any death by the hand of the state. But in turning him into a marytr, the vicitms of the Crips lie as a footnote when they should be the story.

posted by Steve @ 6:47:00 PM