Tomorrow, Sept. 20, 2007, tens of thousands of activists will converge on Jena, Louisiana for the Jena 6 Justice March. A march that will show their solidarity for the atrocious sentences for 6 high school Black males in Jena, Louisiana. For those who can't make it to Lousiana, where the color Black tomorrow to show your unity.
I received an email from Eddie Griffin, that sums up the feelings of most about the Jena 6 case:
What is it about the Jena case that has so incensed people? Nothing more than an eye-opening experience to something that has been going on all along. Suddenly, it is no longer somebody else's bad kid. It's our own not-so-bad children being slammed dunked under the weight of law through a kangaroo court... criminalized with exaggerated charges... prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and beyond... always under-represented by an inept defense counsel... and hit with the heavier sentences.
We find ourselves helpless to do anything about it, unless we join forces. A fight for one child is a fight for all our children.
The MSM has picked up the story as of late, but Francis Holland, Afrospear, and Color Of Change have been blogging about the story since the outrageous sentences came to light.
Howard Witt, of the Chicago Tribune, is the only MSM journalist to give the blogosphere its propers in having the dominant role in getting the word out about the Jena 6:
Yet this will be a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the Ethernet, of a type that has never happened before in America-a collective national mass action grown from a grassroots word-of-mouth movement spread via Internet blogs, e-mails, message boards and talk radio..As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers.
Howard Witt provides this brief summary of the Jena 6 case:
And the trouble in Jena, pronounced Jee-na, started a year ago with a resonant symbol from the Jim Crow past: After black students asked administrators at the local high school for permission to sit beneath a shade tree traditionally used only by whites, white students hung three nooses from the tree. The incident outraged black students and their parents, but was dismissed by the school superintendent as a youthful prank; he punished the white students with three-day suspensions.A series of fights between whites and blacks ensued, both on and off the campus. Whites implicated in the fights were charged with misdemeanors or not at all, while the blacks were charged with felonies.
In November, someone burned down the central wing of the high school-an arson for which no one has been arrested.
And then in early December, Bell and five other black students at the high school were charged after a white student was jumped and beaten while he lay unconscious.
Although the white student was treated and released at a local hospital, Walters initially charged the six black youths with attempted murder-charges that he later reduced to aggravated second-degree battery after black bloggers and civil rights leaders from across the country raised complaints that the charges were excessive.
We can do better America!
Sign the Jena 6 petition here
Comments (5)
Thanks..
Petition signed, and forwarded... check and check.
How about we lay blame where it's deserved:
1) The District Attorney, who orignally brought the Attempted Murder charges and then reduced them to Aggravated Battery (still overcharged) the morning of trial.
2) The jury, who convicted Bell of Aggravated Battery instead of a reduced misdmeanor charge.
Is it Black or Green? I got another announcement yesterday about wearing green.
sigh, maybe i'll just wear both.
Georgia has it's own history prosecutorial abuses perpetrated against black children. (Reminds me of the stuff of MT). Civil Rights gains at the Federal level are being reversed in courtrooms at the local level. The thirteenth amendment outlaws slavery EXCEPT for those under convicted of a crime.
Thirteenth amendment
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
From - The Condemnation of Little B.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080700975X
In Georgia, since the 1994 passage of the state tough juvenile crime law, about 75 percent of all children arrested and over 90 percent of all children tried and convicted as adults have been black. When asked why it was that nearly all of the children he had prosecuted as adults in DeKalb County, Georgia, had been black, District Attorney J. Tom Morgan responded, "They're the ones committing all the crimes."
I signed the petition, and wrote a note expressing my outrage at the way this was handled. Congratulations to the group who has collected almost a quarter million signatures, it is shameful.
aquariusrizing