2 minute video Christmas Card from Smithfield to San Quentin for Tookie Williams...

international | crime and justice | news report Wednesday December 07, 2005 10:23 by the little christmas reindeer roasting on an open fire - association of awfully aromatic post-christmas dinner yuletide logs (AAA-PCDYL) Death Row, Block D, Santa's Workshop, Lapland. six six six - six six six six

...and to all others on death row this festive season.

Short video clip in XviD format.

I was walking around Smithfield, where currently "Smithfield on Ice" is taking place. There's also a small roller coaster and an old style children's merry-go-round parked at the south end of the square. A large Christmas tree has been erected near the north end, and the tree sellers are back again.

While walking around, for some reason I had the memory of the interview with Stan "Tookie" Williams ringing in my ears and brain. It played on my mind a bit. Hearing a man on death row nearing his execution by the US state, yet here were all these people enjoying the winter crispness, a million miles away from it all... anyway, I dont want you to read too much into it. I just thought it would provide an interesting juxtaposition (see, I know big words).

So here's a two minute long video Christmas Card to Tookie on Death Row, composed from and with creative commons/copyleft/open source/freeware material. Tookie's voice is taken from an extended audio interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. You can download this from the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/dn2005-1130_vid. The extra added hiss in the background is from the Opsound Open Music Pool. Its from a burst water mains pipe, and was recorded by D. Jean Hester. You can download this (and other 'field recordings' by him) at http://www.opsound.org/artist/djeanhester/

The video images are mine... chop them up and use them if you want... You need to download the XviD codec if you want to watch it, or else download the VideoLAN player from http://www.videolan.org/ (this video player will play pretty much any video file)

Codecs used for the Christmas Card are XviD for the video:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Koepi_XviD.htm
and Lame MP3 for the audio:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lame_Encoder.htm
And compression all done with the ol' reliable, VirtualDub:
http://www.virtualdub.org/

For more info on what this is all about, go to: http://www.savetookie.org/

You can download the video at the related link below, or here's a direct link to the file:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/12//329392.avi

Nice one to IMC UK for hosting the video content. Apologies in advance to the eds for the almost identical copy and paste from the UK site - but you's dont host video content. (C'mon its Christmas, dont delete me!)