Comments on: Jena Six Updates, Action, and Coverage http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/ A Blog For People of Color Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:22:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: LikeAChild http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-3060 LikeAChild Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:35:37 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-3060 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. 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.

]]> By: Bill Bain http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-2568 Bill Bain Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:41:46 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-2568 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. 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.

]]> By: joseph young http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1954 joseph young Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:13:52 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1954 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 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

]]> By: mozcram http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1429 mozcram Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:53:07 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1429 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... 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…

]]> By: NSangoma http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1214 NSangoma Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:18:23 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1214 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? 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?

]]> By: rikyrah http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1196 rikyrah Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:37:16 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1196 Thank you for this. I'm trying to spread the word. Thank you for this. I’m trying to spread the word.

]]> By: An Impressive Display of Apathy « BRAIN DRAIN http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1189 An Impressive Display of Apathy « BRAIN DRAIN Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:39:53 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1189 [...] 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 [...] [...] 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 [...]

]]> By: Nooses in the “White Tree” « BRAIN DRAIN http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1164 Nooses in the “White Tree” « BRAIN DRAIN Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:14:14 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1164 [...] 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 [...] [...] 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 [...]

]]> By: Jena Six Photo Story and Call for Donations « Automatic Preference http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1089 Jena Six Photo Story and Call for Donations « Automatic Preference Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:03:04 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1089 [...] Jena Six Updates, Action and Coverage, at The AfroSpear [...] [...] Jena Six Updates, Action and Coverage, at The AfroSpear [...]

]]> By: Derick http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1031 Derick Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:13:20 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-1031 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. 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.

]]> By: The Jena Six go to trial « Vox ex Machina http://afrospear.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-986 The Jena Six go to trial « Vox ex Machina Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:53:01 +0000 http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/jena-six-updates-action-and-coverage/#comment-986 [...] 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 [...] [...] 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 [...]

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