12 Days Left For Tookie Williams

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Thursday December 01, 2005 01:51

by Insurrection - international insurrection

inertiaonthestreetsofdublin at hushmail dot com

gang member turned activist faces death penalty

Call for clemency as nobel peace prize nominee Stan Tookie Williams faces death penalty in 12 days.

Stan Tookie Williams co-founded the notorious L.A. gang the crips in 1971. He is currently on death row in San
Quentin prison and is due to be executed on December 13th. Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger
has received thousands of pleas for clemency from human rights groups and even celebritys like Snoop Dogg.

Tookie was jailed in 1981 under rather dubious circumstances for the alleged murder of four people during robberies.
His ttrial was set against a backdrop of gang hysteria with blatant racism on the part of the state.

Tookie has spent the last 20 years campaigning against gang's and fighting racism. He has even acted as a peace broker
between the Bloods and Crips in California and in New Jersey, in what had been one of the deadliest and infamous gang
wars in the country.

In the book "Gangs and the Abuse of Power" which Tookie co-authored with Barbara Becnell Tookie rejects his violent past
and urges others not to make the same mistakes.

"Don't join a gang, you won't find what you're looking for. All you will find is trouble, pain and sadness. I know. I did."