December 12, 2005: If you Tookie Googlers are looking for the latest info on the quadruple murderer, here it is.
Update from LB (12/2): Bilges writes:
I’ve personally tended to ignore the capital punishment debate, considering it a well-settled issue morally, practically, and politically. By intentionally killing another person you forfeit your right to live, end of story.
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Hey all! Hube here from The Colossus of Rhodey. Many thanks go to La Shawn for allowing me to guest blog while she’s away!
Via Joanne Jacobs comes word of a “Tookie Teach-In” at Oakland’s Street Academy High School:
Stefanie Faucher stood inside a classroom at Oakland’s Street Academy High School last Thursday and asked a class of about thirty teenagers, “Do you want to help Tookie Williams live?”
The students nodded and shouted in agreement. Most had just watched a video about the former Crips leader, convicted of murdering four people in 1979. Williams has since apologized for his role in spreading gang violence and written several children’s books condemning his old lifestyle. “Heck yeah,” one student yelled out. “Free Tookie.”
“Good,” said Faucher, projects director for the grassroots group Death Penalty Focus. “Because if the governor does not grant Tookie Williams clemency, he will be executed on December 13.”
Ah, nothing like a balanced discussion of capital punishment in a contemporary American classroom, eh? But then again, the room’s decorations weren’t exactly idelogically neutral:
A portrait of Che Guevara hung next to a sign that read “Dare to Dream.” Another poster suggested, “Honor Dr. King. Defend Mumia Abu-Jamal.” A massive painting of the African continent was slung just beneath Cesar Chavez, who was near Malcolm X.
Indeed — American icons: Martin Luther King Jr. and … Mumia Abu-Jamal?? Uh-huh.
Ms. Faucher offered up this whopper to the enthralled class as well:
“There is actually little evidence to suggest Tookie Williams was actually guilty of the crimes he’s accused of. He was convicted by virtually an all-white jury. So what do we think of the criminal justice system?”
Those nasty whities! Of course Tookie was found guilty, right? So what do we say to that, class? “BOOOOOOOO!”
But come on, Ms. Faucher — if even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that Tookie got a fair trail, you know that you’re arguing a lost cause in this case now, don’tcha?
No word on if there was a speaker to counter Ms. Faucher. Like maybe some of Tookie’s victims’ relatives? But again, this was an American public school classroom — whose prospective teachers are now being assessed on their ideological “dispositions.”
