This past Saturday, November 19th close to a thousand people showed up in front of the gates of San Quentin Prison for the Save the Peacemaker’s Rally. This was despite the fact that prison officials shut down the roads so those attending the rally would have to walk almost half a mile to get to the rally site. Thank God for bay Area rap star JT The Bigga Figga who got hold of a van and started shuttling throngs of people to the rally cite. If that wasn’t enough, prison officials attempted to set off beef between activists and other inmates by completely shutting down inmate’s visitor hours at the last minute for the entire weekend and then blaming it on the ‘Save Tookie Rally’…Fred Hampton and Snoop were supposed to visit with Tookie that day but prison officials killed that as well.. Nevertheless people showed up in masse and made sure that their voices were heard loud and clear in their opposition to the death penalty and especially as it would be applied to Noble Peace Prize nominee and convicted murder Stanley Tookie Williams. Among those who spoke were Rally organizer Barbara Bechnal who introduced Snoop Dogg.. She spoke about all the things Snoop has done in terms of keeping his word about attending the rally and doing a song ‘Real Soon’ with Daz, Kurupt band Jamie Foxx for Crip Gang founder Tookie Williams. When Snoop spoke he explained how Tookie’s turnaround about 10-11 years ago inspired him to re-examine his life and step things up. He noted that the biggest change came when Snoop started a football league for young people.He said that Tookie inspired him to reach out and be more real with people and to move onto hire ground. It should be noted that Snoop was the main architect behind the the West Coast peace Summit held earlier this year Fred Hampton Jr of the POCC reminded the crowd that San Quentin is the place where they killed political prisoner George Jackson and that the irony of the crowd coming to prevent the execution of a peace maker should not be lost on folks. He noted that the system is out to get us all no matter what we do and the best way to combat it is through organized resistance… Lastly T-Kash of the FNV spoke and laid down some immediate steps that one can do including writing the governor and calling him. He gave out the phone number and told people to memorize it… He also asked those in the media to donate time and space to this story and cited the efforts he puts forth on the Friday Nite Vibe show as an example. T-Kash has changed the name to Save Tookie Radio T-Kash later introduced a number of young people and ex gang bangers who shared their life changing experiences after becoming aware of Tookie’s work… Special thanks to Dev and Maya of KPFA for the audio feeds and Felix of Indymedia and T-Kash for the flicks Less