{"id":119,"date":"2005-12-10T10:41:11","date_gmt":"2005-12-10T17:41:11","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-12-10T10:41:58","modified_gmt":"2005-12-10T10:41:58","slug":"tookie_and_execution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2005\/tookie_and_execution\/","title":{"rendered":"Tookie and Execution"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"juiz-outdated-message jodpm-top\">Heads up, this content is 20 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div><p>Everywhere I walk on campus, I see signs saying &#8220;Save Stan &#8216;Tookie&#8217; Williams!&#8221;  Just from that bombardment, I&#8217;ve gathered three things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He&#8217;s about to be executed.<\/li>\n<li>He&#8217;s written books that people want to share.<\/li>\n<li>The campus Socialist organization is his biggest supporter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So I ignored the signs, mostly because the campus Socialists are a little creepy.  And if they weren&#8217;t going to spell out <i>why<\/i> he&#8217;s being executed, I wasn&#8217;t about to listen to why he shouldn&#8217;t be.  Yeah, okay, I live under a rock.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/c\/a\/2005\/12\/10\/MNG3OG620N1.DTL\">SF Chronicle<\/a> cleared it up for me, though.  Here&#8217;s the deal with Tookie:<b>Why he&#8217;s being executed:<\/b> He started the Crips, an LA-based gang, 35 years ago.  The Crips have killed a whole lot of people and destroyed the lives of many of their gang members.  Tookie, himself, was responsible for many, many murders.  Sounds like your typical death row case, as justified as you can get.<b>Why he shouldn&#8217;t be executed:<\/b> Since he&#8217;s been in jail, he turned his focus toward stopping gang violence.  He&#8217;s written numerous books to that end (including children&#8217;s books), has negotiated truces between rival groups, and has generally been an avid opponent to gangs.  Granted, he&#8217;s just trying to undo what he started, and with some futility at that, but if you kill him, he can&#8217;t be on your side anymore.  That, and a big chunk of LA &#8212; both gang and anti-gang &#8212; will try to riot.  And we all know what that&#8217;s like.<b>My thoughts on the death penalty?<\/b>  Execution isn&#8217;t the problem.  Cutting it out won&#8217;t change the fact that &#8220;hardened criminals&#8221; exist and need to be removed from society if we&#8217;re to live somewhat peacefully.  The problem is a system that creates a need for &#8220;crime.&#8221;  Psychologists have found that no one does anything without feeling like it&#8217;s justified at the time.  If so many people feel justified in commiting crimes against society, isn&#8217;t it time we considered what kind of life circumstances would drive these people to such desperation that they could feel that way?  And start there?  We put the mentally insane in institutions to help take care of their minds.  We put products of abuse and neglect behind bars to show them they&#8217;re horrible people.  And then we get mad at them when they ban together to become angrier and more dangerous than before.  Seriously, America, there must be a better way.As for Tookie, let the man speak.  I&#8217;m with the Socialists on this one.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heads up, this content is 20 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.Everywhere I walk on campus, I see signs saying &#8220;Save Stan &#8216;Tookie&#8217; Williams!&#8221; Just from that bombardment, I&#8217;ve gathered three things: He&#8217;s about to be executed. He&#8217;s written books that people want to share. The campus Socialist organization is his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}