Jena, LA

[Katie]

Almost a year ago, in the small northern Louisiana town of Jena, a group of white students hung three nooses from a tree in front of Jena High School. This set into motion a season of racial tension and incidents that culminated in six Black youths facing a lifetime in jail for a schoolyard fight.

The story that has unfolded since then is one of racism and injustice, but also of resistance and solidarity, as people from around the world have joined together with the families of the accused, lending legal and financial support, adding political pressure, and joining demonstrations and marches.

The nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only. In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest. The town's district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which school officials termed to be a "harmless prank." The school assembly, like the schoolyard where all of this had begun, was divided by race, with the Black students on one side and the white students on the other. Directing his remarks to the Black students, District Attorney Reed Walters said, "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of a pen."

The white students who confessed to hanging the nooses never received any meaningful punishment. Nor did the white students who months later beat up a Black student at a school party, nor did the white former student who threatened two Black students with a shotgun. But, after these incidents, when Black students got into a fight with a white student, six Black youths were charged with attempted murder, and now face a lifetime in prison. The Black students may not have been involved in the fight, but they were known to be organizers of the protest under the tree. The white student was briefly hospitalized, but had no major injuries and was socializing with friends at a school ring ceremony the evening of the fight.


The Black students were arrested immediately after the fight, in December of last year. School officials and police officials took statements from at least 44 witnesses to the fight. The statements do not paint a clear picture of who was involved. Statements from white students refer to "Black boys," but many testimonies are unclear as to the identities of who was involved. Some of the arrested youths are not implicated in the fight by any of the witnesses.

Despite this, when Mychal Bell, the first youth to go to trial, refused to take a deal in exchange for testifying against his friends, he was quickly convicted by an all-white jury. Bell's public defender Blane Williams, visibly angry at Bell and his parents because the youth did not take the deal, called no witnesses and gave no meaningful defense. This attorney's behavior gives a vivid example of our nation's broken and underfunded public defender system. Some have called Jena a throwback to the past, but in fact Jena presents a clear vision of the current state of our criminal justice system.

In Paris, Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. Genarlow Wilson, in Atlanta, is sentenced to ten years in prison for participating in consensual oral sex with a 15 year old when he was 17. Like these and many other cases, the case in Jena is textbook proof that there are still two systems of justice functioning in this country, one for Black people, and one for white. No serious observer can doubt that the students of Jena would never have faced charges if a Black student had been beaten instead of a white student. The unpunished incidents in the days and months leading up to the fight clearly demonstrate this.

Local Resistance

Immediately after the arrests, parents of the accused began organizing. Their call, "Free the Jena Six," was initially heard by activists from other parts of Louisiana, such as the Lafayette public access TV show, "Community Defender," which was the first media from outside their immediate area to give coverage of the case. Noncorporate and grassroots media has been vital in spreading word of the case, beginning with blogs and YouTube videos, which then led to high profile stories on Democracy Now and in The Final Call.

Lasalle parish, where Jena is located, is 85% white. The town is still mostly segregated - from the white barber who refuses to cut Black hair to the white and Black parts of town, separated by an invisible line. Lasalle is also one of Louisiana's most wealthy parishes, with small oil rigs in many back yards contributing to area wealth. The parish is a major contributor to Republican politicians, and former klansman and Louisiana gubernatorial candidate David Duke received a solid majority of local votes. Jena was also the former site of a notoriously brutal youth prison, which was closed after years of lawsuits and negative media exposure. The prison is now scheduled to be reopened as a private prison for the growth business of immigrant detentions.


Three hundred supporters, most from the immediate region, but some from as far away as California, Chicago and New York, descended on Jena on July 31 to protest District Attorney Reed Walters' conduct and call for dismissal of all charges. The largest groups included Millions More Movement delegations from Houston, Monroe and Shreveport, nearly fifty members of Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children from Lake Charles and New Orleans. Other delegations from across Louisiana included members of INCITE Women of Color Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Common Ground and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. The demonstration marched through downtown Jena - reported to be the biggest civil rights march the town of 2,500 residents has ever seen - and delivered a petition with 43,000 signatures to the District Attorney's office.

In the two weeks since the demonstration, more major allies have begun to come on board. The Congressional Black Caucus, representing 43 members, including Senator Barack Obama, issued a statement calling for charges to be dropped, while the city of Cambridge Massachusetts passed a resolution in support of the families of the Jena Six. Al Sharpton and other national leaders have visited Jena, while Jesse Jackson called members of the state legislative Black caucus on their behalf.

Mychal Bell's sentencing is currently scheduled for September 20. The families are planning another demonstration for that date, and also have assembled a legal team for Bell and the other youths. National allies such as Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP joined initial supporters such as Friends of Justice (from Tulia, Texas) and ACLU of Louisiana. Legal expenses for the youths could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and funding is still needed. Except for Mychal Bell, who has a bail hearing scheduled for September 4, all of the youths are out on bail.

The case of Jena Six has served as a wake-up call on the state of US justice. It shows vividly the racial bias still inherent to our system. But is has also shown something else. That this group of families refuses to be silent in the face of injustice, and that hundreds of thousands of other people around the world have chosen to stand with them, and say that we are drawing the line, here, in Jena Louisiana



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I had to find the background story on this because I think it is important to read.......edit in a moment with an update to this story.........

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[Katie]

Release sought for teen in overturned conviction

05:01 AM CDT on Tuesday, September 18, 2007


JENA, La. – The attorney for a teenager whose conviction as an adult in a racially charged schoolyard beating was overturned last week has filed motions to have him released from jail, or at least moved to a juvenile facility, while the prosecutor decides if he will appeal to the state Supreme Court. Mychal Bell has been jailed since January, unable to post the $90,000 bond. On Friday, a state appeals court overturned his conviction, saying that he should not have been tried as an adult because he was 16 at the time of the fight. Also on Monday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he would ask federal officials to get Mr. Bell released. And, state police say they will assign troopers to be in Jena on Thursday to help police deal with the thousands expected to rally in support of Mr. Bell and other black students charged with attacking a white student.

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Anyone else find this completely and utterly sickening. This all started because a guy wanted to sit in the shade under a tree. I've been completely sickened following this story for awhile. It seems as if this little town is stuck in a time warp that froze them in the 60's.

Betcha dollars to doughnuts that if it had been six white kids beating up on a black kid, they would have been suspended, not arrested.

stuff like this is why people still give me "that look" when I say I am from Alabama or grew up in the South. SICKENING.

[Buslady]

This kinda crap pisses me off. I'm so sick of racial predjudices. I like to think crap like this doesnt happen in the TWENTY FIRST century, but I'm wrong.

[BubblyShell22]

I agree with that, Buslady and Katie. It sickens me as well. I thought all this stuff had ended, but it's still going on. Racism makes me sick. I agree that the white kids probably would've gotten a slap on the wrist or something. People like this just piss me off. They always want to make blacks look bad when they should be looking in a mirror at themselves.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Katie

Anyone else find this completely and utterly sickening. This all started because a guy wanted to sit in the shade under a tree. I've been completely sickened following this story for awhile. It seems as if this little town is stuck in a time warp that froze them in the 60's.

Betcha dollars to doughnuts that if it had been six white kids beating up on a black kid, they would have been suspended, not arrested.

stuff like this is why people still give me "that look" when I say I am from Alabama or grew up in the South. SICKENING.

60's that's being generous. They are almost stuck in the 1860's. White students (who hang nooses from a "white" shade tree) get a slap on the wrist for their racially charged "joke" and black kids are charged as adults for several scuffles that resulted from the assaults on them by more bigoted wastes of space. It's stupid.

I think the people who hung the nooses should have been suspended for an extended period or even expelled. This whole thing got out of hand, and neither group comes off smelling like roses, both are in the wrong. It's just that the black students are getting harsher consequences.

As I've always said there are idiots, spazzes, and douche bags of all races, religions, and cultures. People who think that white people are better than any other race only seem to disprove that premise, or at least make you think, "Yeah, better at having teeth you can count on one hand and kids with their sister/cousin."

And I hear ya Katie, I'm a white, male, Christian from the South...imagine what kinds of looks I get.

[Type 97 Chi-ha]

So sorry, but I must say I don't take this story at face value.

I've heard it all before, how whites get off easy while blacks have it hard. Nothing in my own experience has proven it. Black politicians who are caught with their hands in the cookie jar scream that they are victims of racism. The story persists that during the Vietnam War, black soldiers were sent to the front lines ahead of everyone else, though that story has proven to be completely false. And I suspect the story as Katie has told it is not entirely accurate.

[The Stryker]

Originally Posted by Type 97 Chi-ha

So sorry, but I must say I don't take this story at face value.

I've heard it all before, how whites get off easy while blacks have it hard. Nothing in my own experience has proven it. Black politicians who are caught with their hands in the cookie jar scream that they are victims of racism. The story persists that during the Vietnam War, black soldiers were sent to the front lines ahead of everyone else, though that story has proven to be completely false. And I suspect the story as Katie has told it is not entirely accurate.

So all blacks are lying whining babies.

Nice to know.

[Type 97 Chi-ha]

Originally Posted by King Stryker

So all blacks are lying whining babies.

Nice to know.

Don't put words in my mouth. Some are, but by no means all of them.

And the black kids were arrested for beating up a white student and putting him in the hospital. How's that for real racism?

And as for the statements about "white people getting off easy while blacks get punished hard," here's very recent proof to destroy that fairy tale:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Du...e_team_scandal

[Sewer Bull]

This thread is going to be locked so soon. My senses are already tingling.

[Voltron]

I saw this reported on the nightly news, but the story was skewed. They reported nothing of the white kids' offenses, opting only to mention that the black students "had hate crime charges over turned." It gave a very slanted opinion this whole thing. I had no idea that anyone was provoked to this extent. Way to stoke the social fires.

Also, be warned that I have my eye on this thread. If anyone decides to make some off kilter comments? Well, you know the deal.

[Type 97 Chi-ha]

Probably best if this thread were just locked right now. No good can come of talking any further on this matter.

[KROW]

What we have here is a clear-cut example of unfairness.

I do agree that the punishments here are harsh, but I have to wonder: If this town of Louisiana is known for its racial tension, what with its segregation in barber shops and all, then didn't the black teen whom asked permission to sit under the tree have an idea that a retaliation of some sort would happen? If it was a tradition -- a known tradition -- that the tree's shade was reserved for those of the Caucasian persuasion, then why did he ask? I'm not justifying the noose prank whatsoever, but was he trying to be Rosa Parks by knowing it was forbidden to sit in that certain spot but wanted to anyway, or did he just not know of the tradition because he is black and no one cared to inform him due to his skin color?

I agree that the students who hung the nooses should have been punished. I mean, that's practically a death threat. A suspension and maybe an order to seek counseling, at least.

The whole thing snowballed into a judicial fracas when it wasn't even necessary -- not if the school board did it's job correctly and fairly. Black teen asks to sit under a white-reserved tree, white teens react with a racist threat, black teens beat up white teen, white teen is sent to hospital while black teens are arrested.

As soon as the nooses were revealed to the public eye, the school should have disciplined the pranksters about racial tension and the consequences of their actions. Then, an assembly -- a proper assembly -- should have been staged to inform all the students that acts like this will not be tolerated and therefore the tree can be sat under by anyone. But, no, that doesn't happen in a racist town.

I think the wrong people are on trial here. It shouldn't be the black teens, it shouldn't be the white teens, it shouldn't even be the lawyers. It should be each member of the school board for not preventing the distortion of the lives of their students and neglecting to keep their safety as their top priority.

[gobo]

Wow... It amazes me how little I know about my own state. I've never even heard of a Jena... But, in as much as this must be a small town to have such a racist mindset (we dun lyke teknowlegee cuz itll bring on the apocolips!), I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Roseangelo]

Originally Posted by KROW

As soon as the nooses were revealed to the public eye, the school should have disciplined the pranksters about racial tension and the consequences of their actions. Then, an assembly -- a proper assembly -- should have been staged to inform all the students that acts like this will not be tolerated and therefore the tree can be sat under by anyone. But, no, that doesn't happen in a racist town.

Actually, the pranksters were disciplined by the school.

(From CNN.com)

Advocates of the Jena 6 said the story actually began three months earlier, when three white students hung nooses from a tree on campus. The white students were suspended from school but didn't face criminal charges. The protesters argue they should have been charged with a hate crime.

It seems people are upset that they weren't disciplined enough. As distasteful as the "prank" was, I can hardly warrant giving it the same punishment that those who put a guy in the hospital should get.

It obviously isn't a good situation in this town and a lot of things need to change. I don't think marching on the town, seemingly advocating that the kids who beat-up the first kid shouldn't be punished more than a suspension, is any step to finding a solution. They should be working on desegregating their town, but this is only going to drive things further apart.

[The Stryker]

Originally Posted by Type 97 Chi-ha

And the black kids were arrested for beating up a white student and putting him in the hospital. How's that for real racism?

God forbid they react to a ****ing noose violently.

But those poor kids were just joking around right? like a clown!

[愛]

Yeah...this thread is done. Sorry, but the talks of racism is too sensitive a topic to discuss any further.