Blog o’ Gnosis

A week ago, Jojo was telling me the story of 2 eighth grade girls in her school who had gotten into a fight, according to her over which of two gangs was the best. We talked a little about what kids their age living in Sebastopol might or might not know about gang life, whether gangs were perceived as fashionable just like different brands of jeans. I took the opportunity to tell her a little about Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the co-founder of the Crips gang then awaiting execution on California’s Death Row.

Tookie Williams had been on my mind for a few days, ever since I listened to someone reading his writing over the radio. I knew he had written several books for children, had been nominated for the Nobel Prize for his anti-gang work while in prison. I consider the death penalty worse than medieval: it is one of the great evils that we perpetuate in this state. Yet even if I were for the death penalty, I still would be opposed to it in this case. We need more men like Tookie Williams, articulate, passionate men who have been through the fire and lived to tell the tale, who can help guide young people away from the dangers of the streets. The last thing we need is another reason for poor Black youth to feel that there is no possibility for justice or a good life for them. Killing such an eloquent, reformed spokesman, regardless of the wrongs he had done earlier in life, is driving another nail into the coffin of an entire generation of disenfranchised youth in our cities and prisons.

Monday morning driving Jojo to school, we heard on the news that Schwarzenegger still hadn’t responded to pleas for clemency. Williams was scheduled to be executed at San Quentin that night at midnight, and Jojo and I made tentative plans to drive down after I got off work and join the vigil outside the gates. For a girl who loves horror and suspense movies, who revels in being scared out of her wits, it was gratifying to see her stricken reaction to real-life horror, and the outrage she felt on hearing about this miscarriage of justice.

That day at work, two people came in and in a classic bait-and-switch one of them distracted me out front while the other went into the back room and stole all the credit cards out of my wallet. This was tremendously upsetting to me, even though I had been watching for something like this to happen since they’d walked in. As soon as they left I went right to my purse and discovered the theft, so was able to file a police report and cancel all my cards before they could even charge a tank of gas. But what a time of year to have no credit cards! And I was reminded that if this had been Tookie Williams in his early days that I had met instead of those two desperate bumblers, I would be lucky to be alive right now. People do bad shit to other people for no reason, all the time. I was in despair for the entire human race. My sense of having been violated merged uneasily with a huge feeling of gratitude, though: following a strong intuition that morning, I’d just done all the rest of my holiday shopping before arriving at work, and so could probably live without those cards until they were replaced.

I just stayed upset all day, and I couldn’t tell how much was from the theft and how much from the atrocity to be committed in my name later that night. I kept checking in to the SF Chronicle’s website for news on the clemency appeal and set up a little shrine to Williams at the front counter, which garnered some lovely comments from customers. Finally word came down that the Governor had denied Williams plea for clemency, and that the execution would go forward as scheduled. My upset turned to nausea, and I gave up trying to make myself feel better for the rest of the day.

By the end of it, I was too exhausted to think about driving to San Rafael, and with no cash and no credit in my wallet it didn’t seem like the smartest thing to do anyway. So Jojo and I lit a candle to Tookie in our house, said prayers for his peaceful passage and for the hope that he will have a better life next time around. In the moment, there didn’t seem like much else to do.

That’s how my week started, and the pace and challenges have not let up for a second. There have been a string of delays at the plant with the Music of Gwydion CD which have frustrated me no end, and mean that no one will get their CDs before Solstice. Everything is taking longer than it should, nothing is easy, and there’s no time to really rest.

I feel stripped down to the bone, in the middle of a marathon with no reserves and no option of quitting. The weather has been cooperating nicely, making me feel like Edmund Hillary everytime I go out to walk Vince bundled up against the howling wind and rain. Tonight I sit here on my bed with my laptop while in the next room Jojo and several of her 7th grade friends are whooping it up on the occasion of her 13th birthday party. Pacing is everything, especially when the timing is immovable. Maybe tomorrow I can sleep in a bit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Family, Spirit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.