[Marxism] Re: Tookie Williams, prisoner of conscience, was executed for pleading not guilty and appealing his conviction (correction and comment)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I wrote:

Making the fact that someone says they are not guilty, while the jury
thought otherwise, into the central argument for executing them --
Schwarzenegger clearly centers his decision on the absence of a
confession of guilt -- is a clear violation, to put it very delicately
indeed.

This should have read:

Making the fact that someone says they are not guilty, while the jury
thought otherwise, into the central argument for executing them --
Schwarzenegger clearly centers his decision on the absence of a
confession of guilt -- is a clear violation, to put it very delicately
indeed, of the first amendment guaranteeing freedom from penalties on
speech, and the fourteenth amendment extending this provision to the
states and guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.


Schwarzenegger's argument clearly shifts the basis for execution to the
crime to Williams' denial that he committed it -- an opinion he is
entitled to hold without penalty regardless of what the jury, the
victim's family, white public opinion, or Schwarzenegger himself hold.

At the point where this shift takes place, Williams was being punished
not for what he had been convicted of, but for his opinions and
convictions, and for his refusal to surrender them.

In the case of the five Puerto Rican nationalists who attacked Congress
in 1948 at the height of brutal persecution of the independence
movement, a significant change took place in the  position of Amnesty
International in the 1970s, after these heroic fighters for their
country had served decades in prison.  Before then, Amnesty had declined
to support them since they had obviously committed a violent act,
illegal under the established laws, and had not been imprisoned for
their opinions or simply exercising democratic rights in the
constitutional sense.

But in the 1970s, facing growing popular demands in Puerto Rico and
around the world for their release, the US government shifted its
position. It now declared it would release them if they would not only
promise not to commit similar acts in the future (they all agreed) but
morally repudiate their action,  reject armed struggle unconditionally,
and withdraw from the Puerto Rican independence struggle.  They all
refused to do this.

At this point, Amnesty recognized, THEY WERE BEING IMPRISONED FOR THEIR
OPINIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS.  And Amnesty threw its support behind freeing
them.

>From the standpoint of revolutionary socialists and opponents of
colonial rule over Puerto Rico, and that is most people in the world,
Amnesty's original abstention is open to criticism.  But the political
and legal propriety of their basis for changing their view was perfectly
clear, at least to me.

Schwarzenegger's statement makes it clear that he was executing Williams
for his failure to accept Schwarzenegger's judgement about his guilt and
to ratify this with an abject confession.  From that statement until his
death, Williams was not just someone being executed immorally and
criminally, as are all who are executed in this country, deprived of
life but a  PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE, someone being executed for refusing
to endorse the views of those who held his life in their hands.

Williams refused to bow to the power of the state.  He became not just a
victim, but a martyr.  And a reminder of what the  Black population
above all, but all of us exploited, oppressed, and dissident face at the
hand of this ruling class.
Fred Feldman




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