Arnold's Opportunity

By Bell Gale Chevigny, AlterNet. Posted November 28, 2005.

Anyone who does not know already that Stanley "Tookie" Wiliams is scheduled to die by lethal injection in San Quentin on Dec. 13, 2005, will soon know. A founder of the notorious Crips gang in Los Angeles who has been convicted of four murders, Williams has become a surprisingly effective moral leader to youth in his hometown and around the world. Among the 51,000 people who have signed a petition for Williams' clemency are countless former gangmembers and Desmond Tutu. What happens to his case will have unusually weighty implications for the U.S. and its reputaton abroad.

"Education is my passion," Arnold Schwarzenegger has often proclaimed. "Corrections should correct," he has repeated, apparently endorsing the belief that people can change.

Is this mere lip service? Is it a glib performance similar to what some parole boards assume they are getting from a prisoner who promises he'll make good? Or is it the speech of a man whose word is his bond?

Tookie Wlliams' plea to have his sentence commuted offers Arnold Schwarzenegger a chance to answer these questions. Education has truly been Williams' passion; his learning curve is about as steep as it gets. When the prison chaplain gave him a dictionary, as Tookie tells it, he fell in love with words. He'd write 50 words on one side of a paper towel, put the definitions on the other side and then test himself. Self-education gave birth to his conscience.

Some believe Williams should not be granted clemency because he has denied responsibility for the killings that landed him on Death Row. (In fact, he has continued to appeal his conviction.) But Williams does take responsibility for the epidemic reach and murderous legacy of the Crips. When he learned that the Crips had inspired copycat gangs in South Africa and among Somali immigrants in Switzerland, he wrote an apology for "ruining the lives of so many young people," which he delivered to the Congressional Black Caucus. His Protocol for Peace between gangs has been used widely to prevent strife among Crips and Bloods. His "Letter to Incarcerated Youth" insists that they can resist the false lures of gangs and can discipline and educate themselves. (These three documents are posted on Williams' website.)

I do not know Tookie Williams personally, but I know some former Crips who have been profoundly transformed by his words and his example. I have known other prisoners on San Quentin's condemned row and nationwide who, like Williams, have come to feel profound remorse for their violence and strive to make some reparation to society. The means of payment they most desire is helping others to avoid their mistakes.

Committing himself to trying to repair the harm he has done to young people, Williams has kept his focus and broadened his reach. He has co-authored a series of children's books, called "Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence." Teachers and prison librarians attest to the fact that Tookie's credibility and influence among youth at risk are unsurpassed. Williams' Internet Project, online chats teaching literacy and peer leadership to young Somali immigrants in Switzerland inspried six members of the Swiss Parliament to nominate Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As a man who has remade himself more than once -- immigrant, body-builder, actor, politician -- Gov. Schwarzenegger can learn from this teacher.

Schwarzenegger has commmendably argued that prisons should return to the goal of rehabilitation. In California's bloated condemned row (648 prisoners) and its vast prison empire (165,000 incarcerated), he would be hard put to find anyone better qualified to embody the meaning of rehabilitation than Tookie Williams. If the governor is sincere about the importance of education and rehabilitation, he will grant Williams clemency.

Bell Gale Chevigny is a member of the PEN Prison Writing Committee and editor of 'Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing' (Arcade, 1999).

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