Arnold is going to regret not commuting Williams'

[Cleita]

death sentence to life in prison. First there will probably be riots in the cities and we won't have all the National Guard we need to stamp them out. People who are victimized by these riots will pin the blame directly on him.

Also, he will lose the rest of the liberal vote of those misguided Democrats who voted for him because they didn't like Grey Davis. He just fucked up his political career. Not that I don't think it's not a good thing, but if the murderous Bush White House is calling the shots through the Governor's office in California, which I believe they are, they just screwed Arnold big time.

[elehhhhna]

1. He was screwed either way, imo. Good on him.

[Double T]

5. Agreed

[brainshrub]

26. Yup. (eom)

[hiaasenrocks]

68. Agreed. n/t

[medeak]

2. think this will all be forgotten in a few days... n/t

[Catherine Vincent]

3. Do you really think there will be riots?

I don't think so, but then I'm not in California. How is the media hyping this Tookie Williams non-clemency story over there?

[Cleita]

7. On another thread a Crip said they were going to riot.

It could be an empty threat, but we shouldn't discount it so soon.

[mattclearing]

15. A crip posting on DU?

You can't be serious.

[Cleita]

21. A DU'er posted what a Crip said.

I didn't bookmark it so it probably way back in GD if not already archived.

[mattclearing]

23. That sounds more like it.

Just what we need...certified gang members in here. Like DU doesn't get enough bad press already.

[RagingInMiami]

20. Don't tell him we have a Blood in the Lounge

Or else there will be some serious flame wars.

[johnnie]

35. Lol

That made me laugh.

[mitchum]

52. LOL!

that also made me laugh
well done :)

[bosspepper1]

25. Then we know....

Awnold did right... and more will follow... it'sal in Tookie-esque lifestyle he is gonna die for...

[Initech]

8. This has been on the front page of the LA Times for the last few days

[RagingInMiami]

22. Riots are not supposed to be planned in advance in the local paper

[Cleita]

57. Why not?

We plan wars don't we.

[Horse with no Name]

65. Of course

What if we planned a war and nobody came?

[Initech]

61. Anarchy!!!

[Eureka]

62. They are in Sydney

:-) Sunday's little shindig was promoted heavily by Uncle Rupert's media for the week leading up to it.

Not really relevant, but there is some precedent for organising through the print media these days.

Peace

[RagingInMiami]

70. I wonder if the Crips subscribe to the LA Times

Reading it over their morning coffee as they plan their day.

[Silverhair]

12. Yes. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. NT

[Johonny]

31. Not in my part LA at least

Don't know anyone near me that is interest in Tookie getting off. Gangs are not very popular.

[Raine]

71. Not in my area either cause I'm in a

reThug area of Los Angeles County but still you never know when trouble might spread. :-(

[Sapphocrat]

54. As one who witnessed the Rodney King riots...

...I think the chances are 50/50 in Northern Calif. (where Tookie will die) and 75/25 in SoCal (where the Crips are).

[tlsmith1963]

75. I'm Afraid...

...that they just may riot. Black people are still angry about the lousy response to Katrina. And this country lacks so much hope because of Bush, anyway. It's not that I *want* them to riot, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Tammy

[WI_DEM]

4. I don't think there will be widespread riots in the streets

and I think he has already lost whatever misguided liberals voted for him. It may be politicalized because a majority of people, even in California approve of the death penalty. My feeling is that he should have just let him stay in prison the rest of his life. I think in the end that is a harsher than the Death Penalty.

[Cleita]

11. Yes, if you are Black you have to watch your back all the

time in prison. He might have been stabbed to death by a KKK or White Supremist. While he was on death row he was away from the main population, but if his sentence was commuted to life, he would probably be moved into the main prison population at San Quentin.

[RagingInMiami]

36. You have to watch your back in prison no matter what color you are

I'm sure he was protected considering his affiliation with the Crips.

[Cleita]

44. He wasn't with the main population. Death row inmates are

kept separate. However, if his sentence was commuted he would be put in with the main population.

[RagingInMiami]

47. I'm sure he would be able to take care of himself in the general

prison population. Since when did Tookie become so fragile?

[okieinpain]

6. no there won't

[graywarrior]

9. Whatever the Terminator did would be considered a joke

He's a joke.

[stillcool]

10. You never know which spark...

is going to light the fire.

[mattclearing]

13. I seriously doubt it.

I think it will be surprisingly quiet.

[sandrakae]

14. Im confused. Help me out.

How long has he been on death row? California has over 600 people on death row. How is it that he is ready to be executed. People say death row in California is life in prison because they never execute.

[Cleita]

17. He's scheduled to die tonight unless Arnold has a change

of heart. It is safer on death row in San Quentin and he's been there twenty years, which is what I heard on the radio.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

19. I think to have a death sentence over your head for 20 years

is cruel and unusual punishment. I don't believe in the death penalty, but if they are going to do it they should do it in an expeditious manner.

[obxhead]

33. In a way I agree with you, but I'm sure

that any true innocents caught in the system want all the time they can get to fight appeals etc.

[sendero]

50. We all have ...

... a death sentence hanging over our heads. It can happen at any time, and it WILL happen. Just sayin'

[tx_dem41]

16. If I were victimized by those riots, I would pin the blame on the rioters.

Silly me.

[Cleita]

24. If there isn't enough National Guard in California to stop a riot,

they would blame Arnold first for doing such a stupid thing without thinking of the consequences, and then Bush for having NG troops in Iraq, instead of being at home where they belong.

[RagingInMiami]

41. Nobody blamed Bush (at least not outside DU and Air America)

For the lack of National Guard in the wake of Katrina. Why would it be different now?

[tx_dem41]

58. No....they would blame the rioters.

And so would I. I blame people for their actions. Not commuting a sentence is not a reason to riot, which if you remember included looting, destruction of property and beating the crap out of people. If you think so little of people that you think they are incapable of controlling themselves, we will just have to agree to disagree.

[Pushed To The Left]

83. I agree with you!

While I don't agree with Schwarzenegger's denial of clemency, there is no excuse for harming innocent people. Anybody who commits violence to protest this execution obviously didn't listen to Williams' message.

[GrumpyGreg]

18. The victims of the riots(if there are any) should blame the rioters.

That's who I would blame,not the governor.

If I rioted everytime something happened in this country that I didn't like I would be dead.

Rioters are idiots.

[Cleita]

29. Every riot in LA up to now has had to have the National Guard

deployed to stop them. If our Guard is in Iraq, who is going to stop them? The police as efficient as they are in S. California have never been able to stop a riot without help from the NG.

[GrumpyGreg]

39. Good point. The only people who will pay a severe price for the

riots are the poor folks who live and work in the neighborhood.

I have no idea what the status of the guard is in CA but it's scary,isn't it?

[michreject]

27. Is anything going to be any different

tonight with the gangs than they have been in the last twenty five years?

Rob, pillage, murder, rape............. Sounds just like another day at work for them.:sarcasm:

[Cleita]

32. Have you ever been in a city while a riot was going on?

The gang activity every night is nothing compared to the death, destruction of property and the looting that goes on during a riot.

Before the NG was able to contain them and keep them from spreading, however, if there isn't enough guard they will spread to affluent neighborhoods if there is no one to stop them.

[michreject]

64. Yes. Detroit 67

Not the suburbs, but the city.

[noiretextatique]

28. i agree...he's already toast

appealing to the death crowd isn't going to do anything for him.

[RagingInMiami]

30. There's not going to be riots

I think people should give the black community more credit than that. This is not Rodney King who was savagely beaten in front of the world (and even then, they waited until justice to take its toll, but when that failed them, the riots broke out).

This is a guy who was on death row. People already expected him to die. If there are any disturbances, it will be just hoodlums using that Tookie as an excuse to commit crime. It's not going to be a genuine social uprising.

Contrary to what you guys might think, black people don't riot after every setback (and I'm not even sure this is a setback for the black community). If that was the case, we would be having riots on a monthly basis.

[Cleita]

34. It isn't the black community as a whole, it's the gang bangers

and there are enough of them to do a lot of damage.

[johnnie]

38. This was posted today

"“Took die, the city fry,” said Raymond “The Hatchet Man” Locket, a member of the West Side Harlem Crips, who says he knew Tookie back in the day. “That’s the word on the streets.”"

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2005/11/23/america-turns-blue/?p=1506

[Cleita]

42. Thanks for posting this. I couldn't find it. n/t

[RagingInMiami]

43. Talking is one thing

Actions are another. We'll wait and see.

[Cleita]

45. You've never been around gang bangers have you?

Back in the seventies they used to have rumbles down on the beach when I lived there and sometimes they tangled with the Heathen's biker club, another sweet bunch. They are a scary and mean bunch when in gang mode. When they came around the rest of us left for another section of the beach.

[RagingInMiami]

53. I grew up in a neighborhood where the Latin Kings dominated

The Latin Disciples were their main enemy. This was during the 1980s in Miami. It was a crazy, violent decade. I knew a lot of those kids from school and they never messed with me because I didn't claim any gang membership. To them, I was a neutral person who lived in their neighborhood.

I knew a kid who went to prison because he took a bat and bashed it over the head of another student, killing him in front of the school.

Then in the early 1990s, a gang called International Posse emerged in South Miami-Dade County. They didn't restrict their membership to ethnicity or race. This was while I was in college as a journalism major so through friends, I got to know them and write about them.

So please don't assume that just cause I'm disagreeing with you, I've lived this sheltered life and have no clue what you're talking about.

[Cleita]

59. My apologies for assuming something I shouldn't have.

It's just that a lot of people in small white bread towns don't really know how they operate and why they came into being.

[RagingInMiami]

60. It's cool

[Raine]

72. Gang war not riots

is what may come. I'm in the Los Angeles County not worried about a riot but gang wars that could continue for years.

[RagingInMiami]

78. Gang wars because the state killed Tookie?

I don't understand how that will start a gang war. It's not like a rival gang killed him. I suspect they will pour out some Olde English 800 in his honor and then move on.

You guys are thinking of the early 1990s. Most of the violent gang members from that era are either dead or in prison. Crime is down all around since that time.

[Raine]

80. Not because the state killed him but

because Tookie worked hard to encourage the gangs to have a fragile truce and without him there is strong likely hood they will go back to killing each other. I hope you're right though.

[RagingInMiami]

82. Or maybe their truce will become stronger after his death

Maybe they will realize that killing each other is exactly what many white people would like to see them do. That they are stronger as a united black community than a divided black community.

[ariesgem]

76. Thank You! From a AA in Los Angeles

I have many friends and family members who reside here and believe me, no one is talking about tearing up and buring down the neighborhoods in the name of Tookie Williams. Most people here despise gangs and the violence they bring to the communities.

We knew in 92' that the city would uprise if the verdict in the Rodney King trial would be "not guilty". Everyone was talking about it and you could feel it thick in the air. The riots occured not just because of the Rodney King verdict but a combination of issues that all happened within MONTHS of each other such as-

A video showing uniformed police stopping a black Long Beach plain clothes officer. They frisked him against a store front and proceeded to slam his head through the plate glass window of the store front. He was pulled over because he was DWB (driving while black). There was no justice in that case.

There was incident around that time caught on tape of a korean store keeper shooting a teenaged girl in the head because she thought she was stealing a bottle orange juice. The girl died. She (the store keeper) was found guilty but the judge felt she should only get probation. There was no justice in that case.

After the store keeper case there was another the same month where someone got 6 months jail time for shooting a dog. That verdict told the community that our lives had less value than a dog and if the King trial ended with a not guilty verdict or probation, the word on the street was an uprising would occur. Mind you, these videos (including the Rodney King beating) were played over & over on the local news. These incidents where happening under a time when we had a openly racist police chief who had nothing but contempt for the black and latino community.

We've experienced many setbacks since 1992. My God, we watch Katrina unfold before our eyes and didn't burn down our city. I don't hear people talking about rioting for Tookie. No one here wants to replay 1992. I find these "rioting" predictions to be insulting to say the least.

[RagingInMiami]

79. I talked to a black friend of mine in Crenshaw and he told me the same

The events you mentioned leading up to the Rodney King riots remind of events leading up to the 1980 riots in Miami. I was 12 years old and the cops beat a black man named Arthur McDuffie to death, a la Rodney King, only it wasn't videotaped and he died three days later.

Even though the black community was outraged, they waited for the trial. When the four white cops were acquitted, the riot broke out and over three days, eighteen people were killed. But it wasn't just the verdict that caused the community to explode, it was a series of events in the previous year.

In one case, a white state trooper molested a black 12-year-old and given probation.
In another case, a white cop shot and killed an unarmed black teenager who was peeing on the side of a warehouse.
And in another case, police raided the home of a black schoolteacher looking for drugs, terrorizing the family at gunpoint, before realizing they had hit the wrong house.

This also came at a time when Miami was dealing with a huge influx of Cuban refugees. Many of the refugees were hired by Cuban business owners for menial jobs, denying black people even the simplest job.

Miami went through three riots in the 1980s. It was a real tense decade as far as race relations goes. Thankfully, things have gotten better down here. People in Miami (all races) have gotten much more tolerant of each other.

That's why I was so furious when I saw what happened with Katrina because I was watching all the progress I thought we had made as a society fall apart on my TV screen.

[MsUnderstood]

37. so arnold should give in to terrorists?

If he doesn't stay the execution people are going to riot in the streets? sounds like our governor is being blackmailed by california terrorist groups. Seriously that is just bad logic.

I have a friend who worked in California prisons--but it got too dangerous. IN the last year, several gaurds have been killed in California prisons because of Tookie's upcoming execution.

[Cleita]

40. Gangs kill each other in the prisons all the time.

It's almost like you have to join one for protection when you get there if you weren't in a gang to begin with. Prisons here in CA are nasty places.

[noiretextatique]

49. he did give into terrorists

just the kind who would withdraw money instead of the kind who might start riots. surely you know there would be consequences if he granted clemency?

[rinsd]

46. Ahnuld will pay zero political price because....

1) The DP is still approved by a majority even in CA and Tookie is not exactly what one would consider to be a model case to argue against DP.

2) "People who are victimized by these riots will pin the blame directly on him." No, they will pin the blame on the rioters and local officials for failing to control the problem. It doesn't help that its been gang members who have been doing the threatening. It does help that local community leaders have been urging calm.

3) "Also, he will lose the rest of the liberal vote of those misguided Democrats who voted for him because they didn't like Grey Davis." The misguided Democrats who voted for Ahnuld were likely not liberal. While they may not have liked Gray Davis it wasn't because he failed to grant clemency to death row inmates (which he never did).

4) "He just fucked up his political career"

He didn't fuck up anything. At the end of the day its Ahnuld upheld sentenced of convicted 4 time murderer. To think the public at large will see it any differently is very wsihful thinking.

[Cleita]

48. Your opinion as different from my opinion.

We will see how it works out.

[rinsd]

51. Let's hope its for the best....

...no violence, no riots.

[Parche]

55. riot

That is a cop out if they have riots, there is no need for that kind of violence
they will be no better then tookie if they riot

[Cleita]

56. You have to remember that these people live

outside the law, and part of their code is to revenge perceived wrongs done to any member of their group.

[Parche]

63. law

You are right, like I have seen in other posts, if Tookie was as "reformed" as he says he is
he would call off any sort of riot that might be happening.

[Cleita]

66. How can he do that if he's dead? n/t

[Parche]

67. Before

Before he walks the green mile

He has had a lot of years to do that in


He could have written more books on that subject too

[kerry-is-my-prez]

69. There's riots in Austrailia & they had them in Paris- it won't take much.

I'm surprised there weren't any after Katrina.

[aPOSITIVEwin]

73. If people choose to riot...

...that's on them; they need to take responsibility for their own behavior. They are just hurting their own neighborhoods and people. If the gov. is to pay any price, it should be in the voting booth--that's where we comment about THAT.

[Walt Starr]

74. I seriously doubt if there will be any riots

Gang bangers, if nothing else, are cowards. They'll talk the talk, but when it comes down to it in this one, they're too cowardly to walk the walk. They can't do drive-by lootings and be successful.

[meisje]

77. You're High

[jim3775]

81. I bet some idiot will throw a trashcan through a window and the media

will call it "the result of overnight rioting".