US rapper Snoop Dogg inspires protesters at death row prison
Showbiz Desk

SAN FRANCISCO—US rapper Snoop Dogg joined an anti-execution protest at the gates of a California prison and called on celebrity governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare the life a condemned killer. An estimated 1,500 demonstrators packed the narrow residential street that ended at San Quentin Prison, where Stanley “Tookie” Williams awaited his scheduled December 13 execution, said organizer LaNiece Jones.
The superstar hip-hop artist stood with school children, inner-city activists, and Muslim religious leaders to demand Schwarzenegger use his political power to spare the co-founder of the notorious Crypts street gang.
“I want to say to you, governor, that Stanley Tookie Williams is not just a regular old guy,” Dogg said from a low stage next to the prison gates. “He is an inspirator. He is inspiring to me.” Williams was sentenced to death after being convicted in 1981 of murdering a convenience store clerk and a Chinese couple and their daughter during a pair of robberies, according to public records.
While in prison, Williams shunned his violent ways and began working with Barbara Becnel to author children’s books geared to steering young people away from gangs, drugs and crime, according to supporters.
“We are all about one thing: humanity,” Dogg said while crediting Williams with getting children from crime-tortured neighbourhoods to pursue constructive dreams. “They don’t have to shoot, kill, rob, murder when they can talk about their problems. You have to understand, we are just a conversation away from peace.”
Williams has been nominated for Nobel peace prize for his work from behind bars in San Quentin, which is perched on the Marin County coast on the San Francisco Bay. Ringed by security guards, Dogg elicited cheers as he strode through through the crowd on his way to the stage. As did many others, he sported a shirt that read “Save Tookie.”
In a soft voice, Dogg told the throng he had been a Crypts gang member but that Williams inspired him to become a better role model for coming generations. “I didn’t get this from the street. I didn’t get this from a father, an uncle,” Dogg said. “I got this from Stanley Tookie Williams, a brother who was locked up on Death Row.”
One demonstrator burned an American flag a few feet from the locked prison gates. Others waved banners and signs bearing messages such as “Why Tookie? Why not George?,” and “Human life is more precious than human vengeance.”
In a tape-recorded message played for demonstrators, Williams said that “being caged like an animal” prompted him to do “soul searching” that led him to shirk the predatory ways he learned on harsh streets. “The demon is within,” Williams said in the recording. “If a man must fight, let it be to the death with the beast that is within himself. I can tell the world that the beast within me is over, I am victorious.”
Williams has admitted “he was a bad actor” and evolved in a person who can now save the lives of urban youths tempted by gangs and crime, Becnel said at the rally.
Local rappers urged their peers in the crowd to get out word about Williams, and the telephone number to Schwarzenegger’s office, in their music so pressure for the governor to grant clemency would build. A compact disc of hip-hop music available at the rally featured a message to “the Terminator” and the governor’s telephone number.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger ran away to China to get some good press,” Todd Chretien of Campaign to End the Death Penalty said, referring to the governor’s recent trade mission. “We are telling him to come home and stand up.”
“There is no grey area. They are either going to stick a needle in Tookie’s arm and kill him, or we are going to stop them.” Williams, 56, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at San Quentin on December 13.