The leader of the Nation of Islam is said to be preparing to deliver a fiery oratory at a "statesman-like" Los Angeles funeral for an executed gang founder lauded as a role model for urban African-American youth.
Stanley "Tookie" Williams was killed by lethal injection in San Quentin Prison on San Francisco Bay early on Dec. 13, despite pleas to keep him alive so he could discourage other youths from following in his violent footsteps.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and rapper Snoop Dogg will take part in a grand memorial service for Williams in Los Angeles on Tuesday, according to LaNiece Jones, a spokeswoman for the failed "SaveTookie" campaign.
Speakers at the memorial service are to include Farrakhan, civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, human-rights advocate Bianca Jagger, Snoop Dogg and Bruce Gordon of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
A celebrity-rich crusade to get Williams' sentence changed to life in prison grew to one of the biggest US anti-execution campaigns in decades.
More than 2,000 people -- including Hollywood actor Sean Penn and folk singer Joan Baez -- gathered outside the prison during Williams' execution to protest and call for an end to the death penalty.
Williams, 51, was sentenced to death in 1981 after being convicted of four shotgun murders but became an anti-violence crusader on death row.
While on death row, Williams insisted he was innocent of the murders but admitted being a founder of the Crips gang that terrorized Los Angeles from the 1970s through to the 1990s. It has been blamed for hundreds of killings.
Williams helped orchestrate a peace deal between rival gangs and wrote books urging children to steer clear of gangs. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
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