More demonstrations

Updated On Saturday, I suggested that the favorable decision regarding Mychal Bell was unlikely to change anyone's intentions about attending today's rally in support of the Jena 6. It appears I was right. Reuters brings the news.

Tens of thousands of black Americans descended on a small town in central Louisiana on Thursday to protest what they say is injustice against six black teen-agers charged over a high school fight.

Protesters arrived in buses and cars from cities as far away and apart as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and New Orleans for a rally in support of the "Jena 6."

AFP adds that

[w]earing black clothing as a sign of mourning, protestors bused in from across the country chanted "No Justice! No Peace!" and swarmed the grounds of the town's high school, many bending to touch the stump of a tree cut down after it sparked months of racial tensions. ...

"The Department of Justice in Washington's gone silent," [Jesse] Jackson told the crowd. "We are intent to have hearings on the matter of criminal justice in Jena because there is a Jena in every town, a Jena in every state."

And AP said that

[a]t times the town resembled a giant festival, with people setting up tables of food and drink and some dancing while a man beat on a drum.

[Rev. Al] Sharpton admonished the crowd to remain peaceful, and there were no reports of trouble. State police could be seen chatting amicably with demonstrators at the courthouse.

AP also reported that state police estimated the crowd at 15,000-20,000 while organizers said it might be as many as 50,000. My own experience has been that in such cases a reasonable estimate can be obtained by averaging the claims and shading it some toward the organizers' figure (i.e., officials tend to undercount somewhat more than organizers tend to overcount). By that method, the crowd numbered in the range of 35,000-38,000. By any count, even the police figure, a whole lotta people that at least met the organizers' hopes.

What's more, there were protests elsewhere, in at least New York, Washington, Oklahoma City, and Baltimore, each drawing some hundreds of people.

A fair amount of the coverage compared the march to the civil rights marches of the '50s and while such comparisons are often either flip or a lazy way to have a hook, there were echoes not only in the fact of, and reasons for, the march but also in the reactions of those criticized, up to and including the insistence that there really isn't a problem even as the evidence says otherwise.

For example, both local US Attorney Donald Washington and local DA Reed Walters insist, in Walters' words, the case "is not and never has been about race." Washington even claimed

there was no direct link between the noose incident and the December fight, which he said was motivated by "male bravado" rather than race.

Yep, no "direct link," nothing racial involved at all. Totally separate. And the denial gets even more direct than that. In a pretty good overview in Newsweek about Jena, it says that

[m]any whites in Jena deny that the town has a race problem. Frankie Morris, a barber at Doughty's Westside Barbershop, says: "There's a bunch of country boys around here. They're not prejudiced."

This was said despite the fact that, as the article immediately goes on to say,

Morris's boss, Billy Doughty, has never cut a black man's hair because "the white customers, they might say something about cutting their hair with the same stuff," he says.

That refusal to see, the refusal to face what is and has been going on, becomes clear in the hometown newspaper's timeline of events. The Jena Times claimed in that timeline that the original question about blacks being able to sit under the tree was a "joke" intended to "invoke laughter" and everyone knew it. It insisted that there was "no racial motivation" for the nooses, something I fail to understand how anyone can be expected to believe. It repeatedly blamed "the media" for the problems, saying it was "flam[ing] the racial winds," which is something of a mixed metaphor, and "promoting racial tensions." And it also tossed off the attack on the black student in a single line but went on at length about the attack on the white student. (Note that at the link you have to scroll down to get to the timeline.)

Meanwhile,

[s]ome black community leaders in Jena said the case was an example of wider problems in the town, which they said was effectively segregated and had few opportunities for blacks more than 40 years after laws were passed to end segregation.

"Blacks live on one side of town. Whites live in another side of town. We live in a segregated city. We've done it all our lives. It's not something that we want but it's something we can't do anything about," said B.L. Morgan, pastor of Antioch church in the town and a rally organizer.

But oh no, there is nothing wrong, nothing to see here and

"[o]utsiders need to stay away," says [Billy] Fowler, the white school-board member. "Let local black and white people sit down and solve these problems."

Just like they did when they had a "whites only" tree at their school. Just like they did when nooses were considered a "prank." Just like they did when they decided it was a misdemeanor punished by probation when a black was the victim and attempted murder when a white was the victim. Just like they have done all along. And would continue to do in the absence of the spotlight of publicity and national attention.

Just to repeat what I have said before, the issue to me is not that the Jena 6 are being prosecuted, it is the grossly disparate legal treatment set against a background of segregation and racism. And I celebrate the moves to present Jena (and any- and everyplace else) with the reality of its racism.

Footnote: AFP includes some unsettling facts from the Urban League.

African-American men are three times more likely than white men to face jail once they have been arrested: 24.4 percent of blacks arrested in the United States in 2005 ended up in jail compared with 8.3 percent of white men.

They also receive jail sentences that are on average 15 percent longer than whites convicted of the same crime.

The biggest disparity is among men convicted of aggravated assault: black men were sentenced to an average of 48 months in jail, which is 33 percent longer than the average sentence of 36 months received by white men, according to the League's annual State of Black America report.

Jena is not alone. It is merely the current example.

Updated to include the reference to the Baltimore demo and the paragraph about the Jena Times' timeline.

Quick recap

This is from a couple of weeks ago and I know you know about it; I mention it only to provide a coda for previous posts.

The Jena 6 case is for all intents and purposes over.

Five members of the Jena Six pleaded no contest Friday[, June 26,] to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration.

The five, standing quietly surrounded by their lawyers, were sentenced to seven days unsupervised probation and fined $500. It was a far less severe end to their cases than seemed possible when the six students were initially charged with attempted murder in the 2006 attack on Justin Barker, a white classmate.

Two quick things: The "no jail time" is, well let's call it misleading. One of the five, Theo Shaw, spent seven months in jail because he couldn't make bail. And the article refers to growing racial tensions in the months preceding the incident.

Residents said there were fights, but nothing too serious until December 2006 when Barker was attacked.

A few days before the fight that resulted in the Jena 6 case, one of the defendants had his head cracked open by a white armed with a beer bottle. Apparently, that was not "serious."

Footnote: For some reason, the posts that come up from the "Jena 6" link do not come up in chronological order. I've no idea why. So you may have to do some jumping back and forth.

Racing to the bottom

Consider this some updates and footnotes to the continuing story of the Jena 6, specifically aimed at those bozos and bigots who insist it had nothing to do with race and that racism is a dead issue in the country. The items are sort of old - ancient in blogtime, in fact - but they need to be noted and recorded. First up is this:

No sooner did tens of thousands of African-American demonstrators depart the racially tense town of Jena, La., last week after protesting perceived injustices than white supremacists flooded in behind them,

reported the Chicago Tribune on September 24. First a neo-Nazi Web site posted the names, addresses, and phone numbers of some of the Jena 6 and suggested people should "drag them out of the house."

Then Richard Barrett, the leader of the Mississippi-based Nationalist Movement, a white supremacist group, published interviews he conducted with Jena Mayor Murphy McMillin and Justin Barker. Told of Barrett's desire that the town "set aside some place for those opposing the colored folks," McMillin said he wouldn't endorse any demonstrations but "I do appreciate what you are trying to do. Your moral support means a lot." Barker, for his part, said white readers of the interview should "realize what is going on, speak up and speak their mind." Barker's family claims they didn't know the nature of Barrett's group when they agreed to the interview; Barrett disputes that. In either event I don't know why that's supposed to make a difference in the meaning of what Barker said, especially as the family has not challenged the accuracy of the quote.

A couple of days later, Reed Walters, the DA prosecuting the 6, proved his own non-racist bona fides by declaring at a press conference on September 27 that

"I firmly believe that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened....

"The Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly," he continued.

Because, as we all know, a group of black people can't be trusted to be, in fact they can't be, peaceful and dignified except as a result of divine intervention. And it is clearly, unquestionably, not racist to say that. No siree.

There was also nothing racial in the fact that Walters claimed he didn't prosecute the students who hung the nooses in the tree because he couldn't find a law that established "a crime that I could prosecute. There is none." That despite the fact that Louisiana Revised Statute 14:107.2 creates a hate crime for any institutional vandalism or criminal trespass motivated by race. That is, the man who turned a schoolyard assault into attempted murder and sneakers into "deadly weapons" couldn't figure a way to make hanging nooses in a tree on school property a case of vandalism. But there's no racism there. None. Couldn't be: Race was not an issue in the case. Walters and McMillin both said so.

What's more, there also was no racism on display in Palmdale, California, late last month, when a white security guard at the local high school attacked a 16-year old black girl after he claimed she didn't completely pick up a piece of birthday cake she accidentally dropped on the lunchroom floor during a lunch-hour birthday celebration for a friend.

He grabbed her, slammed her head against a table, twisted her arm behind her back so violently that he broke her wrist, handcuffed her, and called her a "nappy-head." When he realized he was being videoed, he tackled the student, a 14-year old black boy, doing it. When the boy's older sister tried to help him, she was also assaulted and handcuffed - and also suffered a broken wrist as a result. When the first girl's mother got to the school and demanded to see her daughter, she was accused of battering the school principal (who is white) and was arrested.

So here's the result: The first student, Pleajhia Mervin, has, again, a broken wrist. She has been expelled from school and will have to go to an expulsion hearing. She was ticketed for littering. She was accused of battering the guard - who, hilariously, claimed he felt "threatened" by her.

The boy, Joshua Lockett, was on probation for robbery and was held on suspicion of violating his probation, which, I take it, must have included requirements that he not document a case of brutality or get tackled by an out-of-control security guard.

Lockett's sister Kenngela, also with a broken wrist, was also arrested.

Mervin's mother, Latrisha Majors, spent the night in jail. She was suspended without pay from her job as a special-education instructional assistant pending the outcome of her criminal case.

Oh, and the guard? He has been placed on leave - not suspended, placed on leave - with pay pending an investigation by the school district. His name, unlike the others, was not publicly released.

There is, needless to say, no racial component to any of this.

I'm so glad racism is not a problem any more in the US. Just imagine what could happen if it was.

Before this slips too far away

Those who want to insist - and, depressingly but not surprisingly, they do exist - that there was nothing racial involved in the case of the Jena 6 have something else to dismiss now, as reported by CNN on Friday:

Authorities in Alexandria, less than 40 miles southwest of Jena, arrested two people who were driving a red pickup Thursday night with two nooses hanging off the back, repeatedly passing groups of demonstrators who were waiting for buses back to their home states. ...

The truck was circling around town, repeatedly driving past groups of demonstrators, the [police] report said. The officers pulled the pickup over and arrested two after searching the vehicle. ...

An entry in the report lists "Bias Motive: Racial Anti-Black."

The driver was 18, his passenger 16. The driver was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, DUI, and inciting to riot.

The passenger told police he and his family are in the Ku Klux Klan and that he had KKK tattooed on his chest, the police report said. He also said that he tied the nooses and that the brass knuckles [found in a cupholder on the dashboard] belonged to him, the report said.

Whether that's true or if he's saying that to shield the older boy (since he, at 16, is a juvenile) doesn't really matter to me. I also don't care if they were trying to make a serious threat of a lynching or if they just decided it's be real good fun to go scare themselves some darkies and for the moment I'm not concerned with what would be proper legal penalties. I'm concerned with the fact that it is vile.

To his credit, Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy came out to apologize to the crowd and later said he is looking into whether the incident was a hate crime.

Which brings up something else that should be noted: Perhaps some are, but I am not, saying that every white in the area, or every white in Jena, is a racist. However, I am saying that there is racism there, racism is involved in these events, and those people who close their eyes to it, who refuse to confront it, while they perhaps are not as guilty as the actual racists, neither are they excused.

Then again, some people are just outright guilty. The Washington Post said on Saturday that

FBI agents are looking into a neo-Nazi Web site, which has listed the home addresses and phone numbers of the six black teenagers charged in the beating of a white schoolmate in Jena, La., a bureau spokeswoman said last night.

The Thursday posting on the site that lists the information also encourages readers to "get in touch, and let them know justice is coming."

The FBI is investigating to see whether the posting violates federal laws, special agent Sheila Thorne said from New Orleans.

The website is the work of a peace of shit named William White who heads a white-supremicist group based in Roakoke, VA. He's apparently well-known in the area, as indicated by this from the Roanoke Times:

White has a penchant for inserting inflammatory rhetoric into racially charged incidents that attract national attention, as the Jena Six case has done this week.

"He has done this kind of thing routinely, but probably never in such an outrageous way as this," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

"It's appalling, but it's not surprising."

Appalling, yes, but not as appalling as the fact that according to a report at Bay Area Indymedia, CNN had White on, on Friday, during which time it

allowed him to broadcast a specific threat or call for attack against the Jena 6.

This, I suppose, is what passes for "balance" in the news: Cover a demonstration condemning racism and then interview someone celebrating it. If this report is accurate, that is almost a definition of appalling.

One small victory in the struggle

A bit of good news - just a bit - regarding the "Jena 6," a group of six black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, charged with two felonies in the wake of a school brawl in a time of racial tension in the little town in the central part of the state.

I previously wrote about the case in June; here's a quick backgrounder: A black high school student asked school officials for permission to sit under a tree traditionally reserved for whites. The school replied sure, he could sit anywhere he wanted. But the next morning, three nooses painted in school colors were found hanging from the tree, an action ultimately dismissed by school authorities as an adolescent prank.

That, of course, didn't sit well with blacks in town and it set off months of escalating tensions, with incidents involving both blacks and whites attacking each other. In one case, a white student beat a black student on the head with a flashlight. He was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor. Subsequently, a group of black students went after a white student, knocking him down and kicking him. Even though that student's injuries were minor enough that he attended a school function that same evening, the six black students were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit the same - both felonies. The charges were later reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy, less serious charges but still both felonies.

The first to come to trial was Mychal Bell, who was quickly convicted on both counts by an all-white jury and faced 30 years in prison. So things stood in June.

Now, however, both those convictions have been overturned. On a technicality, but overturned. First, the trial judge vacated the conspiracy charge on the grounds that Bell, who was 16 at the time of the incident, was improperly tired as an adult - but he let the more serious charge of aggravated battery stand on the rather curious grounds that

Bell could be tried in adult court because the charge was among lesser charges included in the original attempted murder charge,

a charge that was not pursued in the court. It was left to the state's Third Circuit Court of Appeal to find that the remaining charge was likewise improper because while

[t]eenagers can be tried as adults in Louisiana for some violent crimes, including attempted murder ... aggravated battery is not one of those crimes, the court said.

So once the attempted murder charge disappeared, the aggravated battery charge had to go with it.

It is a small legal victory but still a victory. The reason it's small is three-fold: One, local District Attorney Reed Walters, who in the course of events told students - quite possibly specifically black students - "I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen" (and who labeled the tennis shows the accused boys were wearing "potentially lethal weapons"), says he intends to appeal the reversal to the state Supreme Court. Two, even if that fails Walters could pursue the case in juvenile court. Most importantly, three, it doesn't affect the other defendants, who were 17 and for these purposes legal adults.

The case has become something of a cause célèbre.

Nearly 200,000 people have signed petitions criticizing the prosecution of the black students and calling on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to intervene in the case. Bus caravans headed toward Jena have been organized at scores of churches across the country and organizers had predicted more than 20,000 protesters might show up in the town of 3,000

for a major civil rights demonstration next Thursday, the day Bell was to have been sentenced. Some have wondered how Bell's changed circumstances will affect the turnout, but precisely because the victory is a small one and the issue is still very much alive, it's unlikely to seriously affect anyone's plans.

Not unexpectedly, there have been some attempts to be artificially even-handed, to go the "nobody's entirely innocent" (And what, therefore nobody's in any way guilty?) route. The New Orleans Times-Picayune takes that tack, calling the story "an evocative tale, trading on every trope of race," which "[i]n the retelling ... has bled from breaking news into bluesy ballad." It even suggests that the town of Jena

finds itself victimized by the same mob emotion, prejudice and rush to judgment of which it stands accused, with perhaps ominous implications for the protest.

Ah yes, the ever-threatening hordes of outsiders.

But let's face some facts here. This is a town with a traditionally whites-only tree at its school. It has school officials who treated nooses as a "prank." It has a local DA who threatened to ruin students' lives (again, quite possibly specifically black students' lives) and who regards a white student beating a black student as a misdemeanor but the reverse as attempted murder.

That's the issue. The issue is not that "no one is completely innocent." The issue is not even per se that the Jena 6 are being prosecuted - in fact, I suspect that had the six been charged with simple battery, as was the white student, this case would never have achieved the notoriety it has. It is, rather, the patent, undeniable, continued existence of racism found in the tree, the official attitudes, and the grossly disparate treatment meted out. And, as always, in the face of such as this, silence is not an option.