Stanley Williams

On the basis of a series of children’s books that death-row inmate Stanley “Tookie” Williams wrote, Swiss parliament member Mario Fehr nominated Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize (Dec. 7)! A convicted murderer of four people and the co-founder of the notorious Crips gang!

The infamous “red-light bandit,” Caryl Chessman, wrote several books in his many years on death row before his 1960 execution, and since I’m not against free speech, let Williams write all the books he wants. But that doesn’t make him a suitable candidate for the famed Nobel Peace Prize; nor is Charles Manson qualified to run for president.

EDDIE CRESS

Sylmar

* Re “Tookie’s Nomination Takes the Prize,” Dec. 8: The ever-cynical Mike Downey has jumped at the opportunity, once again, to dispense opinions regarding a subject on which he is evidently ill informed. Williams’ Nobel Peace Prize nomination seems more an effort to raise the issue of rehabilitation into the arena of enlightening public dialogue than it is about Williams winning.

Williams has chosen to undertake writing books, which are seen as positive by many in the community they address and among those who struggle to improve inner-city social relations. Unfortunately, Downey and many others of similar disposition seem loath to move beyond the puritanical narrow-mindedness that prefers retribution to redemption.

Then there is Downey’s list to which he compares Williams. Interestingly, he and the media in general seem content to identify Alfred Nobel as “the inventor of dynamite,” rather than the multinational armaments profiteer that he was. He, like many of those who have been named “peace laureate,” was indirectly responsible in a way that many Eurocentric folk tend to find quite acceptable for deaths so countless that even “Tookie” Williams would be stunned. The fundamental difference between these people and someone like Williams has more to do with wealth and the power and respectability it can buy than it does with morality.

ROGER BOWERS

Los Angeles