The Jena 6

I think it is important to note that this all happened near the end of LAST year. This whole time my fellow journalists were raking up muck on Brittney and Kevin, Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Lindsay Lohan and missing Madeline, this whole thing got little NATIONAL attention. I heard the first national news cast about it this morning on the Today Show - probably because of the rally/demonstation that is being held there today.



I'll say what I tell the college journalism students I teach: please, please, please question your news sources. Don't rely on one form of media to tell you about everything that is going on in the world...

I don't know enough about the case.  However, I do think these prosecutors jump off the deep end to quickly.  How much better would it have been to educated both groups instead on putting someone in jail.  Those individuals who hung the nooses need to be educated by some black folks about the way they were treated before and during civil rights.

The parents of the "noose hangers" probably have a big influence on their children.  Sad, sad, sad!

And I also think the parents of some of the black students are a cause of some of this.  Bell, who was only 16, already had criminal record.  What does that say about his parents?  This youngster needed help, not jail.

As far as holding him in jail until his appeal, that's just plain absurd!

Shirley,

What I read in the Chicago  Tribune (a special report a couple months ago) and in the New  York Times and heard on NPR, was that the white student who was injured pulled a shotgun on the black students. The student who is in jail was the one who wrestled the gun away and a fight insued.

I am black and grew up in the south and remember all too well the separate facilities. I read somewhere where the nooses were dismissed as a joke. Well, it's no joke. Blacks  have too long a history of being victims of lynching is the south. Would a swastika be considered a joke if the victim were Jewish??

I had hoped that by the 21st century we would be beyond this, but we are not. I wonder how much has really changed for the better. Not a heck of a lot.

Cherryl

What the DA actually said was that he could find no law on the books that was broken as a result of the noose incident. Ironically, two men were arrested the day of the rally for inciting a riot for driving up and down the street near groups of portesters with nooses dangling from their truck. Interesting...



Shirley, you have to understand that this isn't just some incident that happened at the school. Jena is a town that is totally divided along racial lines. The school may have had an unofficial "white's only" section, but I bet it was not the only place in town that did.



Know that the subsequent dismissial of the noose hanger's suspensions that the school principal imposed (the school board voted to give them three days of in-school suspension instead) sparked A LOT of outrage. The school officials and town police didn't do much to qwell those tensions (for example, I've read reports about a meeting held by parents of Black students after the nooses appeared; as a result, they asked the school board to close school for a few days to give the tension some time to dissapate, but they were refused). All the racial incidents that happened after - from the White store owner that pulled a gun on two Black patrons to the Black kid that was beaten up by a White graduate of Jena High School and the beating of Justin Barker - were a direct result of that tension, I think. This was a pot slowly simmering that eventually boiled the heck over. The sad part is that the DA and other officials in the area seem to think that the noose that apparently turned the heat up on that pot was nothing more than a teen prank. Like Cherryl said, that crap isn't even close to funny.

Felicia, I don't think we can emphasize enough the poor quality of the media that most people are exposed to. In my experience of seeing CNN or other usual news sources last year (the TV on in the holding area before a colonoscopy, the waiting area at the auto repair shop....) I just can't believe that anyone can call themselves informed. Even the "non-commercial" sources such as NPR - bah.

At this point the only place I turn to for real news is Amy Goodman. She's dour and got a mutant gene for sense of humor but she covers these issues in more depth than anyone could hope for. As you said, this has actually been in the news for a LONG time. Just not until this week was it in the usual TV news.

www.freepress.net 

jorf 

I've been following the Robin Roberts story, Amy (the one in the "Moving Beyond" section, right? There is another but I can't remember where), but I haven't seen the part about journalists becoming the story yet. Personally, I don't think she really had a choice. As a broadcast news personality that millions wake up with everyday (gheesh that sounds weird), she probably could have taken a leave of absence and done her treatment, but the public would have wanted to know what she was up to and why she was away. In other words, whether she did disclose her dx/treatment journey or she didn't, it would have made news.



I can identify a bit because I struggled with how public I wanted to get about my own BC journey. It took me about two years to write about it, but unlike Robin, I had an option because my face isn't as well known as her's. We all know this road is tough enough without having to do it in the public eye. I really feel for her...

I don't usually post regarding controversial topics here, but I was intrigued by an editorial piece in today's NY Times where the DA actually addresses the very quote cited by Amy. If nothing else, it's interesting:

Justice in Jena

• • By REED WALTERS Published: September 26, 2007

Jena, La.

THE case of the so-called Jena Six has fired the imaginations of thousands, notably young African-Americans who, according to many of their comments, believe they will be in the vanguard of a new civil rights movement. Whether America needs a new civil rights movement I leave to social activists, politicians and the people who must give life to such a cause.

I am a small-town lawyer and prosecutor. For 16 years, it has been my job as the district attorney to review each criminal case brought to me by the police department or the sheriff, match the facts to any applicable laws and seek justice for those who have been harmed. The work is often rewarding, but not always.

I do not question the sincerity or motivation of the 10,000 or more protesters who descended on Jena last week, after riding hundreds of miles on buses. But long before reaching our town of 3,000 people, they had decided that a miscarriage of justice was taking place here. Their anger at me was summed up by a woman who said, "If you can figure out how to make a schoolyard fight into an attempted murder charge, I'm sure you can figure out how to make stringing nooses into a hate crime."

That could be a compelling statement to someone trying to motivate listeners on a radio show, but as I am a lawyer obligated to enforce the laws of my state, it does not work for me.

I cannot overemphasize how abhorrent and stupid I find the placing of the nooses on the schoolyard tree in late August 2006. If those who committed that act considered it a prank, their sense of humor is seriously distorted. It was mean-spirited and deserves the condemnation of all decent people.

But it broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none.

Similarly, the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, who is African-American, found no federal law against what was done.

A district attorney cannot take people to trial for acts not covered in the statutes. Imagine the trampling of individual rights that would occur if prosecutors were allowed to pursue every person whose behavior they disapproved of.

The "hate crime" the protesters wish me to prosecute does not exist as a stand-alone offense in Louisiana law. It's not that our Legislature has turned a blind eye to crimes motivated by race or other personal characteristics, but it has addressed the problem in a way that does not cover what happened in Jena. The hate crime statute is used to enhance the sentences of defendants found guilty of specific crimes, like murder or rape, who chose their victims based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other factors.

Last week, a reporter asked me whether, if I had it to do over, I would do anything differently. I didn't think of it at the time, but the answer is yes. I would have done a better job of explaining that the offenses of Dec. 4, 2006, did not stem from a "schoolyard fight" as it has been commonly described in the news media and by critics.

Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that's not what happened at Jena High School.

The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.

Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?

Only the intervention of an uninvolved student protected Mr. Barker from severe injury or death. There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon - the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell's conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.

I can understand the emotions generated by the juxtaposition of the noose incident with the attack on Mr. Barker and the outcomes for the perpetrators of each. In the final analysis, though, I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone's vision of a perfect world.

That is what I have done. And that is what I must continue to do.

Reed Walters is the district attorney of LaSalle Parish.

I feel so sad that anyone, anyone anywhere can even see any difference in us.  We are all human beings.  With identical wishes, dreams and hopes for ourselves, our families and our country.

Our black sisters and brothers are EQUAL, I don't know how anyone can feel any other way.

I am sorry that this whole thing happened.

I am surprised that any black person would even live in this town.

Hugs, Shirlann 

I watched Dr. Phil today.  Sharpton was on, Justin's family and others. 

I didn't know Bell was released.  Perhaps that was after taping the show. 

From what I understand Dr. Phil is going to send a minister who he admires deeply to see Bell and also talk with all the Jena 6.  I believe their goal is to "reunite" this town instead of dividing.

As I mentioned earlier I think parents have some responsibility in this.  We have to teach our children, no matter what color, to repect on another.  This division stuff ain't gonna do it.

The nooses are not a crime.  However, I think these kids learned this from their parents.  How else would they have known to hang those nooses.  I still say parents, parents, parents.  Where are they?  The white kids should be taught just how hurtful this is to the African Americans and how it certainly can make them angry.

I'm glad Bell was released.

Shirley

Umm, nooses hanging from a tree in the deep south - or anywhere for that matter - tend to do a bit more than make Black folks a little ticked off. Because of the history of lynching in this country, I see a noose as a direct threat - the same way I'm sure a Jewish person views a swastika. And again, the issue wasn't so much that the nooses were a "crime" but that the original punishments imposed by the school principal - a lengthy suspension - were overturned by a "special" school board committee. The three noose hangers got three days of in-school suspension and that's all. Why is it that the kids who hung three nooses from a tree get shrugged off with a "boys will be boys" attitude while the six "involved" (in quotes because none of the witnesses were able to identify the same people) in the fight get slapped with attempted murder charges? See the problem here?



Bell was released yesterday, btw, after serving 10 months in jail. The "minister" Dr. Phil is talking about is actually a Bishop - T.D. Jakes.