Tookie

Writer and filmmaker Jasmina Tesanovic traveled to San Quentin to witness and protest the state's execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams last night. She wrote an account, and here is a snip:

They did him in, Tookie; it is my first capital punishment in California. They say, however, that Texas held the first place in executions while Bush was the governor.

Now Bush has the whole world to sample, to decree who deserves to live and who to die, who is a terrorist and who is a patriot, who can have scissors and who can have guns. Good and bad guys, it all looks like Hollywood and cowboy films. It not only looks like it, it is really is like it.

This Tookie, this black Californian, I don't care if he is guilty or not, I say when interviewed by a TV, as if my opinion mattered: the death penalty is barbarism and a crime against humanity, like torture.

How do you feel? the reporter asks me with tender feelings. What does that matter, I scream, it is not about feelings, it is about human rights.

Link to full text.

Previous Boing Boing posts on Jasmina Tesanovic: Link.

Here's a related piece by Michael Krikorian in the LA Weekly: Link to "Tookie's Mistaken Identity — On the trail of the real founder of the Crips."