So I hope we can all agree on a few simple guidlines for life. It seems that both sides hold at least these ideas as truth(whatever that means anymore).
1. Do not kill or harm other people
2. Redemption and forgiveness are complicated issues
3. You can only speak to your own experience
Now, if we can at lest all stand on this common ground, or not, then this is my experience of the Stanley Tookie Williams issue.
I am a teacher in Watsonville. I did not grow up in the same world as my students, but I still have get past it and try to teach kids who come from homes where education is not as important because survival is the key. As children mainly of color, they are constantly under attack by society. Their self-esteem and culture are ground to a pulp everyday by the white friendly world we have created. I wish I had the magic words to make everything ok and let them know that it will be alright if they stick through it even though every thing around them screams that they are wrong for being who they are. So many of them are in gangs. I had students who lost crucial family memebers in gang violence last year. Still, they turn to gangs because they feel safe. They feel like someone is watching over them because everywhere else they turn, they only feel alone and attacked. I cannot speak to them because they know I have not been exactly where they are. Stanley Tookie Williams can. It frustrates me that someone who could help my kids in a way that I can't is being put to death. That resource is being taken away from my students who need his leadership for a gang-free life. Wanting his death is vengence, not justice. He is more valuable alive. This is an assassination of a very powerful leader of color. Once again teaching my kids that violence is the answer, death is justice, and speaking up isn't worth it if you aren't white.
If you are so bent on this man's death then I feel sorry for whatever wrongs have been done against you that you could actually lust for someone else's blood. If you are so against the deaths of the people he is convicted of killing, why are you so excited to see more death? I have no hate in my heart. I will not play God as you do and say who is fit to live or die. That is not our job. It should not be part of our justice system.
I am an optomist. I believe in redemption. So did Jesus, if you believe him. I hear a lot of people do. How sad life must be for those who walk around thinking that life never gets any better or that nothing ever changes. If this man dies, then I'm afraid my students will have no one to teach them that they don't have to stay stuck where they are. That there are better lives than the one they are facing.
So, I stand up for Tookie because he is a stand for my students and since that number of people could fit in a small utility closet, I find his existence worth while.