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.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS