{hint: to view in larger font hold down the ctrl and hit the + keys on your keyboard.] november, 15 2005 dear tookie, i do not want you do die by execution. i am 31 years old and have lived many years in so.central and in watts. i knew and cared about several gang members because they were simply my neighbors. but i also hated the violence and crime that surrounded them and made my life seem dreary and very hopeless. I hated hearing gun shots and police sirens at night. I hated seeing spilt blood on the sidewalk during the day. I hated knowing that the boys were smart and yet acting so damn stupid; threatenin, jackin, fighting, hurting, drive-byin and killin each other as well as non-gang civilians, all for the fame of a gang. i believe some gang members sold my dad, other men and women crack. what really used to blow my mind was that these would be the same dudes circling around the block or driving by the schools tryin to mack to me and my friends when we were teenagers. [fools. i don’t know who i despise more, the ones who’ve actually killed somebody outright with a gun, knife or some other tool of death, or those who assisted in the selling of crack cocaine and creating the never ending nightmare I and so many others are still watching because our family members are the unfortunate leading cast.] let me be the first to admit that no body told or forced my dad or anyone else to go buy crack in the first place. true enough. but nobody told these gangsters to sell it and become the neighborhood’s symbolic soul snatchers either. my own and the brothers of so many of my friends chose not to finish high school because walking down the street was a damn war game. while some americans send their sons and daughters off to be educated with no worries, these young men in watts had to stress over the color of their school clothes, and sweat trying to watch 360 degrees while walking straight ahead at the same time. its too much to ask, and no one should have to live like that. both of my brothers dropped out and my younger brother being somewhat more adventurous, took to the gang life himself. i remember that he lost a friend to gun violence, shot right on his own front porch, in front of his mother who later lost two more sons in the same way. none had even reached 20 years old. i wondered daily if my brother would die because he had been shot to death. today he is 23 and in jail. at first I was somewhat comforted by this, but now all i want is for his time to be over and for him to be released. when i left watts, i escaped. i felt as though i was literally going crazy. i know now that i was severely depressed (as in my opinion are hundreds of people living and working in this area still today.) i began working as a teacher in special education classrooms and became overwhelmed with how much healing i personally had to do in order to be able to reach, love and teach the children in my charge. my experience with them is what i think really spawned in me a desire to think heavily on the idea of redemption. when a child would misbehave, i had learned from my peers a system of devaluement and punishment. i learned from my students that it is hard to reach, love or teach any person who feels as though they have no value and are always being punished. at first much of my class was black. i had a lot of compassion for these young people because i truly identified with their situation. many of them had parents who were working poor, drug addicts, gang members, prisoners or dead. what was really eye opening to me, was when my class roster changed to students who were predominately mexican and white. these young people were dealing with the same issues that i believed really ended them, right along with the black children, in special education in the first place. i felt like all of them could successfully attain a regular ed education; that their minds were just as capable as any other student on campus. the teaching method and school environment would have had to be drastically different, but everything was possible for them. but the school where i worked, (incidentally in torrance), and more importantly the students themselves, did not truly act in a way that proved a belief that they could do well. all i felt was burden. the school acted as though it was burdened with these children and the students behaved like they were burdened with themselves. in my last days with them i felt like i’d also become the children’s burden because in seven years times i had not found a way to work solely for them; to truly give them the hope and lessons that they really needed to receive daily. i was defeated and i carried that into the classroom each morning until i resigned. now that i’m thinking of your case i want to tell you that racism is alive and well in torrance. even at the school where i worked, a muralist came in and created a beautiful lunch area work of art. in her caucasian vision, she painted a child of every ethnicity among an array of fruits and vegetables; carrying or reading a book, and i think one child with a diploma. one child had a blue ribbon on and was wearing a white tank top, shorts and tennis shoes; apparently about to dive or jump into a very very large watermelon. this child was not white, asian or mexican. also, i remember being utterly shocked and disappointed by some graffitti painted on the side of an abandoned trailer facing a main street near the school. it read, “niggers go home,” in large letters. also very disturbing was a case where the home of one of my students was being investigated for possible child neglect or abuse. it was a friday and instead of going home with his mother as usual, this little boy was driven off in the back of a police car. he was black and 8 yrs old. i am writing you as a black woman who is fed up with the ways of the world that i have come to know in all my 31 years. i’m tired of ignorance and the acts that follow, simply because people aren’t creative enough and don’t care enough about other people to try something different. the principal at the school should have let the entire school view and comment on the proposed art work before it was even painted. the police department should have sent a detective or social worker in a plain outfit and car, and let my student ride in the front seat on his way to the strange place they took him to. in your case, the prosecutor should have been disbarred if his courtroom practices truly had no place in the court. if the case was mishandled according to the court, then i believe it should’ve been thrown out. while these issues are being looked at and decided, i don’t think that they have the right to kill you. to do so would be to live in ignorance and act as unwisely as i believed the gangsters did doing the things i described earlier in this letter. i know you have done some dirt; but people are doing dirt every day. there’s a man right now, a retiring career cop named bradley wagner who allegedly decided he wanted to use the authority of his badge to stop, kidnap, terrorize and rape someone. i say allegedly, but i sense truth in the matter since he has all of a sudden chosen to resign. what boggles the mind is that a spokesman from the department has asked that the face of this supposed domestic terrorist not be shown to the public. in fact the police chief john welter’s official statement on the matter had more to do with the embarrassment and discredit of fellow officers, than it had to do with a genuine concern for justice for the victim. i do not call him an alleged terrorist lightly. bradley, like you in your gang days, is supposed to have systematically used terror to coerce someone into being victimized and as a result, create a situation where that person and others will continue to live in fear. but look at how people care about him even though they believe he’s a criminal. they are at the ready thinking of what’s best for him, his circle of friends and family. even though he is accused of heinous actions, the law enforcers are showing an awful amount of compassion for wagner, an assumed violator of sex offense penal code; probably because they, after 30 years of service, more or less view him as a brother. i view you as a brother. i feel nauseated thinking of what you have probably done to people during your time as a gang leader. i believe the worst about who you were then. i think your actions in the past have helped a cancer that presently festers in thousands of people wordwide: the disease of fear and hopelessness; cynicism and despair. still, i do not think you should die. i think you have acted cruelly, but i think that the people v. anderson decision that has spared charles manson’s life, should be applied in your case; so that you can continue the work of being a brother not only to myself, but every one else out there sincerely working for ways to help save peoples lives. i feel like the gang injunctions, curfews and harrassment imposed on young people can not ever hope to discourage them from making the same mistakes you are now so effectively speaking out against. only the assurance and lessons learned by you and so many others who have confronted the same circumstances, can help them think differently about making the choice to become thugs, thieves and murderers. i hope my brother will learn from your and his own experience, and that he will pass that knowledge onto his son and my nephew. i pray that his little, soon to be one year old body, will never know what the inside of a jail cell feels like. tookie, i am praying for your clemency. there is so much more work that needs to be done by you. let mercy and redemption prevail in your life for many, many more days. home |
| a lETTER tO sTANLEY tOOKIE wILLIAMS |