jena 6

Its a lot more complicated. There have been previous threads.

Its been awhile so some of my details may be off but IIRC, the actions of the black students took place in an environment of extreme hostility. There had been nooses put up which the school called a 'joke' (not a subject to be joked about) and there was a similar, but slightly different incident where white students beat someone up and got off with negligible punishment.

I don’t think anybody argues that what the black students did was ideal behavior, but I think the civil rights people would argue that it was a reaction to a situation of extreme overt racial hostility, and that the application of punishment has been much more harshly pursued because the students were black.

 

It's not that simple. Read up on it.

 

Still, "Free" Jena 6 is just bad marketing. Those kids still need to be punished.

 

Yes. They don't need to go to jail for 10-20 years but they definately should not go free. Those white kids should be charged with something too.

 

Are they even guilty though? That's the first thing. The trial has spurious details and it certainly should go to appeals. They may go free, but if they do, it's because of a poorly conducted trial, perhaps the defense has a big role to play in that though.

Certainly if the evidence is truly beyond a resonable doubt then they should get jail time, but 10-20 years? I don't know about that. I tend to think that the civil rights folks go overboard on a lot of stuff, but this is a place where they definitely are doing the right thing.

 

If they are guilty they should be punished. But the problems here are very deep routed.

The fact that someone who is a minority felt the need to go and ask the principal if they could sit under the tree, shows their is ingrained racism there. The culture is ripe with it.

Then when the nooses appeared and there was no real punishment dealt out to those that committed that hate crime, the level of frustration certainly would be high.

There was a culture of racism, and tolerance of the culture by the power structure.

That being said, nobody should be allowed to get away scott-free after violently attacking someone.

 

I highly doubt the Jena six are sweet little angels.

 

Didn't they beat the living hell out of a kid? 10-20 years for assault doesn't sound wrong.

 

Other details as I remember. . The white student was not hurt that bad. He appeared at a school function that night. So the black students were vastly overcharged by the DA. An all white jury. They turned a bad school fight into big time felonies. Did not do it to the white guys for similar levels of assault during the continuing strife. . The whole tree thing and the noose thing happened months before and there had been continuing incidents.

The vast majority of the short news stories make you wonder why are people marching when 6 black guys nearly killed a white guy.

 

Jason Whitlock on the Jena 6

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/columnists/jason_whitlock/story/284511.html

Lessons from Jena, La.
By JASON WHITLOCK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where were the promises and supervision before any of this?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

I don't mind people wanting justice against the Jenna 6 if they are guilty.

What I don't understand is why there isn't more of an outcry against the prevalent racism and injustice against minorities in the first place. That is much more of a root problem, and ought to have the highest priority.

 

I agree that there should be outcries against the racism. I have a problem with people who want the Jena 6 to get off because of the racism in the region.

 

I agree, nobody should be allowed to go unpunished for violent assault.

 

the degree of beating is in doubt, as is who was really involved. there are so many issues with the case that need to be addressed before putting anyone in jail.

If they can correct that and they are still found guilty, then they should go to jail.

But you are talking about people's LIVES here. You are talking about ruining 6 young people's lives - and they do deserve justice as much as the guy who got scuffed up.

There's something wrong going on in that region, and the problem I have the way things are being carried out is that it really does appear race has been in an issue in the way justice was administered. And that's a no-no.

Additionally, there needs to be an outrage when someone hangs a noose from a tree. That's a very violent symbol and act. This is akin to having neo-nazis march through a black neighborhood and crossed the lines of free speech since it's meant not as a form of self-expression, but designed to intimidate and instill fear - it's actually a form of terrorism.

 

How would loving Mychal Bell end the racism that people are marching about in Jena? Maybe he should have written the other article. Love and educate your kids before they grow up to think it's okay to use the levers of power to hurt people because they're the wrong color or the wrong religion.

 

Just another typical selfish attention grab by the people whose entire existence is predicated on white guilt and media attention. Remove either of the two and Sharpton/Jackson go away.

It's really a vicious cycle. Al Charlatan and Jester Jackson get their fan bases all riled up. They then go march and in the process pi$$ off every non-black in the vicinity. The non-blacks end up discriminating in the future towards the people who pi$$ed them off. This discrimination leads to Sharpton and Jackson coming to town. Repeat cycle.

 

Considering that there have been some nooses dangled around the area since this happened, one might assume there is more going on here than a kid getting beat up by some other kids, and then felonies being tossed around by the local law enforcement apparatus.




D&D. Impeach Mr. Bankrupting America.

 

The most absurdly comical miscarriage of justice in the litany of miscarriages of justice during the whole Jenna saga for me has to be the episode at the quickie mart. This is where there was a potential racial fight brewing at some 7-11 or something and a white kid pulled out a gun and pointed it at the black kids. Fearing for their lives, the black kids wrestled the gun away from the white kid and called the police.

The outcome? The white kid was not charged with anything, and the black kids were charged with theft, for taking the gun away from the guy who was pointing it at them and threatening them.

If that absurdity doesn't put the whole racial bias behind the conflict in perspective, I don't know what does.

 

You are ignoring the fact that there was a racist power structure in place long before Jackson or Sharpton showed up.

The fact that a minority felt the need in the first place to ask if he could sit under a particular tree shows the problem is ingrained in the culture and system there.

Add to that the fact that the whites committed a hate crime with the nooses and weren't punished. Add to that the fact that minorities were defending themselves against gun-wielding whites in a convenient store as Ottomaton pointed out, and the minorities were arrested, add to that the initial charge against the suspect was attempted murder, and it is clear that racism is part of the power structure there, and not caused by Jackson or Sharpton.