Tookie’s Viewing

UPDATE BELOW

There will be a viewing of Tookie today a few miles outside of the area I work. They have put us on tactical alert from 12pm until midnight, meaning they want us out in the field with our riot gear. We shall see.

LOS ANGELES – There will be a public viewing of Stanley Tookie Williams on Monday, December 19, 2005 from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m. at the House of Winston Mortuary located at 9501 South Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles.

The memorial service for peacemaker killer Stanley Tookie Williams will take place Tuesday, December 20, 2005 at 12 noon. The service will take place at Bethel A.M.E. located at 7900 South Western Avenue in Los Angeles. The service will be open to the public, but seating is limited. Overflow viewing will take place outside of the church on jumbotron screens.

Among the participants will be Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., Bruce Gordon of the NAACP, the Honorable (sic) Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, recording artist Snoop Dogg, human rights advocate Bianca Jagger, and Williams’ long time advocate and friend Barbara Becnel.

Check out that list of participants. What a bunch huh?

I can guarantee you there will be Crips in attendence, most of them can be picked out by the color of the clothes they will be wearing. They wear blue while Bloods wear red.

UPDATE

Hundreds of people converged Monday on the South Los Angeles neighborhood where Stanley Tookie Williams co-founded the Crips to say goodbye to a “homeboy” executed last week over the objections of supporters who said he had turned his life around.

Williams, clad in a gray suit, lay in an open coffin at the House of Winston Mortuary as people quietly filed by with their heads bowed.

“Mostly everyone is out here because of his reputation,” said Robert Collins, 27, who said he was a former Crips gang member. “Everyone knew Tookie was no angel. Everyone’s just paying their respects to him.”

A line of 200 stretched out the door shortly after the six-hour viewing began in mid-afternoon. More than an hour later, the line had dissipated but people were still streaming through.

Williams, whose execution was carried out over the protests of supporters who included celebrities and civil rights activists, spent his last years on California’s Death Row renouncing gang violence and writing several children’s books warning of the dangers of gangs.

See Love, a teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District, said she had seen firsthand the way Williams’ book “Life in Prison” had changed students’ lives.

“Tookie’s words were able to do what no judge or probation officer was able to do,” said Love, 35. “I hope Stanley’s spirit continues to live in the name of peace.”

Williams, 51, was executed last Tuesday for the murders of four people during a pair of 1979 robberies. Although he had renounced his past as co-founder of the deadly Crips, he maintained to his death that he did not commit the killings.

A crowd lingering outside the mortuary carried signs and handed out flyers proclaiming his innocence.

Lori Tompkins, 48, of Los Angeles, said she came “to say goodbye to our homeboy and also give support to his family.”

“We feel he was innocent and wrongly killed,” she added.

The viewing was to be followed by a funeral Tuesday in Los Angeles. Organizers said those expected to attend included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg.

“Everyone knew Tookie was no angel”, one of the biggest understatements of the year.

Curt

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