International Socialist Review Issue 45,
January–February 2006

E D I T O R I A L S

STANLEY TOOKIE WILLIAMS

Mourn, and organize

WHEN THE state of California executed Stan Tookie Williams in the early hours of December 13, (see page 11) his closest collaborator Barbara Becnel watched, along with two other close friends from the witness booth, as he was injected with poison. As Stan closed his eyes for the last time, they raised their fists in a Black Power salute, and shouted as they left the death chamber: “The state of California just killed an innocent man!” Later that morning, Becnel told CNN that Stan’s supporters would not give up their fight to prove his innocence. Becnel added that in the fight ahead, they are going to show that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was, in fact, himself a cold-blooded murderer.

Indeed, California Democrats share equal blame with Schwarzenegger. The “opposition” party did not oppose Stan’s execution. Los Angeles Democrats focused their attention instead on calling for “calm” from the city’s African American population in the event of Stan’s execution. With no pressure from his left, Schwarzenegger could more easily succumb to the well-organized pressure from the right wing of the Republican Party—in a decision based on his own career considerations rather than morality.

We all mourn the senseless killing of Stan Williams, a founder of the Crips gang in Los Angeles who had devoted the last twelve years of his life to ending gang violence. But Becnel is right. The fight continues. And it is important to acknowledge that the battle to save Stan’s life—covered blow by blow by the mass media across the country—has advanced the movement to end the death penalty at both an activist and an ideological level.

Stan’s case ignited a movement to save his life, bringing together organizations that had never united before to build broad support. The NAACP, the Nation of Islam, and a host of other organizations came together with activists from the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) and other anti-death penalty groups to organize rallies and build a grassroots campaign that in the end drew a 3,000-strong multiracial crowd to protest at the gates of San Quentin the night of Stan’s execution. CEDP activists say that during several intensive weeks of campaigning to stop Stan’s execution, they found a marked increase in the number of people interested in getting involved in the movement against the death penalty.

According to Gallup polls, public support for the death penalty has fallen from 80 percent in 1994 to 64 percent in October 2005—dropping to just 56 percent if the alternative is life in prison without parole. This drop in support has coincided with the exoneration of 122 death row inmates after they proved their innocence. And that number does not include those who have been proven innocent after they were executed.

But the mainstream discourse on the death penalty has advanced beyond the issue of wrongful conviction in recent years. The Chicago Tribune posed the questions broadly being discussed today: “Is this case a question of innocence? Is it a matter of rehabilitation, and, consequently, mercy? Or is it the continuing question of the propriety of capital punishment?” Stan’s case posed all of these questions, and his execution will not—as the right wing clearly hopes—make these issues go away.

Stan Tookie Williams’ lifework inspired many people to fight on his behalf, and his death will resonate far and wide. Tookie was executed, but the fight goes on.