The Jena Six

I know this probably belongs in the "politics" section but I figure more of you see this here. You may have heard of it, I read about this a while ago and radio stations in Chicago reported about this this morning so I thought I'd post this here, see what you think and if you wish sign the petition etc.
I have no idea if it will help, but I figure more national attention to this injustice may help the hicks in Jena to straighten up their act.

http://civilliberty.about.com/od/raceequalopportunity/p/jena_six.htm

 

Chigirl had you read the story in the Chicago Defender? If so you are informed. Me? I read it from the Final Call and my local Black newspaper.

 

Actually the Tribune had something about it about a month or so ago, it just came back to my mind because they had it on the radio yesterday morning.

I read another piece about it today which has a bit of a different tone. I am not sure whether or not I like the writer, he has a weird approach in the few stories I read from him so far, then again why am I surprised he writes for FOX (even if it's Sports it's still FOX) ... but check it out here

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/7170510

 

Chigirl, thanks for bringing this up to where people can see it. I came across the full story today while browsing through a sports forum, and after reading it, i felt sick to my stomach. 16-17 year old black kids are being sentenced for 22 years?!?! for something that they were probably provoked into doing???? And the white kids involved get off scott free! i couldn't believe what i was reading! i did sign the petition to the governor, and i hope they take this crap to the supreme court and have it overturned. it's sickening!

also...Chi, I TOTALLY respect your opinion on the Michael Vick case, and also Wedlocks opinion on it, but a case like this here is the reason why i was so disturbed about the dog fighting stuff gaining so much media attention. to me, a case about dog fighting should be the farthest thing in people's minds when stuff like this is happening on a daily basis. what Vick did was wrong, and he should pay for it, but that's silly when compared to something like this IMO. but again, it's just my opinion, nothing more. 8)

 

Bryant I agree about the news coverage, or lack thereof. I always wonder if it is really what the people want (Hilton, Lindsay and co.) when you hear more and more people state they are tired of hearing about them or if it's just the media pushing the dirt... I don't know, what I do know is that it's up to us as individuals to find the news that are news-worthy and to always take them with a grain of salt no matter how reputable your source may be. Everyone is a spin-master these days...

 

It is like US Today turning into the Bild newspaper.

 

That is a bunch of shyte! See now y'all know why my behind is staying firmly above the Mason-Dixon line! (I hope) Sorry but those deep southern states are filled to overflowing with racist mofos....not to say there aren't any here up north....but most of the real foul shyte goes down there. I won't hold my breathe for justice though, it's not like the media even picks up stories like this. I mean we should be hearing about this in the national news! If it was the reverse we would be saturated with it!

 

Anderson Cooper had mentioned it last night. It was informative.

 

Chigirl,

I have heard about this but just recently on a talk radio show in Chicago.

Unfortunately, it takes a situation like this to create an oppurtunity to correct the wrongs occuring in Jena. I hope the attention this now getting will help get these kids a fair trial. It would seem the town is bias towards that not happening! In Chicago you can contact operation PUSH. They are putting forth an effort to collect funds to help prepare for attorney's fees and trial prep for these young men. Jesse Jackson has met with the judge in the case along with the families to discuss moving the trial out of town so that they may have an oppurtunity to be judge fairly. I know Jesse has his hand in everthing, but this time his voice maybe loud enough to bring some attention and save them.

 

Well, the story is national now!! As it should be.

The report I saw featured a lot of white people from Jena upset that they are being viewed as racist, they don't think there is anything wrong with the racial tension in the high school or the town in general. A local barbershop won't cut bm's hair b/c it would anger the white customers. There was overwhelming support from the white population for David Duke when he ran for Gov. Most 'town leaders' (all of whom seemed to be white) saw nothing wrong with two nooses being hung from the 'white' tree outside the high school two days before the attack. No, no problems there, are there. :roll:

There is a vigil tonight for the kids, I am taking my daughter. I want her to understand on a personal level the pain and trouble caused by ignorance and hate.

 

There is a lot of crazy things that happen down in the south that never gets reported. That old double standard of justice still exists down there.

 

After 9/11 people had the nerve to ask:

"why do they hate us"

Even white southerners were calling c-span with that shit..

Hateful mofos whining about being hated :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

I have to disagree somewhat with that. It goes on all around this country. Police open firing on unarmed blacks in the North. Not to mention the broom shoved up a Haitian anus in New York. A lot of the extreme racists have moved towards the North.

 

^^^^^^^Surely you are right. It just seemes to me that there still exist that mentality in the deep South, as a right, as a way of life. I mean the people in Jena, aren't owning up to it and don't undertstand what all the fuss is about....just day to day for them. It just seems like less in the North because they are more sneaky about it.

My DH had a gun pulled on him while outside of a store in surburban Philllie area for being with a white girl. A car pulled up next to him a guy leaned out the window with a gun and said n***** do you want to die tonight.....so I do know almost first hand that real violence does happen here, I just feel there is less tolerance for it from communities, they are less saturated with racists although those racists due exist. I mean NJ and PA has the highest concentration of organized hate groups.

But even after all that I would still resist a move to the South, I guess that is just a prejudice in me. Glad to see Jena all over the news, I made some calls for the Color of Change org. It takes Al and Jesse to do something like this glad they are doing something as much as people love to criticize them. Hate to say that without their involvement this would have just been another railroading. But I ask myself where were they at Dunbar?

 

All it appears we had not been told the entire story about what's going on in Jena, please read below this was taken from Jason Whitlock's column



Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student.

Thursday, thousands of us, proud African-Americans, expressed our devotion to and desire to see justice for the “Jena Six,” the half-dozen black students who knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped a white classmate.

Jesse Jackson compared Thursday’s rallies in Jena to the protests and marches that used to take place in cities like Selma, Ala., in the 1960s. Al Sharpton claimed Thursday’s peaceful demonstrations were to highlight racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Jesse and Al, as they’re prone to do, served a kernel of truth stacked on a mountain of lies.

There are undeniable racial and economic inequities in our criminal justice system, and from afar the “Jena Six” rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s.

But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.

The fact that we waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail.

Reed Walters, the Jena district attorney, is being accused of racism because he didn’t show Bell compassion when the teenager was brought before the court for the third time on assault charges in a two-year span.

Where was our compassion long before Bell got into this kind of trouble?

That’s the question that needed to be asked in Jena and across the country on Thursday. But it wasn’t asked because everyone has been lied to about what really transpired in the small southern town.

There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree.

Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack.

A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before. The nooses and two off-campus incidents were tied to Barker’s assault by people wanting to gain sympathy for the “Jena Six” in reaction to Walters’ extreme charges of attempted murder.

Much has been written about Bell’s trial, the six-person all-white jury that convicted him of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery and the clueless public defender who called no witnesses and offered no defense. It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black.

It’s almost never mentioned that Bell’s absentee father returned from Dallas and re-entered his son’s life only after Bell faced attempted-murder charges. At a bond hearing in August, Bell’s father and a parade of local ministers promised a judge that they would supervise Bell if he was released from prison.

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

It’s rarely mentioned that Bell was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in Barker’s attack. And it’s never mentioned that white people in the “racist” town of Jena provided Bell support and protected his football career long before Jesse, Al, Bell’s father and all the others took a sincere interest in Mychal Bell.

You won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.

We don’t practice preventive medicine. Mychal Bell needed us long before he was cuffed and jailed. Here is another undeniable, statistical fact: The best way for a black (or white) father to ensure that his son doesn’t fall victim to a racist prosecutor is by participating in his son’s life on a daily basis.

That fact needed to be shared Thursday in Jena. The constant preaching of that message would short-circuit more potential “Jena Six” cases than attributing random acts of six-on-one violence to three-month-old nooses.

And I am in no way excusing the nooses. The responsible kids should’ve been expelled. A few years after I’d graduated, a similar incident happened at my high school involving our best football player, a future NFL tight end. He was expelled.

The Jena school board foolishly overruled its principal and suspended the kids for three days.

But the kids responsible for Barker’s beating deserve to be punished. The prosecutor needed to be challenged on his excessive charges. And we as black folks need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.

I’ve been the spokesman for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City for six years. Getting black men to volunteer to mentor for just two hours a week to the more than 100 black boys on a waiting list is a yearly crisis. It’s a nationwide crisis for the organization. In Kansas City, we’re lucky if we get 20 black Big Brothers a year.

You don’t want to see any more “Jena Six” cases? Love Mychal Bell before he violently breaks the law.

 

Conversations.The Jena Six

:? Well, if what Whitlock is reporting is backed by credible sources,then there's more to it than meets the eye,as with every story that comes out.

One thing we must do is use our intellect over emotion.

Off topic, but Designer, where have you been lately?I think your take on this would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks Malik. I should have known better! Those two only do what will make them look good, I guess that's why they weren't around for that poor woman in the projects, my heart really hurts for her, that abuse was above and beyond horrendous! They could have used that as an opportunity to illuminate just how bad these places are and the crisis there with young black youth.

Eventhough they are making it sound like something its not, I still support the premise because it is true. So anyway that light shines on it, I'm for it.

 

Quoting Jason Whitlock, a failed sports reporter that has been fired from several jobs, only to suddenly become a political hack, is reprehensible.

Jason Whitlock on the Don Imus insults that demeaned young college women at Rutgers University: "You’ve given (coach) Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor."

"While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos."

"I ain’t saying Jesse (Jackson), Al (Sharpton) and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas."

"It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture."

Lets throw out his attacks on Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for a moment.

What gave Jason the right to go after Rutgers Coach Vivian Stringer, a woman that was trying to protect and heal her students from the direct, verbal assaults of a 67 year old grandpa that should have certainly known better?

To blame rap music for what Imus did is akin to me calling a woman a bitch because Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards mentions it repeatedly in a song. Should I be able to blame Rock & Roll or the Rolling Stones for my insult of a woman?

Rap musicians did not specifically single out the Women’s Basketball Team of Rutgers. IMUS DID!!! Yet, Jason acted as an apologist for Imus.

At the time, he even called Jackson and Sharpton (two people I'm not in love with, but who deserve better than their treatment from the failed Whitlock) "domestic terrorists lighting fires and picking everyone’s pocket on the way out of town."

Jason does what many Black men and women do to their own: He blamed Black people for being at the receiving end of a swinging bat while also acting as an apologist for the larger community. And, many White people in America will swallow his crap in order to erase their guilt.

Jason even improved his career opportunities in the process (at least for a short while as he does have a talent for getting fired rather quickly).

SCENE II of Jason Whitlock's unique view of America: Jena, Louisiana.

Whitlock: "Now we love Mychal Bell, the star of the 2006 Jena (La.) High School football team, the teenage boy who has sat in jail since December for his role in a six-on-one beatdown of a fellow student."

"The fact that we (meaning Black people) waited to love Mychal Bell until after he’d thrown away a Division I football scholarship and nine months of his life is just as heinous as the grossly excessive attempted-murder charges that originally landed him in jail."

"There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree."

"Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack."

Whitlock pulls it altogether as only we can do in America. He gives the opinion of a Black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, an appointee of President Bush in 2001, as proof that the nooses had nothing to do with the anger of the black students.

Even Washington omits to tell you what the Los Angeles Times did earlier this week:

Los Angeles Times: "Just before the incident that resulted in stiff charges for the Jena Six, white youngsters had attacked one of the six black boys, Robert Bailey, 17, striking him with beer bottles as he tried to enter a party. Only one of the attackers was charged -- with simple battery."

"The next day, a white man who had been at the party brandished a shotgun during an altercation with Bailey and several other black boys."

"He was not charged, but the boys, who wrestled the gun away from him, were charged with stealing it."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...15,0,3927872.story?page=2&coll=la-home-center

ALL OF THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT THE JENA SIX DID LATER?

If you can buy this, I have a bridge in London I'd like to sell you, too.

The nooses are horrible. But, in this story (as you can see from the LA Times article...let me know if the link does not work), the nooses were the least of the problems for these kids. Fights along racial lines continued for weeks after the "White tree nooses" incident.

We have to be better then just believe people because they are Black and blame their own. They know that we want to believe this as it would make us feel better about ourselves and our very troubled country. So, they try to make the victim share the blame and apologize for all White people in the process.

This does our country no good. As someone that is part German, I can tell you firsthand that what we are doing is just delaying the inevitable next disaster. I'm still trying very hard to share the blame with the Jews that some of my distant (thankfully) cousins put to death a half century ago.

Part of my ancestry blamed the Jews for our mistakes: "If only they would stop living in their ghettos and let go of their religion, all would be well in Germany."

But, we never really looked at the root causes for our hatred until six million (or more) died.

Whitlock does the same thing here. U.S. attorney Don Washington is one of those US attorneys not fired by the Bush administration for failing to do what the White House wanted them to do, regardless if it was right or not.

This is not the Justice Department we grew up with. It is the failed one that saw an embarrassed and humiliated Attorney General (Alberto Gonzales) leave Washington in complete disgrace.

I'm sure Don Washington is a good man. I'm sure Jason Whitlock does some good things (like volunteering for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, something the late Rev. Jerry Falwell would applaud).

But, they are only offering their opinions. And, as such (and in lieu of what I've written here), their OPINIONS should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The fact that they cannot see the sick racism that's in Jena speaks to the amount of work America has to do. We cannot see it even after all of the kids were initially charged with murder? INCREDIBLE!

I urge any of our international users to weigh in on this. Perhaps we (including myself) can learn a lot from you.

Bronze

 

Thank you BronzeSaint! You can't believe what you read, everyone has an agenda and puts their own spin on it! So thank you for giving another perspective as it seems Maliks source has some major issues of his own!

Like I said before it doesn't even matter the "truth" of it as the reasons are crystal clear. Jena is a racially segregrated town still living in the past, with some real deep issues. So they try to blame the victim, nothing new with that, especially if the person is Black.

And what that guy said about the Rutgers girls is disgusting, saying that they were snapping their fingers and listening to 50cent, like that has to do with anything anyway!

 

Guys like this Jason Whitlock really get on my damn nerves. Of course i know they get paid to spout the nonsense they do but for God's sakes, use your logic for once. This isn't about Mychal Bell's past or about him for that matter. It is about a fucked up criminal "justice" system that is way too harsh on young black men. A prosecutor who uses his office to ruin the lives of people should not sit as one - i am sure we ought to have learned that lesson from Mike Nifong. - The truth is, there were racial tensions, nooses were hung and Justin Barker was not beaten to a point of death.

I really yawn for the day that these foolish black conservatives who have credibility the size of an amoeba will use their common sense and not traffic in the bullshit given to them by their white masters. Racism still exists all across America, and it is a reality. For you to point that Mychal Bell's father was absent and that he possessed a troublesome past is completely irrelevant to this case. He should not have been tried as an adult. That is the simple fact. All this talk about him is just a step aside from the issue itself.

But i guess the money they make is too good for them to put aside logic for ideology.