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At the Gates of San Quentin. Is California Any Safer Now?
By NORMAN SOLOMON
No buzzards were gliding overhead, but several helicopters circled, under black sky tinged blue. On the shore of a stunning bay at a placid moment, the state prepared to kill.
Outside the gates of San Quentin, people gathered to protest the impending execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. Hundreds became thousands as the midnight hour approached. Rage and calming prayers were in the air.
The operative God of the night was a governor. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption," Arnold Schwarzenegger had declared. Hours later, a new killing would be sanitized by law and euphemism. (Before dawn, a newscast on NPR,s "Morning Edition" would air the voice of a media witness who had observed the execution by lethal injection. Within seconds, his on-air report twice referred to the killing of Williams as a "medical procedure.")
But at the prison gates, there were signs.
"The weak can never forgive."
"No Death in My Name"
"Executions teach vengeance and violence."
But for the warfare state -- with the era of big government a thing of the past except for police, prisons and the Pentagon -- vengeance and violence are rudiments of policy, taught most profoundly of all by the daily object lessons of acceptance, passivity and budget.
More
http://counterpunch.org/solomon12132005.html
Outside the gates of San Quentin, people gathered to protest the impending execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. Hundreds became thousands as the midnight hour approached. Rage and calming prayers were in the air.
The operative God of the night was a governor. "Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption," Arnold Schwarzenegger had declared. Hours later, a new killing would be sanitized by law and euphemism. (Before dawn, a newscast on NPR,s "Morning Edition" would air the voice of a media witness who had observed the execution by lethal injection. Within seconds, his on-air report twice referred to the killing of Williams as a "medical procedure.")
But at the prison gates, there were signs.
"The weak can never forgive."
"No Death in My Name"
"Executions teach vengeance and violence."
But for the warfare state -- with the era of big government a thing of the past except for police, prisons and the Pentagon -- vengeance and violence are rudiments of policy, taught most profoundly of all by the daily object lessons of acceptance, passivity and budget.
More
http://counterpunch.org/solomon12132005.html
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The scene outside San Quentin last night was amazing. People had started arriving at the prison gates in the early afternoon, soon after Governor Schwarzenegger announced that he was denying clemency for Stan Tookie Williams. By the time I arrived, shortly after 8:00 pm, the crowd had swelled to 1500, and for the next four hours, people kept coming. Two thousand, three thousand-after that it was impossible to keep count.
Young and old, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, socialists, and just plain outraged, all made the long trek to protest the legal lynching of an African American man who had atoned for the crimes that he did commit and who was being killed for those that he did not. A handful of right-wing provocateurs, hoping to provoke a clash with their message of racism and hate, were surrounded and quickly pushed to the margins, where they could not disrupt the rally.
There was great sadness that the fight to save Stan's life and prevent another senseless death had been lost. But unlike most other executions I've protested outside San Quentin, the mood was not somber but angry and defiant. One electric speaker after another addressed the crowd. Joan Baez sang and declared, "Tonight is a planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder." Angela Davis praised Stan and Mumia Abu Jamal as the most eloquent voices against the death penalty and placed them in the context of black radical struggles. Exonerated California death-row inmate, and former Black Panther, Shujaa Graham drew the parallels between his life and Tookie's, and explained how he had escaped execution in spite of the system, not because of it.
Read More
http://counterpunch.org/gasper12132005.html
Young and old, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, socialists, and just plain outraged, all made the long trek to protest the legal lynching of an African American man who had atoned for the crimes that he did commit and who was being killed for those that he did not. A handful of right-wing provocateurs, hoping to provoke a clash with their message of racism and hate, were surrounded and quickly pushed to the margins, where they could not disrupt the rally.
There was great sadness that the fight to save Stan's life and prevent another senseless death had been lost. But unlike most other executions I've protested outside San Quentin, the mood was not somber but angry and defiant. One electric speaker after another addressed the crowd. Joan Baez sang and declared, "Tonight is a planned, efficient, calculated, antiseptic, cold-blooded murder." Angela Davis praised Stan and Mumia Abu Jamal as the most eloquent voices against the death penalty and placed them in the context of black radical struggles. Exonerated California death-row inmate, and former Black Panther, Shujaa Graham drew the parallels between his life and Tookie's, and explained how he had escaped execution in spite of the system, not because of it.
Read More
http://counterpunch.org/gasper12132005.html
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