Please take time to view the awesome resources Color of Change has put together regarding the Jena Six.
Two commenters have left reporting updates:
George L. Cook III of Let’s Talk Honestly interviewed Alan Bean at Friends of Justice about the case here. The interview and media notes also have important e-mail addresses to the Jena Six Defense Fund, the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office, and the National Action Network:
Jena 6 Defense Fund
jena6defense@gmail.comLouisiana Attorney General’s office
CivilInfo@ag.state.la.us Civil Division
Executive@ag.state.la.us Executive DivisionNational Action Network ( Al Sharpton )
crisis@nationalactionnetwork.net
Ana alerted me that Le Monde in Paris covered the Jena Six today as a feature story; check out this story: “L’arbre de la colere (The Tree of Wrath).”
Thin Black Duke of Slant Truth has created a Facebook group and cause for the Jena Six. Much obliged, man; much obliged. There are a couple of other groups dedicated to the Jena Six too, if you’re interested in joining them. The most important thing is to spread the word.
And I just spotted this on his site and it’s awesome (yes, I’m still wowed by the interwebs):
THE PETITION IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR SIGNING HERE.
- Dr. Elle has more information about the Jena Six, including a Microsoft Word document (7 pages) from the Friends of Justice detailing and analyzing the events surrounding the trial and the charging of the six young men involved.
- Tom has prepared version 5 of the Jena Six petition to the United States Department of Justice; the petition is demanding a review of the charges leveled against the Jena Six for misconduct and bias:
Petition to the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice
This is a petition to request that the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice review events surrounding the prosecution of six Black students in Jena, Louisiana, for evidence of racial discrimination. The six students are reportedly facing prosecution for second degree attempted murder — and possible prison sentences of up to 100 years — for allegedly participating in an unarmed school brawl that resulted in no serious injuries.The brawl followed months of racial tension after hangman’s nooses were reportedly hung from a tree at the students’ school. Please see these articles for the situation in Jena:
Chicago Tribune article
BBC Article.
The prosecution of these young men represents a gross miscarriage of justice, punishing Black students for opposing segregation of their schools while ignoring the threatening and provocative acts of those engaging in segregation.From a Chicago Tribune article on the cases:“There’s been obvious racial discrimination in this case,” said Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who described Jena as a “racial powder keg” primed to ignite. “It appears the black students were singled out and targeted in this case for some unusually harsh treatment.”
In view of these facts, we the undersigned respectfully request that the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice launch a full investigation into events in Jena, Louisiana, beginning with the noose incident of August 31, 2006, and culminating in the alleged fight of December 4, 2006 to determine whether the civil rights of Jena residents have been violated.
———————————————————–
[signatures]You can suggest any changes or recommendations for the petition at Tom’s blog, at my blog, at the AfroSpear Think Tank, or on the AfroSpear Forum (requires AfroSpear membership). We hope to begin circulating the petition by the middle of next week.
- According to Brother J. Vallot of the National Action Network, you can watch a streaming version of the entire “Free the Jena Six” Rally on the Black Action Network website. He recommends watching it using RealPlayer through its stream rather than doing the download.
- Calling the artistically inclined: Aulelia originally suggested that a banner be created for the Jena Six so people can post the image to their websites. If anyone is interested in designing something, please post a comment. Best case scenario is to create an image to couple with the petition so we can generate as many signatures as possible.
- Carmen D. has shared previous coverage she did about the Jena Six on All About Race and an update with additional resources. Go take a look.
For previous information and updates, see Jena, Louisiana: Meet the Grassroots and Jena, Louisiana and the United States. If you have posted any commentary or information surrounding the Jena Six, please include a link to your work in the comments.
[...] not writing much about them at the moment for various reasons, but mainly because Dr. Elle and the AfroSpear are both running updates on trial information and have better access to info than I do at the [...]
So the real crime here isn’t the physical beating of a person. In this particular case, a white boy. No, the real crime is racism, right? The real crime that should be punished by 100 years in prison is putting a fake noose in a tree, right? The actual physical beating isn’t on trial here, it’s the noose that hurt nobody that’s really on trial. Moreover, it’s “racism” on trial.
[...] Jena Six Updates, Action and Coverage, at The AfroSpear [...]
[...] of African Descent has compiled a vast collection of facts and resources. They also provide an update and more documents here. These families need our help. Please educate yourself, spread the word, and add your name to the [...]
[...] one person clicked the transcript on Democracy Now! and one clicked the collection of articles on AfroSpear. Several looked at some pictures. That was it. Not one single comment was left here and my email [...]
Thank you for this. I’m trying to spread the word.
where dey daddies at?
i saw a picture of a mother of one of the boys at the bbc link, but no daddy.
did these boys have cell phones, did they take still or video pictures of the nooses hanging from the tree? via the internet, the pictures and or videos of the nooses hanging in the tree could have been sent around the world and posted around the world.
where dey daddies at?
daily, the black community could have walked their dogs to the tree and let the animals relieve themselves there. that would have taken care of anyone regularly sitting under tree.
where dey daddies at?
the tree could have been ringed, that is, removing the bark from around the trunk of the tree. that would have killed the tree, which is unfair to the tree.
where dey daddies at?
the boys should have reported the white boy with the rifle to the police, it was not their place to disarm him; too much like robbery.
where dey daddies at?
too hades with that tree, negroes get your educations and get out of there.
where dey daddies at?
was the chemistry class whites only?
where dey daddies at?
are the ap math classes whites only?
where dey daddies at?
are the physics classes whites only?
where dey daddies at?
are the ap english classes whites only?
where dey daddies at?
surely, there is more adult negroe male representation in jena than a minister.
where dey daddies at?
again, where dey daddies at?
and finally, where dey daddies at?
A new radio show covering this from 7/25/07 very good http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/assignment.shtml
older:
democracy now radio: (Listen to Segment ||)
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/10/1413220
petitions to sign and pass to friends:
http://www.petitiononline.com/aZ51CqmR/petition.html
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/index.html
thanks for everything the that you do…
An Open Letter To The Jena Six
By Joseph Young
Dear Mychal,
I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous.
It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union.
Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America.
Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization.
Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred.
Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny.
It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children.
Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain:
“You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.”
Godspeed Mychal,
Your brother in the struggle, Joseph
I just wanted to say that I first learned about this situation from a BBC television documentary on the station’s international news program (I live in Spain). That documentary is about 30-40 minutes long and I considered it very professional and unbiased, very well presented. From that and what I’ve since read, this whole case sounds like something out of the Middle Ages (or, maybe even worse, the 1800s!). I am contributing with what I have, which is words and what money I can, and I encourage others to do the same. As always, “the whole world’s watching” and this time the whole world is already in a bad enough state without a major territory in the United States, supposedly a bearer of the torch of Liberty, falling out and going back to dis-civilization. Here’s hoping for a return to bona fide justice and freedom for those who are unjustly accused and/or jailed.
Jena Six,
Right Is Right and Wrong Is Wrong? Because we are black we feel we have to defend ourselves because who would believe us most of the time anyways. People always feel that we are looking for a way out and we are. A way out of racism, injustice, split families, being poor, and a lot of other things. I have to say you were wrong for beating up the “white victim” because one thing I know every black mothers (like myself) always say is words can’t ever hurt. Words do affect us emotionally and we do as you have and defend ourselves in the physical which all teens have. Believe that God knows what’s best and when this is all over take what you need and get out of Jena. I live in Louisiana but I moved from my small town in Many (full of undercover racist, just like Jena) and moved where blacks are treated better. The bigger the city the better your chances are of getting equal and fair treatment in life. Use this incident as your movtivation to get out. To the parents, we can’t watch our children every step they take but we can always show them that we are there for them and I think you guys are doing a great job. Don’t get emotional because the boys are the ones who are going through this. Be their strength and support and not another worry. To the world, no one knows what really went on except those there and if you think Justin Barker is going to stand in front of the camera and say he was the instigator of this incident you are sadly mistaken. He is going to do like every other “white victim” and play the role of being overpowered by racism. I just hate that there are crimes like this all over the world black and white that many of us will never hear about because small towns like Jena try to keep them out of the media. These organizations should really take greater measures in finding other cases that fall into the category of racial injustices. To the people of Jena, things are only going to get worse because there are other people who know what really went on and incidents are going to keep happening. My only other concern in Jena is that the school system overlooked Mychael Bell’s criminal activities when they needed him for football but when he has a “schoolyard fight” and that is what it was, they decided he should be held accountable. Someone really needs to look into this community, I bet if we try hard enough we can get some new leadership into this isolated little town. Just as we don’t want the Jena Six to think they can get away with fighting, we don’t want white kids to think it’s okay to hang nooses, we don’t want leaders to think it is okay to dish out punishment as they see fit. I have a lot to say about this case but I am ending my comment now to get to Jena by noon.