![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The opinions traded about Tookie Williams and his education were, mostly, two. Some people felt that the death penalty was just, Tookie was a bad man who had committed serious crimes, and that he should be executed. Others felt that the death penalty was unjust or immoral, that Tookie had redeemed himself, and that he should be celebrated for his more recent life.
I abhor the death penalty, so that part is taken care of.
But I don't celebrate Tookie, and I think he belongs in jail and should shut up, and not be celebrated. It's great news that he has become less of a jerk and that he is trying to do good in his own way in prison. But as an alpha gangster he has done so much damage to others that he deserves incarceration for life rather than adulation. Reading the "save Tookie" people I got the feeling that most of them were well-educated privileged people and that almost none of them had lived in gang territory, much less been challenged or attacked by one of L.A.'s street gangs. I have, both, and I can testify that the constant watching for colors, the stark fear of confrontation, and the head injury were all no fun.
And by no means did I have the worst of it. As an ethnic outsider, I might be ripped off or kicked around, but I would never be given the choice to join or die. Nor would I be at risk for drive-by retaliation just because of my race and my neighborhood. I think about my former coworker M. (I've written about him before) running like hell from a drive by because he was black and male and lived in a black neighborhood. And I think about his nephew and friend. At 19, community college students and dorks, they were spending a Saturday afternoon playing Nintendo. They went to McDonalds to get some fries between games, and while they were sitting a couple of gangbangers wandered in.
"Sup?" said one of the bangers.
"Sup," said the kids.
Ten minutes later the bangers came back in and shot them both multiple times. They'd been given a territorial challenge they didn't recognized, and their reward was hospitalization and rehab for bullet wounds.
So remember Tookie's good deeds, sure. But remember too that hundreds of thousands of people you've never met live in fear every day of their local Tookies as much as they live in fear of racist and corrupt police. Below the cut is an editorial from the LA Times by someone who knows that story in the first person.
( Read more... )
I abhor the death penalty, so that part is taken care of.
But I don't celebrate Tookie, and I think he belongs in jail and should shut up, and not be celebrated. It's great news that he has become less of a jerk and that he is trying to do good in his own way in prison. But as an alpha gangster he has done so much damage to others that he deserves incarceration for life rather than adulation. Reading the "save Tookie" people I got the feeling that most of them were well-educated privileged people and that almost none of them had lived in gang territory, much less been challenged or attacked by one of L.A.'s street gangs. I have, both, and I can testify that the constant watching for colors, the stark fear of confrontation, and the head injury were all no fun.
And by no means did I have the worst of it. As an ethnic outsider, I might be ripped off or kicked around, but I would never be given the choice to join or die. Nor would I be at risk for drive-by retaliation just because of my race and my neighborhood. I think about my former coworker M. (I've written about him before) running like hell from a drive by because he was black and male and lived in a black neighborhood. And I think about his nephew and friend. At 19, community college students and dorks, they were spending a Saturday afternoon playing Nintendo. They went to McDonalds to get some fries between games, and while they were sitting a couple of gangbangers wandered in.
"Sup?" said one of the bangers.
"Sup," said the kids.
Ten minutes later the bangers came back in and shot them both multiple times. They'd been given a territorial challenge they didn't recognized, and their reward was hospitalization and rehab for bullet wounds.
So remember Tookie's good deeds, sure. But remember too that hundreds of thousands of people you've never met live in fear every day of their local Tookies as much as they live in fear of racist and corrupt police. Below the cut is an editorial from the LA Times by someone who knows that story in the first person.
( Read more... )
