In this morning’s LA Times, you’ll find a review I wrote about a book called Blue Rage, Black Redemption, a memoir by Stanley Tookie Williams. He worked on it during the last few years before he was executed in December of 2005.
It’s an interesting book, in part because it describes with authoritative detail a particular portion of recent Los Angeles history, namely the formation of the Crips. But it also provides a case study, of sorts, of how a boy comes to join a gang, or in Williams’ case, to form one, and what it might have taken to steer him in a different direction.
This past weekend, while I was working on the review, I got out the most recent report put together by the LA City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development. I thought it might stimulate my thinking as I wrote.
I’ll have more to say about the report in the weeks to come, but in rereading it on Sunday, I ran across one paragraph that stopped me cold. It had to do with the way that the committee felt that the city should “reframe the language” used in LA’s various gang plans. Here’s an excerpt:
If we look as if we’re “anti-gang,” we won’t be able to reach the very people we need if we want to eliminate the violence in our communities. Therefore, the Advisory Committee recommends renaming the plan: “A Street Peace and Dignified Community Development Initiative.”
What in the world??? I thought. We want to find better ways to address the gang violence that every single week causes unimaginable sorrow in so many of LA’s neighborhoods and we don’t admit that we’re anti gang?
Yes, of course, there is no room for the kind of demonizing language used by the cops in the bad old days of gang enforcement during the late ’80’s through the mid-’90’s.. “War on gangs”….”NHI—no human involved…” That sort of thing.
But not demonizing gang members doesn’t mean mean we start tiptoeing around and giving gangs any kind of tacit stamp of approval.
No one was clearer on that concept than the man whom they called the godfather of the Crips—Tookie Williams. In the memoir I just reviewed, in the children’s books he wrote, in the speeches he gave via telephone to classrooms full of kids, he didn’t just preach peace in the streets, he preached against kids joining gangs. Pure and simple. He preached against the terrible pain gangs caused.
In fact, on the website that friends and supporters set up for Williams during the last years of his life, Tookie went a step further and apologized at length for forming the Crips. Here’s a clip:
…..So today I apologize to you all — the children of America and South Africa — who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did…..”
How much more direct could the man be?
Listen, I have three wonderful godchildren who are the kids of former gang members, and there scores of homeboys and homegirls whose friendships have made my life a thousand times richer. But am I against gangs? Hell, yes. I’ve been to more than 30 gang funerals. How could I not be?
As Father Greg Boyle said recently when we discussed the subject, “Ask anybody in the neighborhoods most affected by gangs to close their eyes and describe what a healthy community looks like. Not one of them describes a community with gangs in it. Not one.”
Not even, he said, the gang members themselves describe a healthy community with gangs in it.
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P.S. In case you’re interested, you’ll find an excerpt from the review after the jump:
IN the manner of tribal origin myths, stories about the beginning of the street gang known as the Crips have been set down with varying degrees of authority by academics, journalists and a slew of former gangsters, members of the last usually claiming to have been integral to the gang’s formation. In the most common version, the Crips started as an offshoot of the Black Panthers, the name CRIP an acronym for Community Revolution in Progress. Other accounts claim the name was short for cripple — a reference to the gang’s early style of dress that featured elaborate walking canes as a fashion accessory. A less widely circulated story has it that the name stems from a version of the Crip walk — which, unlike its present-day dance incarnation — once involved a sort of limp. There are still other tales that explain lesser elements of the Crips’ mythos, like the genesis of the gang’s signature blue bandannas.
As it turns out, however, these stories are all dead wrong. The Crips gang was formed in 1971 by two people — Raymond Washington and Stanley Tookie Williams. Washington was killed in a shootout in 1979. Williams was executed by the state of California in late 2005. But he left behind a manuscript that sets the record straight.
The rest is here:
Your book review is interesting, Celeste…almost enough to make me read the book and expand my reading limit of 400 words per entry. Is there a Cliff’s Notes version out yet?
However, your final question, “When the state of California put Stanley Tookie Williams to death by lethal injection, was it a net gain for the rest of us, or a net loss?”, does not properly address the issue of capital punishment, which considers justice and deterrent to crime–not future benefits to others But, maybe the publicity of Williams book and information as to his ultimate demise will have greater and positive effect on potential gang members than if he got a pass.
On the renaming of things, Atlanta renamed a street that had strip joints and hookers because that street name had earned a bad connotation. Now, with a new street name, there are no more joints or hookers. Yeah, and if you believe that, then you are truly a liberal who thinks that calling something by another name changes it. And, I’m not white. I’m just melanin deficient.
The History Channel has a current series on gangs and covered the Mexican Mafia the other day. Those guys are totally ruthless. I think that they should be renamed to something nice and they will change.
Here’s information on the series, which I think is worth watching.
Nuestra Familia | 18th St. Gang | American Gangster | MS-13 Suburbia | Mexican Mafia | Black P Stones | Hells Angels | Skinheads | Latin Kings
http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=56287&display_order=4&mini_id=56143
Powerful stuff, hard to reconcile all the facets of one human being. Some of these gangsters seem so brilliant, if only the empathetic part of themselves weren’t missing. Reminds me of the gangster/ prisoner who wrote the book that became a powerful play I saw, In the Belly of the Beast, over a decade ago. He was championed by (I think) Norman Mailer, got out of jail and soon after killed someone in a common street brawl. Brilliance does not equal humanity. Very frustrating for those who try to take on their cause.
In yesterday’s Letters (LAT), Bhutto’s press secretary rebuts Fatima’s claims about her aunt, says they’re just hearsay, part of their family’s historical animosity (and contest for power, I imagine). Who knows… Meanwhile status quo in Pakistan limps on, now that Musharaff has found himself a judiciary he can control, at least until January. As you know, there is growing sentiment there to be rid of all three top contenders, not just Musharaff/ Bhutto. This situation will not be squelched as readily as in the past. Something else for the next administration to deal with.
One other note, legal capital punishment is not responsible for the removal of Tookie Williams from society and whatever good he might have done in the future. He is. He is not a victim, and it is a minority view that sparing his life would be beneficial. Don’t confuse victims and victimizers.
Woody, I wasn’t arguing for or against capital punishment (which, as I’ve made clear in the past, I’m against).
I was arguing for commutation of Williams’ sentence to Life without Possibility of Parole. I think, frankly, Schwarzenegger would have liked to do it. But it was too much of a political hot potato for him, particularly in that Tookie wouldn’t show remorse for the murders, since he maintained until the end that he wasn’t guilty.
(I don’t have any way of guessing at whether he was or wasn’t as I’ve never looked at the trial transcripts. But after reading the book, I tend—for a variety of reasons— to lean toward the not guilty end of things. For one thing, Williams readily admitted he deserved to be arrested and imprisoned for other crimes for which he was never caught, just not for these particular crimes for which he’d been sentenced. But, as I said, I really don’t have enough information to even make an educated guess. I’m just going on gut feeling, which may be way off.)
Ironically, if Williams had admitted to the murders, and expressed remorse, Schwarzenegger might have had the political room to commute—all of which Williams’ attorneys understood. (I have a friend who was part of the commutation appeals team.) But Williams said that he couldn’t, in good conscience, admit to something he didn’t do, even if the choice cost him his life.
So it’s complicated.
Celeste writes ….When the state of California put Stanley Tookie Williams to death by lethal injection, was it a net gain for the rest of us, or a net loss?
I put on my favorite Che Guevara tee-shirt from the 70’s to write this. Tookie was no revolutionist for social change. He was a bad “mofo” criminal in and out of prison. How many executions do you think he ordered? If anyone on death row deserved to die, it was Tookie Williams. Just because he finds redemption and writes a book after he is on death row and living in solitary confinement does not change his past. He is not a loss in my world, he lost his right to live long time ago, and I say good riddance.
L.A. Res—hey, the important thing is that you’re appropriately dressed while writing the above.
I can completely understand your POV, although I don’t happen to share it. This is a guy who definitely caused a whole lot of grief—whether he did those four murders that ultimately got him executed, or not.
Still and all, I’d prefer to have him around as a resource. But then again I’m against capital punishment anyway, so admittedly that means I’m dealing from a stacked emotional deck, so to speak.
I was impressed with how much Tavis Smiley and others (who appear to have their heads screwed on relatively straight) seemed to like the guy. Personally, while I found Williams interesting, I didn’t find him terribly likable. Yet, after reading the book, speaking simply as a journalist, there’s a lot I’d have liked to have had the chance ask him. And killing him seems so….I don’t know….wasteful.
His was an interesting book to review—precisely because it points beyond itself to all of these things we’re discussing now, and other issues still beyond these. That’s why I happily agreed to do the review when the Times called.
Michael Vick said that he was sorry. Paris Hilton took a Bible to jail. Maybe they should get off easy.