[media-credit name=’MATTHEW KUTZ/Herald Photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]The Coalition Against Legal Lynching (CALL) held a candlelight vigil Monday night to demand clemency for death-row inmate and five-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Stanley "Tookie" Williams.

"Stan Williams is an example of why you should not enforce the death penalty," CALL spokesperson Cory Sims said. "He's doing a lot to help communities that are afflicted by gang violence and who better to keep kids away from gangs than someone who founded one?"

Williams, who founded the "Crips" gang in Los Angeles in the early '70s has received four nominations for the Nobel Prize for Literature and one Nobel nomination for Peace because of his series of children's books designed to keep young people away from gangs and his negotiations of gang truces, Sims said. Earlier this year, President Bush awarded Williams the President's Call to Service Award for his anti-gang work.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Ald. Austin King, District 8, attended the vigil to express their support for the cause.
"The death penalty doesn't work. Wisconsin hasn't had a death penalty in 150 years and our murder rate is lower than every state with the death penalty," Cieslewicz said. "I think the death penalty creates more violence, because it sanctions murder on behalf of everyone in that state. It's not just failed public policy, it's an actual contributor to violence."
King said he is interested in distributing Tookie's books to Madison youth as a way of fighting Madison's growing gang problem.

"I believe very firmly that the death penalty is a horrific anachronism from an era long past," King said. "We're one of the few western countries who continue to execute minors, people who are mentally retarded. Even executing a guilty man is still state-sanctioned murder."

University of Wisconsin sociology professor Michael Bell also spoke in opposition to William's execution.

"Justice is supposed to be blind to who the accused is socially," Bell said. "Looking at the overrepresentation of minorities amongst the arrested, sentenced and the severity of their sentences, we know justice is not blind, nor was it blind in the trial of Tookie Williams."

Sims said that although CALL may fail in its immediate goal of receiving clemency for Williams, the group's ultimate goal is the abolition of the death penalty.

"The death penalty has been around since the beginning of time and people still commit murder," Sims said. "As long as you have rich and poor, you're going to have people who try to survive by any means, and sometimes that's violent."

CALL is planning to hold viewings of the movie "Redemption," a film about William's life starring Jamie Foxx, and to build for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty's national day of action Nov. 30.

The group formed after Alpha Phi Alpha Inc. fraternity sponsored a trip to Washington D.C. for the "Millions More March" Oct. 15, a demonstration calling for civil rights and black unity.

"It's legal lynching," Alpha Phi Alpha member Reggie Cribbs said. "Tookie has turned his life around … he's done everything he can to correct those wrongs and yet they still sentence him to death."