The Nationalist Movement have gotten the green light to spread their message of racist terror by local and statewide authorities which should be condemned by all progressive activists of nationalities. Fascistic groups like the Nationalist Movement should not have the right to free speech in order to spread their vile, hateful venom especially against Black and other people of color.
Historically, extra-legal terrorist groups like the KKK and the Nationalist Movement have been encouraged by the U.S. government to raise their ugly heads especially during periods of deepening economic crisis which is happening at this very moment in the U.S. after millions of people face foreclosures, evictions, loss of jobs and much more. It is also not an accident that these racists targeted Jena, where tens of thousands of mainly Black students from around the country marched last Sept. 20th to express their support of the heroic Black youth known as the Jena 6.
The Jena 6 defended themselves against racist white youth who hung nooses on a "white" tree outside of Jena High School in September 2006.
By hanging these nooses, these racist youth were saying that Black people deserve to be lynched which has been terror tactic of groups like the Nationalist Movement and the KKK since the end of the Civil War. Five of the Jena 6 will be standing trial for assaulting one of the racist students. Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, is still imprisoned for an old charge.
The Martin Luther King March Against Racism Coalition in N.Y. which includes Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), Troops Out Now Coalition and International Action Center stands in solidarity with the Jena 6, the Black people of Jena and the anti-racist demonstration that is being planned in Jena on Jan. 21st which will gather at 9 a.m. in the Jena City Park for a rally, just off route 84 followed by march to the courthouse.
Down with the Nationalist movement! Smash racist terror! Unity and solidarity forever!
Free the Jena 6!
Donate to help send Martin Luther King March Against Racism Coalition activists to Jena: http://troopsoutnow.org/donate.shtml
For updates and more information, see: Januaryinjena.blogspot.com
Showing posts with label Jena 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jena 6. Show all posts
WUSA 9 News Now report on Sept 29 March On Washington
Decent report, other than under reporting the turn out. The Google news link for the article does say thousands
Hundreds Of Anti-War Protestors March Again In D.C.
Written by Brittany Morehouse
9News Now, 9/29/2007 11:08PM Last Updated:10/1/2007 12:31AM
WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) - A week-long anti-war movement reached its peak Saturday when hundreds united to march the streets of D.C.
Organized by the Troops Out Now Coalition, the protest united young people with some protest veterans.
For Larry Holmes and Sharon Eolis, two of the Troops Out Now founders, the demonstration is one among thousands in which they've participated.
"I was drafted in the vietnam war. I refused to go," said Holmes. "So I tried to organize soldiers against the war and got a lot of support from the inside and outside. Vietnam War woke me up, radicalized me - made me think about the world."
"I first came around since the civil rights movement in 1959. My first demonstration was the March on Washington" said Eolis, who traveled to Iraq as a healthcare worker. "I think there's an opportunity for people to live in peace."
Ever since, Holmes and Eolis have dedicated their lives to anti-war efforts and other social causes.
"I've learned that the reasons for the Vietnam War are the same reasons why people go hungry in the world and why there's so much inequality," he said.
Holmes organized Saturday's event to showcase how it's possible to unite different social causes.
"That's why if you see in our march we said stop the war. we also said free the Jena 6 we also said justice for katrina survivors. We also said stop rage on immigrants."
He called Saturday's turn out an example of how he's passing the torch. He joined dozens of young high schoolers and college students who splintered off the massive protest early evening. The group sat in the middle of the street at the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania Ave, blocking traffic between 3rd and 4th streets.
One man worked as a walking filibuster. He held a megaphone and talked non-stop to the peaceful demonstrators. He sang rap songs, old songs and even clips from the movie Annie.
"The sun will come out tomorrow," he sang to the weary group.
"He's annoying but like the rest of us, he's here," remarked one of the protestors. The group stayed put until 10pm, when they joined the thousand others who were camped out next to the Capitol's West Side reflecting pool.
"This is what it's all about," said Holmes.
Hundreds Of Anti-War Protestors March Again In D.C.
Written by Brittany Morehouse
9News Now, 9/29/2007 11:08PM Last Updated:10/1/2007 12:31AM
WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) - A week-long anti-war movement reached its peak Saturday when hundreds united to march the streets of D.C.
Organized by the Troops Out Now Coalition, the protest united young people with some protest veterans.
For Larry Holmes and Sharon Eolis, two of the Troops Out Now founders, the demonstration is one among thousands in which they've participated.
"I was drafted in the vietnam war. I refused to go," said Holmes. "So I tried to organize soldiers against the war and got a lot of support from the inside and outside. Vietnam War woke me up, radicalized me - made me think about the world."
"I first came around since the civil rights movement in 1959. My first demonstration was the March on Washington" said Eolis, who traveled to Iraq as a healthcare worker. "I think there's an opportunity for people to live in peace."
Ever since, Holmes and Eolis have dedicated their lives to anti-war efforts and other social causes.
"I've learned that the reasons for the Vietnam War are the same reasons why people go hungry in the world and why there's so much inequality," he said.
Holmes organized Saturday's event to showcase how it's possible to unite different social causes.
"That's why if you see in our march we said stop the war. we also said free the Jena 6 we also said justice for katrina survivors. We also said stop rage on immigrants."
He called Saturday's turn out an example of how he's passing the torch. He joined dozens of young high schoolers and college students who splintered off the massive protest early evening. The group sat in the middle of the street at the intersection of Constitution and Pennsylvania Ave, blocking traffic between 3rd and 4th streets.
One man worked as a walking filibuster. He held a megaphone and talked non-stop to the peaceful demonstrators. He sang rap songs, old songs and even clips from the movie Annie.
"The sun will come out tomorrow," he sang to the weary group.
"He's annoying but like the rest of us, he's here," remarked one of the protestors. The group stayed put until 10pm, when they joined the thousand others who were camped out next to the Capitol's West Side reflecting pool.
"This is what it's all about," said Holmes.
Judge won't release only jailed Jena 6 defendant
By Howard Witt, chicagotribune.com, Sept. 21, 2007
HOUSTON - The judge overseeing the racially-charged case of the Jena 6 declined Friday to release the only one of the six black teenagers still being held in jail, despite the fact that the youth's conviction for aggravated second-degree battery was vacated a week ago by an appeals court, family members and court sources confirmed.
Ruling just a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the small central Louisiana town of Jena to protest the prosecution of the six black high school students for beating a white classmate, LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray declined a defense motion for a writ of habeus corpus that sought to have Mychal Bell, 17, released. A second judge also turned down a defense motion seeking to have Mauffray recused from the case.
Bell has been jailed since the beating incident last December, unable to post $90,000 bond. That bond was rendered moot when Bell's battery conviction was overturned by Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 14, which ruled that Bell, who was 16 at the time of the incident, should have been tried as a juvenile. The local district attorney prosecuting the case, Reed Walters, has vowed to appeal that ruling, and to press ahead with his cases against the other five youths, who are free on bond.
But Bell remains in jail, and under the jurisdiction of juvenile court, because he is now being prosecuted as a juvenile on a count of conspiracy in connection with the beating. Mauffray's ruling Friday means he declined to set any conditions for Bell's release.
Last month, Mauffray declined a defense motion seeking a reduction in Bell's bond, citing the existence of several previous juvenile convictions for battery and damage to property in Bell's record.
Defense attorneys and Bell's family members all declined to speak about the case on the record, citing strict confidentiality rules governing juvenile proceedings in Louisiana. But Bell's defense team, which replaced a court-appointed public defender who offered no defense on the teenager's behalf during his criminal trial, have vowed in the past to appeal every adverse ruling in the case.
The Jena case has drawn national protests because of the perception of many African Americans that blacks are treated more harshly than whites in the town's criminal justice system.
The tensions in Jena stemmed from an incident a year ago at the local high school, when three white students hung nooses from a tree in a perceived threat directed at black students. After the school superintendent dismissed the nooses as a prank, angering black students and their parents, a series of fights between white and black youths ensued, both on and off the campus.
Walters declined to lodge serious criminal charges against white youths who attacked blacks in two incidents. But when the six black teenagers jumped the white student at the school, beating him and knocking him unconscious, Walters initially charged them with attempted murder, later reducing the charge to aggravated second-degree battery. The white youth was treated and released at a local hospital and attended a school ceremony several hours after the beating incident.
hwitt@tribune.com
HOUSTON - The judge overseeing the racially-charged case of the Jena 6 declined Friday to release the only one of the six black teenagers still being held in jail, despite the fact that the youth's conviction for aggravated second-degree battery was vacated a week ago by an appeals court, family members and court sources confirmed.
Ruling just a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the small central Louisiana town of Jena to protest the prosecution of the six black high school students for beating a white classmate, LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray declined a defense motion for a writ of habeus corpus that sought to have Mychal Bell, 17, released. A second judge also turned down a defense motion seeking to have Mauffray recused from the case.
Bell has been jailed since the beating incident last December, unable to post $90,000 bond. That bond was rendered moot when Bell's battery conviction was overturned by Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 14, which ruled that Bell, who was 16 at the time of the incident, should have been tried as a juvenile. The local district attorney prosecuting the case, Reed Walters, has vowed to appeal that ruling, and to press ahead with his cases against the other five youths, who are free on bond.
But Bell remains in jail, and under the jurisdiction of juvenile court, because he is now being prosecuted as a juvenile on a count of conspiracy in connection with the beating. Mauffray's ruling Friday means he declined to set any conditions for Bell's release.
Last month, Mauffray declined a defense motion seeking a reduction in Bell's bond, citing the existence of several previous juvenile convictions for battery and damage to property in Bell's record.
Defense attorneys and Bell's family members all declined to speak about the case on the record, citing strict confidentiality rules governing juvenile proceedings in Louisiana. But Bell's defense team, which replaced a court-appointed public defender who offered no defense on the teenager's behalf during his criminal trial, have vowed in the past to appeal every adverse ruling in the case.
The Jena case has drawn national protests because of the perception of many African Americans that blacks are treated more harshly than whites in the town's criminal justice system.
The tensions in Jena stemmed from an incident a year ago at the local high school, when three white students hung nooses from a tree in a perceived threat directed at black students. After the school superintendent dismissed the nooses as a prank, angering black students and their parents, a series of fights between white and black youths ensued, both on and off the campus.
Walters declined to lodge serious criminal charges against white youths who attacked blacks in two incidents. But when the six black teenagers jumped the white student at the school, beating him and knocking him unconscious, Walters initially charged them with attempted murder, later reducing the charge to aggravated second-degree battery. The white youth was treated and released at a local hospital and attended a school ceremony several hours after the beating incident.
hwitt@tribune.com
Sept. 22: Unity/Solidarity Cook-Out for Jena 6 & film in Charlotte
Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007
Unity/Solidarity Cook-Out for Jena 6 & film in Charlotte
Cook-Out starts at 5:30pm
Guest speakers at 7:00pm
Film starts at 8:30pm
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Baldwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
Join us this Saturday, Sept. 22 for a very special Unity/Solidarity Cook-Out for the Jena 6 & the film “Passin’ It On”. It is important that all justice loving people stand with the Jena 6 and the growing movement to support them & stand against racism in all its vile forms.
Invited guests include:
Rev. James Barnett, The Crusade, Stop The Killing
Ahmad Daniels, Director, Creative-Interchange & reparations activist
Sylvia Grier, Vice-President, Millions More Movement – Charlotte
Jibril Hough, Chairman, Islamic Political Party of America
Our film will be the documentary “Passin’ It On”: Follow the startling true story of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a leader of the New York City chapter of the Black Panther Party, who served 19 years in prison for killing two policemen, a crime he did not commit. Archival footage, interviews and courtroom testimony chronicle Dhoruba's struggle, including the overturning of his sentence in 1990, and the U.S. Governments war on the Black Panther Party & black liberation movement.
Please bring something to throw on the grill, your favorite beverage, and family and friends. (We will have some hotdogs & hamburgers to get started).
Donations will be accepted for the Jena 6 Defense Fund & for local organizing for the Sept 29 March on Washington & future events.
All supporters of Jena 6 welcome, no one turned away for lack of money.
Info: Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
704.492.8527
********************
Sept. 29 National March on the White House
Sept. 22-29 Encampment in Front of Congress
Stop the War At Home & Abroad!
Impeach Bush & Cheney for War Crimes!
Bring The Troops Home Now!
*Buses from across the U.S., find one near you
*For details, flyers, & to endorse, click here
********************
There are peace & justice actions all through out Sept & Oct.
See www.CharlotteAction.org for more of them.
********************
Donate Now to support Action Center For Justice online by using the Orange Donate link at http://www.CharlotteAction.org
Or send check or money order to:
Action Center For Justice
7100 Mapleridge Dr
Charlotte, NC 28210
Unity/Solidarity Cook-Out for Jena 6 & film in Charlotte
Cook-Out starts at 5:30pm
Guest speakers at 7:00pm
Film starts at 8:30pm
Charlotte Energy Solutions
337 Baldwin Ave
Charlotte, NC 28204
Join us this Saturday, Sept. 22 for a very special Unity/Solidarity Cook-Out for the Jena 6 & the film “Passin’ It On”. It is important that all justice loving people stand with the Jena 6 and the growing movement to support them & stand against racism in all its vile forms.
Invited guests include:
Rev. James Barnett, The Crusade, Stop The Killing
Ahmad Daniels, Director, Creative-Interchange & reparations activist
Sylvia Grier, Vice-President, Millions More Movement – Charlotte
Jibril Hough, Chairman, Islamic Political Party of America
Our film will be the documentary “Passin’ It On”: Follow the startling true story of Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a leader of the New York City chapter of the Black Panther Party, who served 19 years in prison for killing two policemen, a crime he did not commit. Archival footage, interviews and courtroom testimony chronicle Dhoruba's struggle, including the overturning of his sentence in 1990, and the U.S. Governments war on the Black Panther Party & black liberation movement.
Please bring something to throw on the grill, your favorite beverage, and family and friends. (We will have some hotdogs & hamburgers to get started).
Donations will be accepted for the Jena 6 Defense Fund & for local organizing for the Sept 29 March on Washington & future events.
All supporters of Jena 6 welcome, no one turned away for lack of money.
Info: Action Center For Justice
www.CharlotteAction.org
704.492.8527
********************
Sept. 29 National March on the White House
Sept. 22-29 Encampment in Front of Congress
Stop the War At Home & Abroad!
Impeach Bush & Cheney for War Crimes!
Bring The Troops Home Now!
*Buses from across the U.S., find one near you
*For details, flyers, & to endorse, click here
********************
There are peace & justice actions all through out Sept & Oct.
See www.CharlotteAction.org for more of them.
********************
Donate Now to support Action Center For Justice online by using the Orange Donate link at http://www.CharlotteAction.org
Or send check or money order to:
Action Center For Justice
7100 Mapleridge Dr
Charlotte, NC 28210
Thousands rally to support 'Jena 6'
CNN.com, Sept. 20, 2007
JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in Jena, Louisiana, Thursday to show support for the "Jena 6," six black teens charged in the beating of a white classmate.
Thursday was the day Mychal Bell expected to find out his punishment for his alleged role in the school beating.
"This is a march for justice. This is not a march against whites or against Jena," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and one of the protest organizers.
Sharpton called Jena the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement.
"[The Rev. Martin Luther] King went to Selma. That wasn't the only place you couldn't vote. That was the point of action," Sharpton said. "They went to Birmingham. That wasn't the only place we didn't have public accommodations. It was the point of action.
"Jena is a point of action for the Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said.
"There's a Jena in every state," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the crowd in Jena on Thursday morning.
JoAnn Scales, who brought her three teenage children on a two-day bus journey from Los Angeles to Jena, made the same point.
"The reason I brought my children is because it could have been one of them" involved in an incident like the one in Jena.
"If this can happen to them [the Jena 6] , it can happen to anyone," Scales said.
Ondra Hathaway was on the bus with Scales.
"If this young man (Bell) was railroaded to do time as an adult, how many more people has that happened to?" she said.
At 8 a.m. ET, a Louisiana state patrol officer said five tour buses were being allowed into the town every 12 minutes. That resulted in buses lined up as far as the eye could see in both directions on Route 49.
As the crowd grew in Jena, they found most of the local population gone, reported CNN's Tony Harris. The town's businesses had shut down, he said.
Demonstrators are protesting what they say are excessive criminal charges and bond amounts for the teens.
Bell, 17, has been in prison since his arrest in December.
"It breaks our heart to see him handcuffed and in leg shackles," Sharpton said. "But his spirit is high. He has said that he is very encouraged to know that thousands are coming to this town to stand up for him and his five friends." Watch how town prepares for flood of protesters »
The teens were initially charged with attempted murder after they allegedly knocked out Justin Barker -- a white classmate -- while stomping and kicking him during a school fight on December 4, 2006.
Barker was taken to a hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears, as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker.
LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters urged the world not to forget the victim in the case.
"The injury done to him and threats to his survival have become less than a footnote," Walters said Wednesday.
"This case has not, never has been about race. It's about finding justice for an innocent victim, holding people accountable for their actions. That is what it's about," he said.
Five of the black teens were charged as adults. Bell was the first to face felony charges.
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.
Thursday morning, demonstrators walked to the high school, asking to see the tree where nooses were hung. They couldn't; the tree has been chopped down.
Charges against Bell were reduced, as were charges against Carwin Jones and Theodore Shaw, who have not yet come to trial.
Robert Bailey, Bryant Purvis and an unidentified juvenile remain charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Bell, who was 16 at the time of the fight, was to have been sentenced on battery and conspiracy convictions Thursday. But a district judge earlier this month tossed out his conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, saying the matter should have been handled in the juvenile court.
Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Lake Charles, Louisiana, did the same with Bell's battery conviction.
But a Louisiana appeals court ruled Tuesday it was too early to consider a motion to free Bell from prison.
Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney who reviewed investigations into the nooses and the beating said he believes the incidents -- though likely symptoms of racial tension -- were not related.
"A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection," said Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.
"There were three months of high school football in which they all played football together and got along fine, in which there was a homecoming court, in which there was the drill team, in which there were parades," Washington added.
JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in Jena, Louisiana, Thursday to show support for the "Jena 6," six black teens charged in the beating of a white classmate.
Thursday was the day Mychal Bell expected to find out his punishment for his alleged role in the school beating.
"This is a march for justice. This is not a march against whites or against Jena," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and one of the protest organizers.
Sharpton called Jena the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement.
"[The Rev. Martin Luther] King went to Selma. That wasn't the only place you couldn't vote. That was the point of action," Sharpton said. "They went to Birmingham. That wasn't the only place we didn't have public accommodations. It was the point of action.
"Jena is a point of action for the Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said.
"There's a Jena in every state," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the crowd in Jena on Thursday morning.
JoAnn Scales, who brought her three teenage children on a two-day bus journey from Los Angeles to Jena, made the same point.
"The reason I brought my children is because it could have been one of them" involved in an incident like the one in Jena.
"If this can happen to them [the Jena 6] , it can happen to anyone," Scales said.
Ondra Hathaway was on the bus with Scales.
"If this young man (Bell) was railroaded to do time as an adult, how many more people has that happened to?" she said.
At 8 a.m. ET, a Louisiana state patrol officer said five tour buses were being allowed into the town every 12 minutes. That resulted in buses lined up as far as the eye could see in both directions on Route 49.
As the crowd grew in Jena, they found most of the local population gone, reported CNN's Tony Harris. The town's businesses had shut down, he said.
Demonstrators are protesting what they say are excessive criminal charges and bond amounts for the teens.
Bell, 17, has been in prison since his arrest in December.
"It breaks our heart to see him handcuffed and in leg shackles," Sharpton said. "But his spirit is high. He has said that he is very encouraged to know that thousands are coming to this town to stand up for him and his five friends." Watch how town prepares for flood of protesters »
The teens were initially charged with attempted murder after they allegedly knocked out Justin Barker -- a white classmate -- while stomping and kicking him during a school fight on December 4, 2006.
Barker was taken to a hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears, as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker.
LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters urged the world not to forget the victim in the case.
"The injury done to him and threats to his survival have become less than a footnote," Walters said Wednesday.
"This case has not, never has been about race. It's about finding justice for an innocent victim, holding people accountable for their actions. That is what it's about," he said.
Five of the black teens were charged as adults. Bell was the first to face felony charges.
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.
Thursday morning, demonstrators walked to the high school, asking to see the tree where nooses were hung. They couldn't; the tree has been chopped down.
Charges against Bell were reduced, as were charges against Carwin Jones and Theodore Shaw, who have not yet come to trial.
Robert Bailey, Bryant Purvis and an unidentified juvenile remain charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Bell, who was 16 at the time of the fight, was to have been sentenced on battery and conspiracy convictions Thursday. But a district judge earlier this month tossed out his conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, saying the matter should have been handled in the juvenile court.
Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Lake Charles, Louisiana, did the same with Bell's battery conviction.
But a Louisiana appeals court ruled Tuesday it was too early to consider a motion to free Bell from prison.
Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney who reviewed investigations into the nooses and the beating said he believes the incidents -- though likely symptoms of racial tension -- were not related.
"A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection," said Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.
"There were three months of high school football in which they all played football together and got along fine, in which there was a homecoming court, in which there was the drill team, in which there were parades," Washington added.
Major Demonstration Planned in Jena to Protest Pending Charges Against Six Students
Democracy Now!, Sept. 18, 2007
Listen to segment. Download Show mp3.
Thousands of people are expected to gather in Jena, Louisiana on Thursday to protest the pending charges against six African American high school students. Last week, a Louisiana appeals court threw out the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell. Bell was supposed to have been sentenced for attempted second-degree battery this Thursday. The court ruled that he should not have been tried as an adult. He has been jailed since January, unable to meet his $90,000 bond. We speak with Lewis Scott. [includes rush transcript - partial]
Mychal Bell and five other students were arrested for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight last year. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses on a tree in the schoolyard.
Bell has been jailed since January unable to meet his $90,000 bond. As of this morning he remains in prison waiting for his new bond to be posted. The Associated Press is reporting that District Attorney Reed Walters plans to appeal Bell's overturned conviction at the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Lewis Scott, Mychal Bell's attorney on the phone from Monroe, Louisiana.
One year after the nooses were hung from the tree, the case of the Jena 6 is drawing thousands to the small town of Jena this Thursday. Mychal Bell is the only one of the Jena Six who remains in prison. But it’s been ten months since the boys were arrested for the schoolyard fight and seventeen-year-old Bryant Purvis hasn’t even been arraigned. The court has just set his arraignment date for the first week of November. He is the only remaining member of the Jena Six to be charged as an adult with attempted second-degree murder.
I spoke to Bryant Purvis’s mother Tina Jones earlier this month. We met on the front porch of her house in Goodpine, an all Black community just outside of Jena. Bryant Purvis was expelled from Jena High School and is now studying in Dallas, Texas and living with his uncle Jason Hatcher. Hatcher grew up in Jena but plays professional football for the Dallas Cowboys. I began by asking Tina Jones to explain what her son has been charged with.
Tina Jones, mother of Bryant Purvis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
Donate at Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Jena, Louisiana, where thousands of people are expected to gather Thursday to protest the charges against six African American high school students. Last week, the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction of seventeen-year-old Mychal Bell. The court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult. Bell was supposed to have been sentenced for attempted second-degree battery this Thursday.
Mychal Bell and five other students were arrested for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight last December. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses on a tree in the schoolyard. Bell has been jailed since January, unable to meet his $90,000 bond. As of this morning, he remains in prison, waiting for his new bond to be posted.
The Associated Press is reporting that District Attorney Reed Walters plans to appeal Bell's overturned conviction at the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Lewis Scott is the lead attorney for Mychal Bell. He joins us on the phone right now from Monroe, Louisiana. Welcome to Democracy Now!
LEWIS SCOTT: Good morning. How are you doing?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you tell us the status? What happened with Mychal Bell's conviction?
LEWIS SCOTT: It was overturned by the Third Circuit on the basis of the fact that he was only sixteen at the time of the charge. So, therefore, he should not have been tried in Louisiana as an adult. As a matter of fact, the charges that he was convicted of were not charges that an individual can be charged as an adult for if they're under seventeen years old.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you go back and explain this case to us? We've been covering it on Democracy Now! We've just returned from Jena, Louisiana. We’re going to be playing an interview with one of the moms, in the minute, of the Jena Six. But explain what happened and why Mychal Bell was tried first and separately.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know why the district attorney chose to try Mychal first. By the time I entered the case, the trial was already over. So I entered the case about June or early July of this year, and at the time he had already been convicted. I’ve not been able to determine why he was tried first.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have this situation where last September a black student asked the principal if black students could sit under the tree in the Jena schoolyard. The principal says yes. The black students go to sit under the tree. The next day, the three nooses are hung. Some students are suspended for a couple of days. Tensions mount. It goes for a few months. Then one of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey, goes to a party. He's beaten up by whites. In the next few days, he goes to the local convenience store, the Gotta-Go, and one of those white men has a weapon. Robert grabs it from him, runs home.
Then, the next day is the schoolyard fight, and six African American students are charged. They're charged with second-degree attempted murder, facing each a hundred years in jail. Mychal Bell is tried first. He refuses the plea bargain. And so, they drop the attempted murder charge, but charge him with aggravated battery and said the dangerous weapon was his tennis shoes. And he is convicted by an all-white jury, from an all-white jury pool, and facing twenty-two years in jail.
You then came into the picture after he was convicted. And now the judge, before the court threw out the conviction, said that they were going to drop the conspiracy charge, is that right? He was charged with conspiracy and aggravated battery?
LEWIS SCOTT: Yes, what happened, the district judge threw out the conspiracy and the Third Circuit threw out the aggravated second-degree battery. So you had one charge thrown out at a district level, one charge thrown out at the appellate level.
AMY GOODMAN: Why is Mychal Bell still in jail? The other students, one after another, eventually got out of jail as their families tried to make the bail. Theo Shaw was the last of them to be released just recently. But why is Mychal still in jail?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, after Mychal was convicted, his bail was revoked. And then, after that, the cases were thrown out. At the present time, our position is that he should not be in jail. However, he does have one juvenile charge of conspiracy still pending against him as a result of him being charged with that charge after the Third Circuit threw out the adult conspiracy charge. So, therefore, he's being held in jail now. And I’m not exactly sure what the reasoning is, but that's a part of what we're challenging at the present time.
AMY GOODMAN: Why was he charged as an adult?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I can only speculate at that. But what happened was, he was first charged with attempted murder, which is a charge that you can be charged as an adult for. And then, the attempted murder was downgraded to aggravated second-degree battery. Aggravated second-degree battery is not a charge that you can be charged as an adult for. So it's possible that the purpose was a procedural maneuver to charge the greater charge to change the jurisdiction and then try to determine -- I mean, try to keep the jurisdiction in the district court rather than in the juvenile court. But I would only have to speculate regarding the motivation in charging that and then reducing it.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Lewis Scott, how it was that all of these young people were charged with attempted second-degree murder originally and still some facing a hundred years in jail? And the response in the Jena community?
LEWIS SCOTT: I wasn't quite able to understand what you said on the last question.
AMY GOODMAN: How the boys were charged with second-degree attempted murder, facing a hundred years each in prison originally.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, in Louisiana, the district attorney has a lot of discretion in determining what charge he's going to charge. But, again, to answer that question, I would have to deal with the motivations of someone else in order to answer the question. So I really can't answer that question regarding what the district attorney's motivation was in charging such a tremendous crime in this particular circumstance.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the DA, the District Attorney Reed Walters, after the nooses were hung from the tree and then the students, the black students, protested and all went to stand under the tree, came in with police, according to teachers and students, to the school. They held an assembly, and he warned the students. He said, “I could wipe out your lives with the stroke of a pen.” And then you have the schoolyard fight, and he charges them with attempted second-degree murder.
Mychal Bell is charged. He is convicted by an all-white jury, from an all-white jury pool, and he faces first twenty years, and then, when they drop the conspiracy charge, something like fifteen years. His original lawyer did not bring up one witness in Mychal's defense. Will you be charging incompetent counsel in that case? He had a public defender.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, it's not up to us to charge. But that was one of the things we were investigating. However, we won't actually be going any further with that, because that entire charge was thrown out. So that was something that we were looking into prior to the time that the Third Circuit made its ruling, but after the Third Circuit made its ruling, then that pretty much gave us the opportunity for a new trial without dealing with all of those issues. So that was something we were investigating into, but at the present time it's not something that we are dealing with under the present circumstance.
AMY GOODMAN: If Mychal Bell is charged as a juvenile, what does he face?
LEWIS SCOTT: A maximum of up to twenty-one.
AMY GOODMAN: Years?
LEWIS SCOTT: Up to his twenty-first birthday, I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Up to the age of twenty-one. And he has been in jail now for, well, almost ten months. He was a football star. They expected a lot of Mychal, going on to college on a football scholarship. Have you visited Mychal? What are his spirits like in jail?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, they range from being cautiously optimistic to being optimistically cautious. That is, he's happy over certain things that happen, but then there are other things that cause him to feel like things are not going very well, mainly because he hasn't been able to have his freedom. So I think that's what bothers him most. So he may be happy about good decisions and things of that nature, but he doesn't really feel the full impact of that unless he's released.
AMY GOODMAN: Lewis Scott, what is the impact of the public exposure of this case, as it grows around the country, and then the protests? This one on Thursday, there are many people expected to show up in Jena, Louisiana.
LEWIS SCOTT: Again, I wasn't able to hear.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the impact of the public exposure and the public protest, this large protest expected for the day it was expected that Mychal Bell would be sentenced, now unclear what will happen with the overturning of the decision and the district attorney saying he will appeal?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I intentionally try not to evaluate the impact of things of that nature. What I try to do is to concentrate on the legal effort, to make sure that everything is done legally. But then, I don't really get involved in determining how what is done in the public will affect the legal process.
AMY GOODMAN: Well we will certainly follow what happens. We're just back from Jena. I want to thank you very much. We hope to talk to you again, Lewis Scott, the new attorney for Mychal Bell, who remains in jail. Thanks for joining us.
LEWIS SCOTT: OK, thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. When we come back, we'll talk to the mother of one of the Jena Six, and then we'll have a debate on the role of Blackwater in Iraq. The Iraqi government says they're throwing the security company out. Stay with us.
[break]
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.
Listen to segment. Download Show mp3.
Thousands of people are expected to gather in Jena, Louisiana on Thursday to protest the pending charges against six African American high school students. Last week, a Louisiana appeals court threw out the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell. Bell was supposed to have been sentenced for attempted second-degree battery this Thursday. The court ruled that he should not have been tried as an adult. He has been jailed since January, unable to meet his $90,000 bond. We speak with Lewis Scott. [includes rush transcript - partial]
Mychal Bell and five other students were arrested for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight last year. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses on a tree in the schoolyard.
Bell has been jailed since January unable to meet his $90,000 bond. As of this morning he remains in prison waiting for his new bond to be posted. The Associated Press is reporting that District Attorney Reed Walters plans to appeal Bell's overturned conviction at the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Lewis Scott, Mychal Bell's attorney on the phone from Monroe, Louisiana.
One year after the nooses were hung from the tree, the case of the Jena 6 is drawing thousands to the small town of Jena this Thursday. Mychal Bell is the only one of the Jena Six who remains in prison. But it’s been ten months since the boys were arrested for the schoolyard fight and seventeen-year-old Bryant Purvis hasn’t even been arraigned. The court has just set his arraignment date for the first week of November. He is the only remaining member of the Jena Six to be charged as an adult with attempted second-degree murder.
I spoke to Bryant Purvis’s mother Tina Jones earlier this month. We met on the front porch of her house in Goodpine, an all Black community just outside of Jena. Bryant Purvis was expelled from Jena High School and is now studying in Dallas, Texas and living with his uncle Jason Hatcher. Hatcher grew up in Jena but plays professional football for the Dallas Cowboys. I began by asking Tina Jones to explain what her son has been charged with.
Tina Jones, mother of Bryant Purvis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Jena, Louisiana, where thousands of people are expected to gather Thursday to protest the charges against six African American high school students. Last week, the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction of seventeen-year-old Mychal Bell. The court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult. Bell was supposed to have been sentenced for attempted second-degree battery this Thursday.
Mychal Bell and five other students were arrested for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight last December. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses on a tree in the schoolyard. Bell has been jailed since January, unable to meet his $90,000 bond. As of this morning, he remains in prison, waiting for his new bond to be posted.
The Associated Press is reporting that District Attorney Reed Walters plans to appeal Bell's overturned conviction at the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Lewis Scott is the lead attorney for Mychal Bell. He joins us on the phone right now from Monroe, Louisiana. Welcome to Democracy Now!
LEWIS SCOTT: Good morning. How are you doing?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you tell us the status? What happened with Mychal Bell's conviction?
LEWIS SCOTT: It was overturned by the Third Circuit on the basis of the fact that he was only sixteen at the time of the charge. So, therefore, he should not have been tried in Louisiana as an adult. As a matter of fact, the charges that he was convicted of were not charges that an individual can be charged as an adult for if they're under seventeen years old.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you go back and explain this case to us? We've been covering it on Democracy Now! We've just returned from Jena, Louisiana. We’re going to be playing an interview with one of the moms, in the minute, of the Jena Six. But explain what happened and why Mychal Bell was tried first and separately.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I don't know the answer to that. I don't know why the district attorney chose to try Mychal first. By the time I entered the case, the trial was already over. So I entered the case about June or early July of this year, and at the time he had already been convicted. I’ve not been able to determine why he was tried first.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have this situation where last September a black student asked the principal if black students could sit under the tree in the Jena schoolyard. The principal says yes. The black students go to sit under the tree. The next day, the three nooses are hung. Some students are suspended for a couple of days. Tensions mount. It goes for a few months. Then one of the Jena Six, Robert Bailey, goes to a party. He's beaten up by whites. In the next few days, he goes to the local convenience store, the Gotta-Go, and one of those white men has a weapon. Robert grabs it from him, runs home.
Then, the next day is the schoolyard fight, and six African American students are charged. They're charged with second-degree attempted murder, facing each a hundred years in jail. Mychal Bell is tried first. He refuses the plea bargain. And so, they drop the attempted murder charge, but charge him with aggravated battery and said the dangerous weapon was his tennis shoes. And he is convicted by an all-white jury, from an all-white jury pool, and facing twenty-two years in jail.
You then came into the picture after he was convicted. And now the judge, before the court threw out the conviction, said that they were going to drop the conspiracy charge, is that right? He was charged with conspiracy and aggravated battery?
LEWIS SCOTT: Yes, what happened, the district judge threw out the conspiracy and the Third Circuit threw out the aggravated second-degree battery. So you had one charge thrown out at a district level, one charge thrown out at the appellate level.
AMY GOODMAN: Why is Mychal Bell still in jail? The other students, one after another, eventually got out of jail as their families tried to make the bail. Theo Shaw was the last of them to be released just recently. But why is Mychal still in jail?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, after Mychal was convicted, his bail was revoked. And then, after that, the cases were thrown out. At the present time, our position is that he should not be in jail. However, he does have one juvenile charge of conspiracy still pending against him as a result of him being charged with that charge after the Third Circuit threw out the adult conspiracy charge. So, therefore, he's being held in jail now. And I’m not exactly sure what the reasoning is, but that's a part of what we're challenging at the present time.
AMY GOODMAN: Why was he charged as an adult?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I can only speculate at that. But what happened was, he was first charged with attempted murder, which is a charge that you can be charged as an adult for. And then, the attempted murder was downgraded to aggravated second-degree battery. Aggravated second-degree battery is not a charge that you can be charged as an adult for. So it's possible that the purpose was a procedural maneuver to charge the greater charge to change the jurisdiction and then try to determine -- I mean, try to keep the jurisdiction in the district court rather than in the juvenile court. But I would only have to speculate regarding the motivation in charging that and then reducing it.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain, Lewis Scott, how it was that all of these young people were charged with attempted second-degree murder originally and still some facing a hundred years in jail? And the response in the Jena community?
LEWIS SCOTT: I wasn't quite able to understand what you said on the last question.
AMY GOODMAN: How the boys were charged with second-degree attempted murder, facing a hundred years each in prison originally.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, in Louisiana, the district attorney has a lot of discretion in determining what charge he's going to charge. But, again, to answer that question, I would have to deal with the motivations of someone else in order to answer the question. So I really can't answer that question regarding what the district attorney's motivation was in charging such a tremendous crime in this particular circumstance.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the DA, the District Attorney Reed Walters, after the nooses were hung from the tree and then the students, the black students, protested and all went to stand under the tree, came in with police, according to teachers and students, to the school. They held an assembly, and he warned the students. He said, “I could wipe out your lives with the stroke of a pen.” And then you have the schoolyard fight, and he charges them with attempted second-degree murder.
Mychal Bell is charged. He is convicted by an all-white jury, from an all-white jury pool, and he faces first twenty years, and then, when they drop the conspiracy charge, something like fifteen years. His original lawyer did not bring up one witness in Mychal's defense. Will you be charging incompetent counsel in that case? He had a public defender.
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, it's not up to us to charge. But that was one of the things we were investigating. However, we won't actually be going any further with that, because that entire charge was thrown out. So that was something that we were looking into prior to the time that the Third Circuit made its ruling, but after the Third Circuit made its ruling, then that pretty much gave us the opportunity for a new trial without dealing with all of those issues. So that was something we were investigating into, but at the present time it's not something that we are dealing with under the present circumstance.
AMY GOODMAN: If Mychal Bell is charged as a juvenile, what does he face?
LEWIS SCOTT: A maximum of up to twenty-one.
AMY GOODMAN: Years?
LEWIS SCOTT: Up to his twenty-first birthday, I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: Up to the age of twenty-one. And he has been in jail now for, well, almost ten months. He was a football star. They expected a lot of Mychal, going on to college on a football scholarship. Have you visited Mychal? What are his spirits like in jail?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, they range from being cautiously optimistic to being optimistically cautious. That is, he's happy over certain things that happen, but then there are other things that cause him to feel like things are not going very well, mainly because he hasn't been able to have his freedom. So I think that's what bothers him most. So he may be happy about good decisions and things of that nature, but he doesn't really feel the full impact of that unless he's released.
AMY GOODMAN: Lewis Scott, what is the impact of the public exposure of this case, as it grows around the country, and then the protests? This one on Thursday, there are many people expected to show up in Jena, Louisiana.
LEWIS SCOTT: Again, I wasn't able to hear.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the impact of the public exposure and the public protest, this large protest expected for the day it was expected that Mychal Bell would be sentenced, now unclear what will happen with the overturning of the decision and the district attorney saying he will appeal?
LEWIS SCOTT: Well, I intentionally try not to evaluate the impact of things of that nature. What I try to do is to concentrate on the legal effort, to make sure that everything is done legally. But then, I don't really get involved in determining how what is done in the public will affect the legal process.
AMY GOODMAN: Well we will certainly follow what happens. We're just back from Jena. I want to thank you very much. We hope to talk to you again, Lewis Scott, the new attorney for Mychal Bell, who remains in jail. Thanks for joining us.
LEWIS SCOTT: OK, thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. When we come back, we'll talk to the mother of one of the Jena Six, and then we'll have a debate on the role of Blackwater in Iraq. The Iraqi government says they're throwing the security company out. Stay with us.
[break]
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (888) 999-3877.
Apart from the noose, this is an everyday story of modern America
The racial tensions which flared in a small southern town have laid bare the bias infecting the nation's justice system
Gary Younge in Jena, The Guardian, Monday Sept. 17, 2007
The four-hour drive from New Orleans to Jena takes you over long bridges, across still bayoux and deep into the remote backwoods of Louisiana. It's a journey that starts in the city that has become a byword for racial division and infrastructural neglect, following Hurricane Katrina. It then heads north-east through Opelousas where, as in so much of the south, people are literally segregated to death. There are two Catholic churches in the centre of town - Holy Ghost, for African Americans, and St Landry, for whites. In between is the cemetery where, by law and then by custom, blacks and whites have been buried according to their race - separate and finally equal, if only in the afterlife. And finally, it lands in the small town of Jena, surrounded by forests of pine where, it seems, even the flora can be racialised.
It was here that Kenneth Purvis asked the headmaster at Jena high school if he could sit under the "white tree" - the tree in the school courtyard where the white children used to hang out during break. The principal said he could sit where he liked. Purvis took him at his word. The next day he went with his cousin Bryant and stood under the tree. The day after that white students hung three nooses there.
If the symbolic threat of a schoolyard lynching makes this sound like a tale from a bygone era, then what happened next belongs very much to the present. It is a story of institutional indifference and judicial impunity that today condemns black American men: not to end their lives hanging from a tree, but to spend it rotting in jail. It illustrates to those who would like to draw a line under the civil rights era that they must first contend with its legacy before claiming to have conquered history. It serves as a salient example that legal barriers to integration may have been removed - itself no mean feat - but the ultimate goal of equality remains elusive. And it shows that just because you are allowed to do something - even something as basic as sitting under a tree - it doesn't mean that you are able to.
Back in Jena, the local, overwhelmingly white school board, considered the nooses a youthful prank and handed down brief suspensions. This made black parents and students angry and sparked months of racial tension. Police were called to the school several times because of fights between black and white students.
The principal called an assembly where the local district attorney, Reed Walters, told them "See this pen? I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen." The black students say when he said it he was looking at them; Walters denies it.
In an unsolved arson case a wing of the school was burned down. A few days later, Justin Sloan, a white man, attacked black students who tried to go to a white party in town. Sloan was charged with battery and put on probation. A few days after that another white boy pulled a gun on three black students in a convenience store. The black student wrestled the gun from him and took it home. The black student was charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who produced the gun was not charged.
On December 4 a group of black students attacked a white student, Justin Barker, after they heard him bragging about a racial assault his friend had made. Barker, 17, had concussion and his eye was swollen shut. He spent a few hours in hospital and, on his release, went to a party where friends described him as "his usual smiling self".
The six black students were then arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder. Such a charge requires use of a deadly weapon. Walters argued that the trainers used to kick Barker were indeed deadly weapons. Mychal Bell, 17, became the first of what are now known as the Jena Six to be convicted on reduced charges by an all-white jury and faced up to 22 years in jail.
On Friday Bell's conviction was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that he should not have been tried as an adult. A new bail hearing is set for later today.
These incidents have transformed Jena from a sleepy town of 3,000 into a national symbol of racial injustice. Its new-found notoriety suggests that if a political gaffe is when a politician inadvertently tells an awkward truth, then a racial scandal in America is simply when the scandal of its racism is laid bare. The true outrage is not that this happened in Jena, but that similar things happen everywhere, every day in America, and almost nobody takes any notice.
"If the media wasn't watching what was going on then every last one of those kids would be in jail right now," says Tina Jones, whose son, Bryant Purvis, has also been charged.
Once again race and class collide. The poor, who are unable to afford a decent lawyer, stand at the mercy of a judicial system that simply wants them to disappear. They are given inadequate counsel, encouraged to plea-bargain their lives away or face stiffer penalties on trial. This is not a problem for P Diddy or OJ (Lil' Kim was not so lucky). But Bell could never have afforded Johnnie Cochran, even if he were alive.
Add racism to poverty and the magnifier effect is stunning. African Americans fall foul not just of the law of the land, but the law of probabilities.
According to the US justice department, black people are almost three times as likely as whites to have their cars searched when they are pulled over and more than twice as likely to be arrested. They are over five times more likely than whites to be to be sent to jail, and are given 20% longer sentences. On any given day, one in eight black men in America in their 20s is in prison.
"Jena is America," says Alan Bean, the executive director of Friends of Justice, who has been working with the Jena Six. "The new Jim Crow is the criminal justice system and its impact on poor people in general and people of colour in particular. We don't always get the exotic trimmings like the nooses."
At the high school's homecoming rally on Friday there were plenty of cheers for the black and gold of the Jena Giants, the school football team, but no talk of festering bitterness between black and white. White people here don't want to talk about it. They resent being portrayed as rednecks. They have a point.
According to the census, the top five segregated cities - Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Chicago and Newark - are all in the north. According to the Sentencing project, a pressure group for penal reform, the 10 states with the highest discrepancy between black and white incarceration include Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York - which all consider themselves liberal - but there are none from the south. Jena's problem is not that it has proved itself more racist than the rest of the country, but that it has manifested its racism with insufficient subtlety.
As the homecoming parade passed through town, the class of 2007 was carried by a truck with a Confederate flag on its licence plate. At the high school they chopped down the "white tree". But they couldn't uproot it.
Gary Younge in Jena, The Guardian, Monday Sept. 17, 2007
The four-hour drive from New Orleans to Jena takes you over long bridges, across still bayoux and deep into the remote backwoods of Louisiana. It's a journey that starts in the city that has become a byword for racial division and infrastructural neglect, following Hurricane Katrina. It then heads north-east through Opelousas where, as in so much of the south, people are literally segregated to death. There are two Catholic churches in the centre of town - Holy Ghost, for African Americans, and St Landry, for whites. In between is the cemetery where, by law and then by custom, blacks and whites have been buried according to their race - separate and finally equal, if only in the afterlife. And finally, it lands in the small town of Jena, surrounded by forests of pine where, it seems, even the flora can be racialised.
It was here that Kenneth Purvis asked the headmaster at Jena high school if he could sit under the "white tree" - the tree in the school courtyard where the white children used to hang out during break. The principal said he could sit where he liked. Purvis took him at his word. The next day he went with his cousin Bryant and stood under the tree. The day after that white students hung three nooses there.
If the symbolic threat of a schoolyard lynching makes this sound like a tale from a bygone era, then what happened next belongs very much to the present. It is a story of institutional indifference and judicial impunity that today condemns black American men: not to end their lives hanging from a tree, but to spend it rotting in jail. It illustrates to those who would like to draw a line under the civil rights era that they must first contend with its legacy before claiming to have conquered history. It serves as a salient example that legal barriers to integration may have been removed - itself no mean feat - but the ultimate goal of equality remains elusive. And it shows that just because you are allowed to do something - even something as basic as sitting under a tree - it doesn't mean that you are able to.
Back in Jena, the local, overwhelmingly white school board, considered the nooses a youthful prank and handed down brief suspensions. This made black parents and students angry and sparked months of racial tension. Police were called to the school several times because of fights between black and white students.
The principal called an assembly where the local district attorney, Reed Walters, told them "See this pen? I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen." The black students say when he said it he was looking at them; Walters denies it.
In an unsolved arson case a wing of the school was burned down. A few days later, Justin Sloan, a white man, attacked black students who tried to go to a white party in town. Sloan was charged with battery and put on probation. A few days after that another white boy pulled a gun on three black students in a convenience store. The black student wrestled the gun from him and took it home. The black student was charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who produced the gun was not charged.
On December 4 a group of black students attacked a white student, Justin Barker, after they heard him bragging about a racial assault his friend had made. Barker, 17, had concussion and his eye was swollen shut. He spent a few hours in hospital and, on his release, went to a party where friends described him as "his usual smiling self".
The six black students were then arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder. Such a charge requires use of a deadly weapon. Walters argued that the trainers used to kick Barker were indeed deadly weapons. Mychal Bell, 17, became the first of what are now known as the Jena Six to be convicted on reduced charges by an all-white jury and faced up to 22 years in jail.
On Friday Bell's conviction was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that he should not have been tried as an adult. A new bail hearing is set for later today.
These incidents have transformed Jena from a sleepy town of 3,000 into a national symbol of racial injustice. Its new-found notoriety suggests that if a political gaffe is when a politician inadvertently tells an awkward truth, then a racial scandal in America is simply when the scandal of its racism is laid bare. The true outrage is not that this happened in Jena, but that similar things happen everywhere, every day in America, and almost nobody takes any notice.
"If the media wasn't watching what was going on then every last one of those kids would be in jail right now," says Tina Jones, whose son, Bryant Purvis, has also been charged.
Once again race and class collide. The poor, who are unable to afford a decent lawyer, stand at the mercy of a judicial system that simply wants them to disappear. They are given inadequate counsel, encouraged to plea-bargain their lives away or face stiffer penalties on trial. This is not a problem for P Diddy or OJ (Lil' Kim was not so lucky). But Bell could never have afforded Johnnie Cochran, even if he were alive.
Add racism to poverty and the magnifier effect is stunning. African Americans fall foul not just of the law of the land, but the law of probabilities.
According to the US justice department, black people are almost three times as likely as whites to have their cars searched when they are pulled over and more than twice as likely to be arrested. They are over five times more likely than whites to be to be sent to jail, and are given 20% longer sentences. On any given day, one in eight black men in America in their 20s is in prison.
"Jena is America," says Alan Bean, the executive director of Friends of Justice, who has been working with the Jena Six. "The new Jim Crow is the criminal justice system and its impact on poor people in general and people of colour in particular. We don't always get the exotic trimmings like the nooses."
At the high school's homecoming rally on Friday there were plenty of cheers for the black and gold of the Jena Giants, the school football team, but no talk of festering bitterness between black and white. White people here don't want to talk about it. They resent being portrayed as rednecks. They have a point.
According to the census, the top five segregated cities - Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Chicago and Newark - are all in the north. According to the Sentencing project, a pressure group for penal reform, the 10 states with the highest discrepancy between black and white incarceration include Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York - which all consider themselves liberal - but there are none from the south. Jena's problem is not that it has proved itself more racist than the rest of the country, but that it has manifested its racism with insufficient subtlety.
As the homecoming parade passed through town, the class of 2007 was carried by a truck with a Confederate flag on its licence plate. At the high school they chopped down the "white tree". But they couldn't uproot it.
In Chicago, civic leaders vow to stay focused on 'Jena 6'
By Antonio Olivo, chicagotribune.com, Sept. 16, 2007
Black community leaders in Chicago on Saturday sought to keep the spotlight on the racially charged "Jena 6" case in Louisiana a day after a state appeals court there threw out a felony conviction against one of the teen defendants.
Both Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton pledged to continue plans for a demonstration in Jena, La., on Thursday, arguing the overturned battery conviction against Mychal Bell, 17, did not diminish the racial injustice of a case that drew national attention when Bell and five other black teenagers were charged with attempted murder for beating a white teen and leaving him unconscious.
The white student was treated at a local hospital for cuts and bruises, and later released.
Bell remains in jail, and the district attorney overseeing the case pledged to appeal the overturned conviction or bring new juvenile charges against him. The five other defendants are free on bail and await trial, said George Tucker, one of the defense attorneys in the case. Tucker and Bell's parents visited Chicago on Saturday to attract more people to the planned rally.
"It's taken a big toll on us from Day One," said Bell's father, Martus Jones, after a rally Saturday at Whitney High School that drew several hundred people.
The December beating came after several white-on-black attacks in Jena in which white assailants escaped serious charges. Racial tensions had been simmering in town after a black freshman at Jena High School asked a vice principal for permission to sit under a tree on campus claimed by white students as a favorite patch of shade.
The vice principal told the student to sit wherever he wanted. But three white students later hung nooses from the tree, perceived as a threat to blacks in the mostly white town of about 3,000 residents. Those students were suspended for three days.
On Saturday, during a morning sermon inside his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago's South Side, Jackson called the Jena case emblematic of continuing systemic mistreatment of African Americans, who make up the majority of prison populations around the country and suffer from poor health care and underfunded public schools.
"Jena is just a DNA sample of what's happening around the country," Jackson said, arguing that the use of nooses in the rural South should have been treated by local authorities as a hate crime.
"Don't just put your eye on the Jena jail system," Jackson said. "If you can't make it to Jena, go to 26th and California," he said, referring to the site of the Cook County Jail.
Sharpton sought to use the case to spur more action against police abuse in the city's black neighborhoods. He announced plans for a march in the city in the fall.
"There hasn't been a mass march in this city for years," he said. "It's time we bring these issues to City Hall."
Black community leaders in Chicago on Saturday sought to keep the spotlight on the racially charged "Jena 6" case in Louisiana a day after a state appeals court there threw out a felony conviction against one of the teen defendants.
Both Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton pledged to continue plans for a demonstration in Jena, La., on Thursday, arguing the overturned battery conviction against Mychal Bell, 17, did not diminish the racial injustice of a case that drew national attention when Bell and five other black teenagers were charged with attempted murder for beating a white teen and leaving him unconscious.
The white student was treated at a local hospital for cuts and bruises, and later released.
Bell remains in jail, and the district attorney overseeing the case pledged to appeal the overturned conviction or bring new juvenile charges against him. The five other defendants are free on bail and await trial, said George Tucker, one of the defense attorneys in the case. Tucker and Bell's parents visited Chicago on Saturday to attract more people to the planned rally.
"It's taken a big toll on us from Day One," said Bell's father, Martus Jones, after a rally Saturday at Whitney High School that drew several hundred people.
The December beating came after several white-on-black attacks in Jena in which white assailants escaped serious charges. Racial tensions had been simmering in town after a black freshman at Jena High School asked a vice principal for permission to sit under a tree on campus claimed by white students as a favorite patch of shade.
The vice principal told the student to sit wherever he wanted. But three white students later hung nooses from the tree, perceived as a threat to blacks in the mostly white town of about 3,000 residents. Those students were suspended for three days.
On Saturday, during a morning sermon inside his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago's South Side, Jackson called the Jena case emblematic of continuing systemic mistreatment of African Americans, who make up the majority of prison populations around the country and suffer from poor health care and underfunded public schools.
"Jena is just a DNA sample of what's happening around the country," Jackson said, arguing that the use of nooses in the rural South should have been treated by local authorities as a hate crime.
"Don't just put your eye on the Jena jail system," Jackson said. "If you can't make it to Jena, go to 26th and California," he said, referring to the site of the Cook County Jail.
Sharpton sought to use the case to spur more action against police abuse in the city's black neighborhoods. He announced plans for a march in the city in the fall.
"There hasn't been a mass march in this city for years," he said. "It's time we bring these issues to City Hall."
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