Tookie and Schwarzenegger

I just read an NPR article about Stanley Tookie, one of the original co-founders of the Crips. What an amazing story of someone working through bad choices made earlier in life in such a way that it not only transforms them but others as well. One of the things that really hit me from the NPR article was Tookie's statement that "I was miseducated on manhood. I thought that manhood constituted violence, aggression, womanizing." Tookie is on death row, and because of the ways that he's turned his life around, been nominated for a Nobel Prize, and sought to influence youth, many are hoping he will be pardoned by Schwarzenegger. I think there's a great irony here; think about the type of manhood that Schwarzenegger is known for and has presented over the years on film! He has built his career on courses of action that, when actualized by Tookie, have resulted in the ruin of many people.

If Schwarzenegger does not pardon Tookie, who has been hugely influential among youth who are on the cusp of joining gangs or are already in them, it send the message that "no matter how much you repent, change, try to redeem your mistakes, it makes absolutely no difference." Thousands of youth who have learned to solve problems by killing will watch someone who has told them not to do this be killed himself, even though he has clearly demonstrated that he deeply regrets his decisions and is willing to change by virtue of his actions. This is the stuff that riots are built on.

What was significant about Tookie's experience is that part of his transformation occurred when he had time in prison to read and reflect. I lived in inner-city East LA for eight years; I know that time alone in an urban environment is difficult to find, and given the condition of many public inner city schools in LA, being equipped with the resources to study (books, adequate libraries, etc.) is an even harder commodity. Isn't some of this really about a larger societal failure as well as poor individual choices (which, yes, are there too), and shouldn't we recognize how much Tookie had to overcome to get to the point where he is now? That Tookie's fate hangs on the pardon of a former action hero strikes me as the cruelest of ironies.