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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
What will Tookie's death mean in the long run?
By the time you read this...Stanley “Tookie” Williams will be dead. The State has again chosen premeditated, public murder as its punishment of choice. Since it’s too late for anyone to save his life, I’m left wondering—once the sense of personal loss and tragedy has diminished a little—if Tookie’s story will create a space for social change...or will it spiral down that bottomless, insatiable memory hole.
Blood on his hands...
I recall ten years ago when the plight of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro Wiwa (http://www.remembersarowiwa.com) galvanized the Left across the globe. Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni colleagues were sentenced to death by the Nigerian state for campaigning against the devastation of the Niger Delta by oil companies...especially Shell and Chevron. Petitions, phone calls, campaigns, candlelight vigils...all in the name of saving the charismatic Saro Wiwa.
All to no avail...
(Ken Saro Wiwa)
On Nov. 10, 1995, my wife Michele and I were part of a political gathering at Riverside Church in Manhattan. Ralph Nader was speaking when someone passed him a note. He made the grim announcement that the Nigerian government had ignored international opinion and hanged Ken Saro Wiwa along with his eight colleagues. How many today still remember Saro Wiwa or the cause he died for?
Tookie, Saro Wiwa, me, you...none of us are saints. None of us are heroes. But each of us, in our own way, can contribute to a better, more decent society...a society without capital punishment, for one thing. On WBAI radio yesterday morning, a sedate Tookie Williams said he’d like the world to remember him with one word: redemption. A decade from now, how many of us will remember Tookie or his attempts to share valuable lessons from a violent life (http://tinyurl.com/bv2r6)? What will/can each of us do to keep that message of redemption alive and, at the same time, strive for justice, peace, and solidarity?
William Faulkner sez:
“Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash, your picture in the paper nor money in the bank, neither. Just refuse to bear them.”
In the struggle...
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