"San Quentin — December 13, 2005"
Three thousand people showed up at the gates of San Quentin Prison the night Stanley Tookie Williams was executed. I was one of them, and I had a camera.
Williams was the co-founder of the Crips who, during his years on death row, had reinvented himself as an anti-gang advocate and children's book author. He'd been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency that morning. The execution was scheduled for just after midnight.
What struck me standing in that crowd wasn't the anger — it was the sheer range of people who came. This wasn't an organized bloc. It was thousands of individuals who had all made the same decision to drive to a prison on a cold December night and stand outside its gates.
Shot on a Canon 7D, the street was very crowded, this was a tough shot to get!