Killing Tookie, Smearing Mandela: Schwarzenegger's Hit List

by Counterpunch (repost)

Thu, Jan 12, 2006 9:38AM

So reads the statement of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in denying clemency for Stan Tookie Williams. Twelve hours after the statement was issued, Stan was brought into the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison, and the former gang leader-turned-internationally renown peacemaker was put to death.

Schwarzenegger claimed the dedication of Stan's Life in Prison autobiography showed that his record of turning his life around was a fraud.

But the men and women on Stan's list aren't "criminals." They are revolutionaries--African Americans and Native Americans who were subjected to the dehumanizing conditions of U.S. prisons, but who refused to submit, and dedicated their lives to the struggle against racism and oppression.

By singling out this dedication, Schwarzenegger and his aides showed that Stan Tookie Williams died most of all because of the political challenge he represented to the status quo of racism and repression in the U.S. today.

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