You can be opposed to the death penalty for Tookie (or any other murderer) and still be opposed to glorifying him in any way. That is quite offensive, comparing him to Rosa Parks in any way, shape, or form. That Barbara is sort of his 'PR" person who said it was a racist question to ask him to say the names of the his victims
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20...NkNGroe6sgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YWFzYnA2BHNlYwM3NDI-
Look, I think the death penalty is a lousy idea. It demeans those of us in whose name it is done. It makes us killers, however ceremonially and legally it is couched. It drags us down toward the same level as the murderers we do in. Opposing the death penalty is ultimately about the kind of people we are, not about the kind of people we kill.
But I just heard that Barbara Becnel, a close friend of Tookie Williams', is planning a ‘’statesman’s’’ funeral for the man put to death in San Quentin on Tuesday morning, and I am appalled. The Los Angeles Times says Becnel is promising a funeral on the scale of Rosa Parks’.
Stop right there. Tookie Williams, however repentant his latter years, however many Swiss legislators nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, was also a criminal force. To try to put him on a par with Rosa Parks, the blameless secular saint of the civil rights movement, insults her, and us – and the anti-death penalty movement.
Not everyone who goes to prison is Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi. Heck, Hitler was in prison too and look what came out – Herr Holocaust. Being sent to prison does not automatically give anyone a leg up the hero ladder.
Prisoner redemption and rehabilitation – which for decades were ignored by the prison system --are laudable. But there’s a helluva lot to be said for not going bad in the first place. Where are the statesmen’s funerals for all the black kids who lived upright and forthright lives and didn’t get into trouble – and got killed by Crips or Bloods nonetheless?
Williams’ friend Becnel says the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has promised to help her prove Williams was innocent of the murders that sent him to death row – although after her comparing Williams to Rosa Parks, I gotta wonder if that’ll happen.
If it’s ever established that he is innocent, it will be a large and dreadful lesson for California, to have sent an innocent man to his death. But that's a matter in the future. For now, you can’t force history’s hand. Giving Tookie Williams a statesman’s funeral won’t make him one.