Imagined And Real Legacies

Jesse Jackson said of Tookie Williams,

I think he feels a comfort in his new legacy as a social transformer.

The statement is so outrageous, I'll simply flesh it out with one by execution witness Steve Lopez, the LATimes columnist who is no fan of capital punishment:

Nothing I saw made me feel any differently about Williams, the Crip co-founder whose legacy is terrorized neighborhoods and a chorus of weeping mothers.

Williams' legacy is the Crips, about which nothing noble or redeeming can be said. It is not his efforts to keep kids away from gangs, because if it were, he would have made a statement last night toward that end: Something like, "This is what happens when you join gangs. You kill people and you're so empty and vicious you don't even feel remorse. I deserve to die, as does every gang member like me."

But no such words came from Williams, who never confessed to his crimes and never apologized to his victims; a gang punk until the end.