Tookie is Killed

As many of you know, Stanley Tookie Williams was executed last night after midnight Tuesday morning.

It is a sad day today for Californians. I feel sad and depressed, because I realize that we have not learned. We cannot solve violence by performing violence on others. We cannot simply cut off the evil be shooting it with a gun or injecting it with a needle. Doctors will tell you plainly that cutting out the cancer does not necessarily stop its spread. The body is a system - the good bacteria and bad bacteria, good cells and bad cells. It is the balance amongst there parts that keep the system stable and useable. You must live with and embrace the fact that you have diabetes, HIV, MS. It is unavoidable. It is life. And do life rears its ugly head and people do very bad things. But people also do very good things. If the overriding factor or good maintains its steady pace, evil will never prevail. Tookie knew that and regretted his creation of the terrible gang violence that has plagued American impoverished neighborhoods. The violence on the streets has not brought these poor folks success or money or power, but shame and grief. The families of the victims of Tookie's wrath, be it direct or indirect, know this all too well. Their pain does not end because Tookie's life has. It will not save the lives of other family members who may die in senseless tragedies. Crime will not simply stop in South Central or the Bronx or West Oakland, because we killed the founder of one gang. Bloods and Crips aren't laying down their arms. Race riots in Australia aren't on hiatus. Black and Brown peoples the world over aren't sighing in relief. Was it worth it? Was it necessary?

It is shameful. America, as a democratic, industrialized, a supposedly evolved nation, cannot simply come to terms with the death penalty. It is difficult, I realize. But, that does not mean we walk away until the next night when some poor fool and undoubtedly evil person walks to his or her death. We become what they are. They reject society and choose to perform terrible and indefensible acts on others. But when we sentence a person to death, do we understand why? Is it revenge? Moral outrage? Ignorance? We address the effects, not the causes. We ignore the real issues that put people like Tookie on Death Row. We assume that the hood is just another neighborhood, only poorer... It never ends.

America was intended to be a different place; one that holds itself to a higher standard. One where all peoples are created equal, the rich and the poor, black and the white, good and the bad. That was the hope. We would not engage is the terrible acts of our enemies. We would not torture. We would share, build and learn. We would unite. We would deliberate and consider. We would include and create peace treaties, disarm, deter, discuss. We would rehabilitate, not incarcerate. Redeem, not react. This was and is our way. So, all legal arguments aside, what Tookie did was wrong. He was responsible somehow, whether directly or indirectly, of the deaths of four people over 25 years ago. He may have wielded the gun. He may have ordered the crime. He may have apprenticed or influenced the people who actually carried it out. Two decades of legal wrangling, appeals, and courts upholding the verdict, show us the justice system did not appear to consider otherwise.

The real question here is whether Tookie became a man of redemption, did he make up for the havoc we caused - the many more people that died because of his creation? This is about more than the four people who died during those robberies. Pro-death penalty advocates will tell you that, and it is not without merit. His affect has been tenfold and if it was not these 4 poor people, it was many others. But, when a man rejects that useless life and works day after day to reverse it for the rest of his life, does that achieve more and impact society for the better? Is redemption a word reserved only for the few who say it? Or does a person's actions dictate his or her redemptive quality? Will he do more know for society or more if he had lived? These are the difficult questions we must ask. Who are we to judge, with all our flawed selves, who should live and who should die?

And lastly, that brings me to whether our leaders actually consider the moral implications and obligations to the compassionate democracy we are founder on. The Governor of California, with his stern words that Tookie had not shown any form of redemption, had made his decision out of understanding not politics, we would expect more anti-gang work from Tookie today. The Democratic obligation to rehabilitation would be intact. We would have progressed one very important step. But, that does not matter to those who lead. In the local coverage last night in the lead up to Tookie's execution, some of the thousands who gathered in vigil had a chance to speak their minds briefly. One such comment struck me with hope. A black woman from the East Bay flanked by her two children said (to paraphrase here) that "we now know" that we must "demand and choose leaders who represent the communities" of these everyday tragedies.

These leaders would spend more time addressing and acting on the root problems that brought us here in the first place. I think we have always known...