Tookie Williams died, and I hope that his soul is allowed to pass on to peace. I hope that he truly did find redemption, because our barbarous state stopped him from breathing. They stopped him from trying to change the world. I never knew him, never met him, no reason I ever would have, but I really hope that he is in the middle of a beautiful experience.
Our government apparently does not believe in redemption, does not believe in the sanctity of human life and is not at all interested in rehabilitation, but we all knew this. I did not know Tookie, and certainly there is a lot of information that we will never know, but if there were some doubts about his guilt or the circumstances surrounding the crimes of which he was convicted and killed for, his death should have been stayed.
I don't believe in the death penalty. I don't think that we should hide behind "the state" to get what we want. If someone takes a life and death is to be the sentence, then guilt should be ironclad sure, the death should be quick and one of the victims' families' should carry it out-on television. It shouldn't be this thing that we hide behind closed walls, if so many people support this barbaric thing, then we should really show how proud we are as a nation to be assassinating "the guilty."
Alternatively, we could suspend all of this killing and attack the root causes of murder. If we attacked joblessness, drug addiction and the mental health issues that plague our communities then I am sure the murder and incarceration rates would go down. Instead we put people in jail and murder them. I pray for the day when all Americans, all of us, will have to reckon what we profess to believe against what we allow to happen in our names.
Peace to Stanley's soul.
-M
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