Preening for the cameras

[kliljedahl]

Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com
12.14.05

If Rev. Jackson really wants to help, he'll stop stealing spotlights


Stanley "Tookie" Williams is dead, for which we should all be sad. Not because Williams was innocent -- despite the dubiousness of the evidence linking him to the four murders for which he was convicted, any co-founder of the Crips has more than one lifetime's worth of karma to work off. No, it's sad, and enraging, because no nation worthy of its name should execute its citizens. Any citizens. Williams should not have been murdered by the state -- and neither should any of the thousands currently on America's death rows, almost none of whom share William's fame or his friends in high places.
But I digress.

Williams' execution was disgusting, as was the statement released by Gov. Schwarzenegger (a man who's no stranger to bad karma) in denying clemency. But I was also revolted by the scene Monday night outside the gates of San Quentin, where the march protesting Williams' execution was led by none other than... Rev. Jesse Jackson.

It probably won't be popular, but somebody has to say this. The time has long passed since Jackson's presence gave a cause additional credibility (let alone effectiveness). Jackson is such a shameless opportunist, such a relentless seeker of screen time, that rather than enhancing, he actually discredits the causes he parachutes in to "lead." And in eclipsing the people who work tirelessly on those causes, he prevents media from airing voices that have a lot more to say than he does, and more credibility with which to say it.

This has been going on a long, long time. I still vividly remember standing outside the Chinese Embassy on Connecticut Ave. NW in Washington in early June 1989. A half a world away, the massacre at Tiananmen Square was unfolding, and outside the Embassy, hundreds of Chinese nationals, mostly students, had gathered to protest. (I spoke Mandarin, so I was there as a translator.) Those students, videotaped from the embassy's windows, were there at great risk to their own futures and to the safety of their relatives back home. They had a lot to say, from personal experience, about the repressiveness of the Chinese government and the valor of the movement for greater freedom.

So here, uninvited, comes the good Reverend, and there went the TV cameras -- for about 15 minutes



Keith’s Barbeque Central