The Stanley Tookie Williams show starts up again at 12Noon today:

LOS ANGELES – In the kind of funeral normally reserved for a dignitary, religious leaders and celebrities traveled to violence-wracked South Los Angeles to pay respects to the man who helped found a deadly street gang, then spent the years before his execution denouncing the gangster life.

Stanley Tookie Williams’ funeral was scheduled for noon Tuesday, almost exactly a week after he was put to death for murdering four people during a pair of 1979 robberies…

…Among those expected to attend his funeral were the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who visited Williams shortly before his death, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg.

The service was to include a five-minute video tribute by documentary filmmaker Jonathan Stack and speeches by motivational guru Tony Robbins and actor Jamie Foxx, who portrayed Williams in the TV movie “Redemption: The Stanley Tookie Williams Story.”

“If they think they succeeded by killing him in getting people to forget about him, they have done just the opposite,” Barbara Becnel, who collaborated with Williams on his books, said last week after his execution.

The service will be held at Bethel AME Church Los Angeles, which holds 1,500 people. An expected overflow crowd will be able to view the funeral on a large video screen outside, Becnel said. The service also will be broadcast on the Internet at www.savetookie.org...

The vultures never rest.

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The LA Times reports on the public viewing of Williams’ body, attended by some 2,000 Tookie fans, which had the aroma of a pot-filled block party:

The public viewing of his body attracted a sometimes rowdy crowd that spilled into the street, backing up traffic. Marijuana smoke wafted through the air as sport utility vehicles with 20-inch rims cruised past, rap music blaring at full volume.

Adding tension to the activities in Williams’ old Crips neighborhood, members of traditional rival Blood gangs took their place in line under the watchful eye of Los Angeles police officers across the street.

When elementary schoolteacher Macella Hibbler, 34, heard that Williams’ body was on public view, she threw sweaters on her three young children and hurried to the mortuary to see the man whose life story had saturated the news media only a week ago.

“My only thought has been this: How can I get my children to understand, I mean really understand, why we’re here?” she said. “I’m telling them, ‘Watch the road you take and make wise decisions. That way you won’t wind up in a coffin.’ ”

On a crowded street corner a few yards away, a group of young men wearing blue jerseys and ball caps flashed gang signs at a passing vehicle, then charged into the street and tossed a bottle at it.

Future Nobel Peace Prize nominees, no doubt.

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Previous Tookie coverage.

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