California Governor Arnold "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger's denial of Stanley "Tookie" Williams' clemency petition is an appalling document, showing not only Schwarzenegger's moral cowardice in hiding behind the jury's decision in favor of execution, (which the bourgeois press is emphasizing) but also that he is an extreme right-wing apologist for the frame-up trials and long incarcerations of political prisoners around the globe, from Nelson Mandela to Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The denial of clemency statement just issued by the office of the Governor of California shows the strong class bias and political basis for the decision. Schwarzenegger specifically cites Williams' statements of support for political prisoners as one of his principal reasons for denying him clemency:

"The dedication of Williams' book 'Life in Prison' casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998, several years after Williams' claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is dedicated to 'Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countless other men, women and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars.' The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement [sic]."

http://www.governor.ca.gov/govsite/pdf/press_release_2005/Williams_Clemency_Statem ent.pdf

ALL of the cases cited by Governor Schwarzenegger in his clemency denial statement are of class-war prisoners, many of whom have been released from prison long ago after having conclusively proven that the criminal charges levied against them were frame-ups by local, state and federal authorities -- created as a way to prevent them from remaining effective political activists opposing the machinations of the US government at home and abroad.

That Schwarzenegger has the gall to include Nelson Mandela on the list of people with "violent pasts" is astounding. In fact, NO ONE on this list can be said to have had a "violent past" in the way Schwarzenegger implies - unless, of course, he wants to claim that Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt's experience as a US Marine in Vietnam is proof that he had a "violent past"! The cases brought against nearly every single person on the list have subsequently been proven to be utterly unfounded, based upon police frame-ups, false accusations, fabricated testimony, withholding of exculpatory evidence and falsification of forensic lab data. It is absolutely repulsive that Schwarzenegger should use Williams' written statement of support for men and women who have been declared innocent and released from jail after spending years behind bars as another reason why Williams should be executed!

To top all the duplicity and slander contained in the denial of clemency statement, the inclusion of Nelson Mandela's name on this list of people with indefensibly "violent pasts" places Schwarzenegger firmly among the outright apologists for the South African apartheid state!

It must be pointed out that "Tookie" Williams is not a "class-war" prisoner. He is a lumpenproletarian who co-founded one of the most vicious street gangs in the US. It is admirable that he seems to have risen far above his background as a "Crips" gang leader, writing books warning youth to avoid the tragic and deadly "thug life," and that he espouses admiration for, and a defense of class-war prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal.

But that does not mean that "Tookie" Williams is on a par with Jamal, Pratt, Peltier or any other stalwart working-class fighter against US imperialism. Let's use Mumia Abu-Jamal as an example. We, as Trotskyists, defend Mumia Abu-Jamal as a "class-war prisoner" because he is an innocent victim of a frame up by the capitalist state, which has identified Jamal as one of the greatest defenders of the working people of the US. We defend Jamal as a "class-war prisoner" because he has dedicated his entire life, from the age of 15, to the fight against the racist oppression of black workers in America. "Tookie" Williams has no such record to show in his background; not even close. We simply defend "Tookie" Williams because we as Trotskyists are opposed to the death penalty, period - no matter WHO is being threatened with murder by the capitalist state. The death penalty is inherently racist, and amounts to nothing more or less than "legal lynching." The threat of death sentences means, in the deeply corrupt and racist US capitalist legal system, that innocent people will be wrongly convicted and executed. 13 men have been released from death row in Illinois alone because they were later found to have been innocent after years and years in death-row hellholes. Now, there is a tenuous moratorium on executions in Illinois, which could be overturned by the bourgeois political parties at their convenience. We as workers must fight for the outright abolition of the death penalty because it threatens our class almost exclusively, and it has historically specifically targeted our most selfless, stalwart worker-leaders.

That Arnold Schwarzenegger would dive to such great depths in order to justify the state-sanctioned murder of "Tookie" Williams should not come as such a surprise: after all, Schwartzenegger's father was a Nazi Stormtrooper back in Austria during WWII [http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/11381.html] and Gov. Schwarzenegger himself has repeatedly espoused his own personal admiration of Hitler:

"Mr. Schwarzenegger was asked to name his heroes — 'who do you admire most[?]'

'It depends for what,' Mr. Schwarzenegger said, according to the transcript in the book proposal. 'I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker.' " ["Schwarzenegger Admired Hitler, Book Proposal Says" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/national/03BOOK.html?ex=1134536400&en=03b c9b2418c7bcc3&ei=5070&hp]

The rotten apple does not fall far from the diseased tree that bore it.

Clemency now for Stanley "Tookie" Williams and every other death-row prisoner in the racist US Prison System!

Abolish the Death Penalty!

Varlet

As soon as I got to the part that said "We, as Trotskyists," I started laughing so hard I spilled my vodka.

Leftists are nothing if not sanctimonious.

Tookie, a pleasure. I'm Joe, over there with the icepick in his head is Leon.

"hiding behind the jury's decision in favor of execution"

This is my favorite. As if the decision by a jury is just some small loophole that he found to exploit.

Of course the constant references to mumia as a "political prisoner" are pretty priceless as well.

I find it endlessly fascinating how the left, with almost clocklike consistency treats virtually EVERY conviction of a Black murderer exactly the same way.

A. They must clearly be innocent and it was an oppresive white court system which framed them.

B. This is due to the class divide which caused their heainous behavior to begin with (B obviously contradicts A but no matter evidently)

C. Once in prison they are "political prisoners", their murders somehow erased and the state crime of dissent somehow retroactively committed. (Make no mistake...tookie was not in aclass war when he blew off the face of the "buddha head" as he laughingly called one of his victims).

D. If the situation ever actually culminates in an execution it is again an example of state racism and murder. The fact that more whites are executed than Blacks is conviently forgotten. Let's see how this board lights up next month when a white guy is due to be executed. Mums the word, I predict, certainly from the likes of the fraud jesse jackson et. al.

Face it. Blacks actually DO commit murder and they sometimes get caught and convicted just like Whites and Hispanics and Aisians and whoever. And I suspect that very often, when this happens, their crimes, like tookies, weren't acts of rebellion or sedition. Just garden variety murder.

Tookie was a scumbag that may or may not have turned his miserable act around long enough to write some books and maybe help some kids. Maybe. If so that's still a long, long way from paying the price of his actions.

Here's my win-win situation.

Get rid of the Death Penalty.

Commute mumia's sentence to life.

Just stop feeding him.

The politicization of Tookie happened, mostly, after the governor's statement. This was a somewhat atypical demand for clemency.

Until the statement, there were roughly two dominant opinions about why he should not be killed. One was that the death penalty should be abolished. The other is that Took had redeemed himself.

A. Nobody disputed that he was guilty of *something*. Even if it wasn't these murders, they assumed he's guilty of other ones or of causing other ones to happen. But you don't say that kind of think when you're making a point.

B. Yes, they say this. It's called the influence of Marxism. But in the above, they say Tookie was *not* working class, but was "lumpenproletariat" or in a class below the working class. I think communists consider the lumpen the *enemy* of the working class, but I don't think this is the case in America.

C. He was not widely considered a political prisoner, like Leonard Peltier or Mumia.

D. Few death penalty executions get any attention. I think the last major one was Kevin Cooper. Anti-death-penalty groups protest every single execution. Leftist groups protest those executions of people considered allies. Different faiths will have groups protest on behalf of their own. (I don't know if the right wing does protests when right wingers get executed.)

I appreciate all your comments on my article - even though, reviewing them all, it appears that only one of you actually took the time (3 minutes?) to read my missive on behalf of clemency for Stanley Williams. Permit me to take just a minute to put the children to bed; I'll be with you, "johnk" in a moment.

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I imagine that you, "J Stalin", must be too busy watching reruns of "Jackass" to intelligently reply to an article you never even bothered to read. Why do you even waste your time (and ours, to be sure) to add your worthless commentary to this forum? Have you been thrown out of every other webspace in which you have sought to give free rein to your paltry intellect? Has Indymedia become your forum of last resort?

Your cynicism, J Stalin, seems boundless; yet you seem to be far too young to be so cynical.

But perhaps I'm wrong about your age. If so, why don't you go out and drown your tedious cynicism in mass quantities of alcohol (as you will undoubtedly be doing before too, too long, if you are only 15).

If you are old enough to drink, why not go and have some fun at the local pub! Surely, it would be more fun for you to get beat up for your insulting boorishness and thrown ass-first out of a bar into the gutter than to be the laughingstock of a place such as this?

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"fresca", like his namesake, is full of gas and nutritionally barren (especially in an intellectual sense). He amuses himself with criticism of things he neither reads nor understands. How charming! Bless its pointed little head!

Your entire "criticism" of my article is made up of misrepresentations of my statements. You obviously never read Schwarznegger's denial of clemency statement either. How can someone who never even troubles himself to read these two documents pass judgement on either one of them?

You wrote:

" 'hiding behind the jury's decision in favor of execution'

"This is my favorite. As if the decision by a jury is just some small loophole that he found to exploit."

An important aspect of, and one of the many reasons why so many prominent people chose to support Stanley Williams' appeal for clemency was the fact that he had come to repudiate his membership in the Crips gang, and had written, over a period of years, a series of books for children urging them to stay away from gangs. All this took place years after the jury voted in favor of the death penalty for Williams. Schwarzenegger was supposed to take into account the way Williams conducted his life AFTER his conviction. Instead, he hid behind a decision taken by a jury years before Williams undertook to do all his anti-gang work.

Schwarzenegger wrote:

"[T]here is nothing that compels me to nullify the jury's decision of guilt and sentence and the many court decisions during the last 24 years upholding the jury's decision..."

If that's not "hiding behind a jury" I just don't know what is.

"fresca" continued:

"Of course the constant references to mumia as a "political prisoner" are pretty priceless as well.

"I find it endlessly fascinating how the left, with almost clocklike consistency treats virtually EVERY conviction of a Black murderer exactly the same way."

If you had read my statement you would know that I actually said that Williams was NOT a "political prisoner" like Mumia Abu-Jamal (only the willfully blind can deny the deeply political basis for Mumia's conviction, sentence of death and the continual refusal of Mumia's appeals for a new trial.)

Review Gov. Schwarzenegger's denial of clemency statement. It could be persuasively argued (and I do argue, now) that the GOVERNOR made "Tookie" into a political prisoner, at the 11th hour, when Gov. Schwarzenegger made it clear that among his reasons for denying Williams clemency were published statements Williams made in support of political prisoners past and present (Nelson Mandela, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, etc.)!

"A. They must clearly be innocent and it was an oppresive white court system which framed them."

I made no assertion at all in my article as to whether Williams was guilty or innocent. I have not been able to review the case in any truly comprehensive way that would enable me to make any judgement of that sort; nor have any of the idiots who have been howling for his execution done such an investigation. I also never used the word "white" even once in my article. These are just 2 of the ways you showed the world that you like to criticize things you never bother to read.

"B. This is due to the class divide which caused their heainous [sic - V] behavior to begin with

Yes. Gang life is an outgrowth of ghetto life. Ghettos exist due to racism. Look up the definition of "ghetto" in the dictionary, if you have one.

Racism is part of the capitalist system, not just here in the US, but in every capitalist state. The supporters of Indymedia have dedicated their lives and work toward eradicating racism. Trotskyists declare that the workers of the world should unite as brothers and sisters, as a class.

And you, "fresca"? Where do you stand on the issue of racism?

"C. Once in prison they are "political prisoners", their murders somehow erased and the state crime of dissent somehow retroactively committed. (Make no mistake...tookie was not in aclass war when he blew off the face of the "buddha head" as he laughingly called one of his victims)."

See my first response above, before your section "A".

By the way... what on earth is "the state crime of dissent"?

"D. If the situation ever actually culminates in an execution it is again an example of state racism and murder. The fact that more whites are executed than Blacks is conviently [sic] forgotten. Let's see how this board lights up next month when a white guy is due to be executed."

First of all, you would have seen, had you bothered to look, that in my article I, a leftist, (and I am far from alone), stated that I am for giving clemency to EVERYONE on death row in the US. I make no distinction of race, creed or color. Trotskyists, socialists and people of "the left" generally are opposed to the death penalty; we say it should be abolished entirely. The death penalty, like poverty, racism, sexism and homelessness has no place in a truly civilized society.

Secondly: Many of the organizations that demonstrated outside the prison where Williams was murdered by the State of California have also demonstrated against every single execution that has taken place since 1976 and before; the only reason we ever "miss" the opportunity to protest a state-sanctioned murder is when it takes place in a location so remote that we are unable to travel to the site of the foul crime before it is carried out. In fact, that's one of the principal reasons why the state puts prisons in remote locations in the first place. The Bastille was in a densely populated section of Paris.

Thirdly: While it is true that (in raw numbers) more "whites" are executed than "blacks" here in the US, it is also true that black workers, who make up 13 percent of the US population make up 38% of the population of Death Row. Even the US Supreme Court has acknowledged that the death penalty is applied in a way that is unavoidably racist. The Supreme Court refused to investigate this fact further, writing in McCleskey vs. Kemp that "At most, the Baldus study [of racism in the application of the death penalty in Georgia - V] indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race. Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system...Despite these imperfections, our consistent rule has been that constitutional guarantees are met when 'the mode [for determining guilt or punishment] itself has been surrounded with safeguards to make it as fair as possible.' Singer v. United States, supra, at 35. Where the discretion that is fundamental to our criminal process is involved, we decline to assume that what is unexplained is invidious. In light of the safeguards designed to minimize racial bias in the process, the fundamental value of jury trial in our criminal justice system, and the benefits that discretion provides to criminal defendants, we hold that the Baldus study does not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias affecting the Georgia capital sentencing process." In other words: yes there is racism when it comes to the application of the death penalty, but it's not so big a deal as to strike down the death penalty itself. Even when the Supreme Court issued this horrible verdict upholding the death penalty in Georgia, it had to admit that consideration of a defendant's race plays "an inevitable part" in the US criminal justice system, and that it can't be eliminated, only "minimized".

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=481&invol=279

Here's a lollipop, "fresca"; go sit in the corner and amuse yourself with it while we adults discuss important things. And please: read the articles before you subject them to a "critique."

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Sorry to keep you waiting, johnk.

Your statement was both intelligent and welcome. I especially liked your insight on the political nature of the Williams case, and how Schwarzenegger's denial of clemency itself made the Williams case a political case. I borrowed your insightful commentary in my riposte to "fresca". I hope you don't mind!

I just wanted to point out that communists do not see the lumpenproletariat as the enemy at all. The lumpenproletariat is defined by Marxists, essentially, as workers who bear no relationship to the means of production. They are the homeless, the ghetto poor, the unemployed. They are not enemies of the working class. The working class, because of their ability to shut down capitalist production simply by going on strike, is the revolutionary class. The dispossessed lumpenproletariat has no power to shut down the machinery of capitalism; the capitalist class couldn't care less what happens to the lumpenproletarians. They have only one use for these dispossessed human beings. From the ranks of the lumpenproletariat the capitalist class wishes to recruit its scabs and hired thugs and assassins, and its soldiery to be used to crush the workers movement at home and abroad whenever the workers rise up in self-defense.

Many ostensibly revolutionary organizations see the lumpenproletariat as the revolutionary class. Marxists consider that individual lumpenproletarians could be won over as potential allies of the revolutionary working class during a revolutionary struggle. But in general, lumpenproletarians are struggling so much for the necessities of life, living day-to-day, so that, as Marx said, they could more easily be bribed by the capitalists to cross picket lines in order to put some food on their tables than they would be likely to be won over to Marxist ideology.

The word "lumpenproletarian" is German in origin. It sounds extremely perjorative in English. The meaning in English is basically "sub-working-class", i.e., unemployed and without the means of subsistence. Homeless. "Sans-culottes." Socialists see all the downtrodden lumpenproletarians as potential allies, not as enemies. Socialists are people who have dedicated their lives to the struggle to raise all the dispossessed lumpenproletarians up to the level of the working class, to provide jobs, housing, food, clothing, everything necessary for a healthy, full life.

Other than that misunderstanding, I agree substantially with everything you wrote.

Thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to clarify about attitudes regarding the lumpenproletariat. It helps put things into some perspective.

Thanks so much for the rebuttal Varla. I don't have time now to pick it apart, piece by piece but I savor the opportunity. Believe me..I can't wait.

I will leave you with these two thoughts.

First of all, my four point outline of the left's usual response to the conviction and execution of Black murderers stands by itself. It neither responds to nor depends on your original post. Obviously, however, the spirit of the left, about which I write, has been glowingly on display all over in the weeks leading up to the justice for tookie. It's clearly evident in your post as well regardless of whether you claim i misquoted you or not. The fact is I didn't quote you at all in the four points.

But I will quote you now.

"Schwarzenegger was supposed to take into account the way Williams conducted his life AFTER his conviction"

No. He wasn't. You may have WANTED him to but the fact remains that tookie remained guilty. Nothing changed that particular history and he's spent 24 years denying it. The entire basis of his "redemption" is built on one very simple, very inescapable lie. He's lying about his innocence.

Anyway, I'm off. I look forward to feasting on more of the rather overblown and frankly nnonsenseical defenses you've taken the time to fabricate for some of the more garden variety scumbags to end their sorry lives on Death Row.

The important thing remains true however.

We have one less lying murderer on Earth today. Tookies dead and we can only be better for it.



"Schwarzenegger was supposed to take into account the way Williams conducted his life AFTER his conviction"