Nice posting. Email me re worldwide peace movement.

Liberals on this site had better read the latest issue of The Christian Science Monitor and journalist Craig Franklin’s words of caution ("Editor Believes Media Created Myths About Jena 6"), before ranting about social justice.

Seems that Mychal Bell was a four-time loser with a criminal record long before the Jena “incident,” and it’s likely the man’s criminality won’t end anytime soon.  Read Craig Franklin’s piece, and be prepared to weep, liberals.  Once more, the Big Lie hasn’t worked for you.  It’s high time to come to terms with truth and reality, lest you continue to wallow in fabrication and ill-begotten hated.

Fox News creates fear, someone said?

Actually--real, palpable fear is when you’re knocked to the ground by six unruly thugs, and then repeatedly kicked in the head.

Mychal Bell, a proven habitual criminal, is still behind bars--precisely where he needs to be.  Let justice be done!  God bless Reed Walters!

Mychal Bell already boasts an uncomfortably lengthy criminal past, or so his record indicates.  Justice be done:  Let the kid do his jail time.  You go, prosecutor Reed Walters!

Ignorance is a Virtue. Portrayed by any man, creed, color, or nationality.

Where injustice happen over any cause and

But the true statement is this no this caucasion guy was not deliberatly beaten to a pulp.  And it is stupid to believe that in your world you beat someone near death you go to prison.

Because the male student by choice went to a party the same night he was released from the hospital.  Which intentionally shows any sinceable person right away that he was not so called beat.

Any ways in california people got stomped i didn’t see my friends sent to jail with attempted murder with a shoe and worst when i moved to texas.

So this is true fact of racism

in my world you beat someone to near death you go to prison .....

So this crusade is on behalf of 6 young punks that ganged up on a single boy and beat him nearly to death.
This is not civil rights but civil wrongs.
Would Ms. Goodman be so charitable if that was her son that was beaten by six punks?
Liberalism is sinking into an abyss.
Jeese Jackass and Al Sharkton are evil race hustlers.
Wake up people!!!

Just keep in mind folks, Reed Walters, the DA in this case, is a Democrat.  The senator Robert Byrd is a former member of the KKK, also a democrat.

Plain and simple, the democrats are NOT your friends until election time.  Love him or hate, Bush promoted not one, but two African Americans to Secretary of State.  Are you going to listen to the facts or Kayne West?

My name is Keith Richard Radford Jr.
I attended Mt. Vernon Jr High School in the late ‘60s in Los Angeles, California.
I was one of the three to five white kids filling bus attendence requirements at that time at that school.
My mother married a black man in ‘64 who was my stepfather at that time, when the busing of students began in the Los Angeles County Schools.
I was beaten up so many times on that campus, but one instance comes to mind first--when I was beaten unconcious in one area of the school before the morning bell on the teacher-monitored playground.
This fight occurred after the call for king of the school was made--in other words, it was a situation wherein school dominance was being challenged.
In this scenario, all the white kids by gender were beaten up as a signal that the challenge was made and the challenger was on his way.
Needless to say, as a white kid, you got tired of this and stayed home, started fighting back, or got out of their school which was the political objective.
Getting out of the school would be giving in to segregation, and this was my fifth placement since this little busing thing had started.
The bussing was beginning to affect my grade level.
My stepdad Mack, a well-respected Baptist Minister, would come home, get naked and beat me, and that was a really big problem.
I think Mack’s issues stemmed back to the fact that his best friend was dragged through the streets of his town in Mississippi, all night long by someone when he was a kid, and it was like burying hamburger in the morning, and none of the morning papers he wrapped him in had his friend’s name on it and that was… a really big problem.
Well, I had kind of started to have some respect for the last guy who beat me up so I took a stand.
Also, I was going to high school soon, and I needed to so at the top of the cement stairs at the end of main hall I did for few minutes.

At the bottom of the stairs picking myself up I walked home blurry and blooded.
The call came again all to soon. This time on the monitored playground mentioned above, I was being hit from all sides by a crowd goading the fight, when the lights went out, and I woke up about one hundred yards from the location of the fight after lunch, realizing nobody cared through recess either because I was covered with wrappers from both dragging myself from under the bleachers, badly in need of a change of clothes.
In the Principal’s office the next day, knowing what I knew about the monitor having a family and the now reigning king going to prison if I snitched, I was being told I could help him by destroying the their lives being offered an empty promise of money from a suit, or I would be suspended, for political reasons.

Knowing this was not about me but polittical reason I declinded feeling people are more important than politacal reasons.
Difficulties in life started with the church inside our government, breaking up my family for political reasons.
Mack robbed and kidnapped to try to keep up with a lifestyle when the chips were stacked against him by prejudice, for political reasons.

Being a boy who watched men with guns on rooftops in Watts during the L.A. riots, championing the beginning of the end of these civil and human rights abuses, I realized then that we were all in a battle created by the same prejudice, giving rise to the movement to end a really big problem.
As long as we fight among ourselves for whatever reason, continuing to support archaic ideas like the judge in the Jena case holding a child responsible for for the error of society which allow prejudice, our nation will continue damaging its own people for political reasons.
Due to the situation and circumstances we find ourselves in we need to look into how much damage we cause each other for politcal reasons.
Prejudice has no place in our world; we all need to work together to handle issues in a manner that does not damage and destroy individuals in the process for political reasons.
Peace.

This is flat out ridiculous...I can not believ that after all the struggles black people have went to and all the respect we deserved but have to earn still we get this, I am so serious right now this is craz. How can we live in a country that says JUSTICE FOR ALL what justice and for who? Not if your African American noooo because you not fully an American. i’m only in Highschool so I didn’t o through the hardships my ancestors went through but I know that we do not deserve this we need to keep fighting for our equality. We need to bring back the traditional ways to fight rascism. If not for us then for the future my futurre and all the rest of the generations this can not keep happening to us!
In the words of James Brown and Huey P. Newton and Bobbye Seale “ say it loud I’m BLACK AND I’M PROUD”

To me this has nothing to do with skin tone it’s more about lack of any thing ever close to equal,or fair. No matter what side of the fence you happen too find yourself,there seems to be short sided “JUSTICE” for all.I’m a 36 year old white male. because of that I can’t get a job on the Shreveport fire dept.Thanks to “affirmative action” that job HAS to be given to a black. what if I pass the test with a higher score than the black? No matter, his passing grade is much lower than the grade a white has to make to pass the same test.In our schools we lower the testing standard because the blacks couldn’t pass at the required level. all we are doing is dumbing down our kids to give the appearance of not leaving anyone behind. hell, we’re leaving them all behind instead of working to bring those who need a little extra help up to the standard.If we all would take a little pride in ourself as AMERIACANS and not ancestors of… whatever,whoever. It has not One thing to do with you or me going through our lives making choices to do right or wrong by others and ourselves. To some I seem mad,to me,I can’t belive your not enraged that we,us as a country,once a free nation,have allowed our elected government to get away with not holding up a higher standard for all of us to adhear to and that includes socially and morally all of us should stop and look at whats going on in this country not Jena.  To hell with “the Jena 6” This Government is out of control and trampling on what little freedom we THINK we have while everyone is distracted with a couple hood rats and a few good kids.(I don’t know which is kid is which of course because its not up to me to judge them in their lives.  WAKE UP stop following politicians like Jessy and Al they are not doing anything that isn’t going to benefit thim and their pocket books.

Chris,
Don’t feel ganged up on but you were obviously askin for a reply when you wrote your comment. First of all what has your culture gone through that is so brutal that you had to make all of these organizations become an sucess. Also do you think it’s our choice to live in the ghetto? NO! And when it comes to education black people are not thought of excelling, i mean that is why we have certain organizations to help us do better to make something of ourselves. Another piont i would ike to make is did white mothers get their babies taken away from them when just being born? NO! Were white people beaten sometimes just because of the color of their skin?NO! Yes i know im going back to salvary time but thats where it started. Yes maybe it’s gotten a little bit better because Kennedy(white man) thought it was just so important that we got treated equally for 25 years!! Now im not saying white people didn’t help, the north obviously thought that this situation that we are having that has been going on for more than 365 years was ridiculous.... and it is...and you missed the whole point of why we have all of these organizations to help us out. One we have colleges to help us be somebody and to help us make this world a better place to live in and so they can help out these ghettos we live in. Two we have Martin Luther King Jr. Day because he was assassined because he stood up for something he believed in and and it wasn’t for just black people it was for all nations white, black, hispanic, asian,ect. He wanted all of us to be equal meaning ONE. Now if Situations like jena-6 keep on happening then you can’t expect to walk down the street like everything is all good. And if you don’t expect that then you need to stop dreaming and wake up and face reality!!So please don’t even start to complain and compare about the two cultures unless you have been through it or experienced what we have been through i a speaking because i have been through it and so have my ancestors!!!

Dominick,

I don’t see that Chris is angry. What I got from what Chris said is two things. First is that he’s proud because of his lack of skin pigment, and the second is that he believes the same standards should be applied to everyone in regard to what constitutes racism. Chris, please correct me if I’m wrong.

While I can certainly agree with his second point, that ‘yes’ there are, in fact, selectively applied standards, I can’t see why anyone would be proud of their epidermal melanin content or ancestry. Skin color does not guarantee that a person inherits virtue, true morality or just judgment… these are attributes that must be cultivated regardless of who your grand-daddy was.

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture, the more important point of what all of this “Jena Six” publicity is being USED for. There are elements in our society who’s goal is to agitate and inflame relations between the so-called “races” to distract our attention away from the fact that we’re ALL being set-up for a tyrannical police state. While this and O.J., Madeleine McCann, Princess Di, Paris Hilton, JonBenet, and Janet Jackson’s boob are all being selectively shoved in our faces by the obedient media, the presstitutes, bills are being signed and Executive Orders are being written that effect ALL of US, red-brown-black-white+yellow, proud or not. And “No”, voting for the right candidate isn’t going to fix it. This world is run by a criminal organization that institutionalizes evil and there is no way to “fix” it… it cannot be repaired. It’s too late for that. Why? Because individuals, the “little-guys”, YOU, have cooperated with these criminal elements and have cultivated into your own character the very same attributes of tyranny and oppression and it’s too late for you to change your ways. You patriotically go to Walmart and buy your plastic trinkets made by Communist Chinese slave-labor, and then, on the 4th of July or New years you celebrate “YOUR” freedom by lighting fireworks made by these same Communist Chinese slaves. Yes, the amoral end up digging the hole into which they themselves will certainly fall. Or, put another way, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man (or nation, world) sows, THAT shall he also reap.”

This whole thing reminds me of two prisoners on the way to the gallows arguing who gets to ride in the front of the cart, or in this case, who gets to meet under the shade tree. Unless you have an intimate relationship with your Maker, you’re simply going to end up food for worms, and likely sooner than you had anticipated.

John, I appreciate your comment that violence is not the way… very true. The Booker T. Washington quote posted in an earlier comment below revealed the way that any minority would have found success in being valued and respected in the community in which they live.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070717_two_races _two_systems_of_justice_in_louisiana/#96705

This is the shizzle!!!! You MFs are really turning this into the country we have hoped for. I have a dream, that I can leagaly shoot any racist whitey for looking at me cross-eyed.
We shouldn’t kill them though, we need them to keep working and paying the taxes that provide food stamps and welfare checks. Speaking of which, I have lots of time on my hands and am able so let me know if I can help too.

Sweeeeet Jesus, I love America. Let it be!!!!

we need more black people to vote, getting involved with their communities (church is a good start, but more), better educated african americans as a whole, more moral police, leaders and officials to change this “old south” mantality…

Responding in violence is just making the black community look violent…

There’s certainly still a black struggle and a thousand other situations just like this one...lets stand up with our minds, not our fists.

Chris,
what are you so angry about?  You’re not being hung because you’re white or imprisioned because you’re white or put into slavery because you’re white!  You didn’t have to fight to get your independence or civil rights you got it because you are white.  Of course you don’t want to live in the gehetto and neither do those living there.  As a white person you don’t have the KKK hunting you down or Skin Heads, or Nazis, or any other racist group.  So please tell me what are you so angry about?  When was the last time you saw a white Christian Church bombed or buned down here in the states?  Again, why are YOU so dam angry?

I ‘m Proud To Be White
How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, etc.
And then there are just Americans.
You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.
You Call me “White boy,” “Cracker,” “Honkey,”
“Whitey,” “Caveman” .. And that’s OK. But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger,
Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ... You call me a racist.
You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you,
So why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?
You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King
Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You
Have Yom Hashoah You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi You have the NAACP.
You have BET. If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) .. We’d be racists. If we had a White Pride Day .. You would call us racists. If we had White History Month We’d be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to “advance” OUR lives ..
We’d be racists. We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of
Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce.
Wonder who pays for that?
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships
... You know we’d be racists. There are over 60 openly proclaimed
Black Colleges in the US , yet if there were “White colleges” ...
THAT would be a racist college. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching
For your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights,
You would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re
Not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride ..
You call us racists.
I am proud. But, you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists?

FROM ROOTS TO NOW RACISM IS WRONG! IN DAYTONA BEACH FLORIDA IN 1980’S AT SEABREEZE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL MY BROTHER WAS ARRESTED AND WAS LOCKED UP FOR ONE YEAR CHARGED WITH STRONG ARMED ROBBERY. MY BROTHER WAS IN SCHOOL, IN GYM CLASS, HE AND A WHITE BOY HAD A SITUATION, THE SCHOOL OFFICALS CHARGED HIM WITH STRONG ARMED ROBBERY OF FIFTY CENT.AND NOW TWENTY YEARS LATER WE ARE STILL GOING THROUGH THE SAME STRUGGLE CONTINUES. GOD IS NOT PLEASED. TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART AND LEAN NOT TO YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING AND IN ALL YOUR WAYS ACKNOWLEDGE HIM AND HE WILL DIRECT YOUR PATH. THERE IS ONE JUSTICE SYSTEM, IT’S GOD.

Princess, Kathleen Blanco, as a Governor, is a sham and wasted piece of humanity!  She refuses to lift a finger to help these kids.  More people should, hell Need to, write to her and let her know how our country is viewing her.
Dominick

The Jena six students strike a chord when Malcolm X quoted in his autobiography that his beliefs of freedom, independence and self-respect could never be achieved by the Negro in America, and that Negro should leave America to the white man and return to his African land of origin.  For this reason he has seen four of his six brother’s die by violence, three of them killed by white man and including one by lynching.  In society today this case demonstrated that racism is still thriving within our country.  I’m hoping that Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco can intervene and give these young men the fair justice that they deserve.

Come on Kathleen Blanco; you really blew it when Katrina blew in. Now is the time to change a little bit of your pathetic legacy- step up to the plate for a change.

Point blank… there are MANY problems with-in our society but instead of doing something about it, we simply talk about the problems. I’m a half Irish, half Italian lower-class white man. I’ve been in jail, seen the 35 year old black man who’s in on his 5th, 6th, 10th probation violation… stemming from a child support case… I’ve seen the 23 year old latino who was working under the table to send money back home to his family who’s been waiting for over a year to get deported… I’ve seen the way that minorities are treated, but don’t we all out number the racist and classist bigots who consistently slam the door in our faces?

WHEN ARE WE AS CITIZENS GOING TO STAND UP AND TAKE THIS COUNTRY.  we can’t take it BACK… we never really had it, but it’s been afforded to us by those who have tried before us… MLK was too peaceful… you can’t ALWAYS be peaceful… We as a nation need to rise up before we look back and wonder why we never acted… I’m sure if we rounded up 10 thousand people to march into Jena… something would get done… and I dare one of those red-neck hill-billy ignorant to attack one person… self defense is a bitch when we have nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine witnesses…

am I just wishfully thinking if we took it upon ourselves we could inflict change??

What people don’t seem to understand is that regardless of where you stay there is going to be racism. Because of the location of the boys and the fact that the boys live in a southern state there will be little or no justice for them. If president Bush didn’t send any or very little aid to help the victims of hurricane Katrina then what makes people think that the justice system is going to be any better in some parts of Louisiana.

One hundred and seven years ago Booker T. Washington clearly & accurately addressed the solution as to how to dispel racial prejudice in any community in his book “Up From Slavery”, found here:

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/pdf/WasSlav.pdf

On pages 141 & 142 he states:

“In this address at Madison I took the ground that the policy to be pursued with reference to the races was, by every honourable means, to bring them together and to encourage the cultivation of friendly relations, instead of doing that which would embitter…

In this address I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through his skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his presence. I said that any individual who learned to do something better than anybody else - learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner - had solved his problem, regardless of the colour of his skin, and that in proportion as the Negro learned to produce what other people wanted and must have, in the same proportion would he be respected.

I spoke of an instance where one of our graduates had produced two hundred and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground, in a community where the average production had been only forty-nine bushels to the acre. He had been able to do this by reason of his knowledge of the chemistry of the soil and by his knowledge of improved methods of agriculture. The white farmers in the neighbourhood respected him, and came to him for ideas regarding the raising of sweet potatoes. These white farmers honoured and respected him because he, by his skill and knowledge, had added something to the wealth and the comfort of the community in which he lived. I explained that my theory of education for the Negro would not, for example, confine him for all time to farm life - to the production of the best and the most sweet potatoes - but that, if he succeeded in this line of industry, he could lay the foundations upon which his children and grandchildren could grow to higher and more important things in life.

Such, in brief, were some of the views I advocated in this first address dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and since that time I have not found any reason for changing my views on any important point.”

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

Chegu,

i could not agree more about the brutal reality of racism and class oppression as it plays out in the u.s. or South Africa or canada, or any other country where settlers still are in control (politically and/or economically.)

Where are you in South Africa?
i am there, too.
Email: footstepsofjonb at yahoo dot ca

Free the Jena 6!!!

Moira, Thank you----Done!

there was this one too, further down the comments
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/?id=2256-156927
cheers

Moira, my question too.  Thanks for putting it right out there.

found it!
http://www.naacp.org/get-involved/activism/alerts/phon ecall.htm
how to call, email, write…

is there a campaign organising about this? how can we get in touch?
thanks

The title of your story “Two Races, Two Systens of Justice in Lousiana”, yes there are two races but only one justice system, justice for the whites and injustice for the black race.

This reminds me of Tula Texas where the white community used the injustice system to convict more than fourty members of the minority community on bogus drug charges, thank God for Judge Ron, he came in and set things right for the minority community after the damage was done.

The question was asked “where is the NAACP”, I can tell you we are on the case, the President of the Lousiana State Conference of NAACP is present and counted for, and for the person who asked about the NAACP you should be a member and and on the case with us.

I agree with Amy Goodman that Gov. Kathleen Blanco should intervene immediately.  This is the ultimate gross injustice.  It is not surprising that hate crimes continue when the people elected to represent all the people allow this to happen and do nothing to prevent or punish it (usually because of politics).

to 87901:

The prosecution’s message is the same as it has always been in racist jurisdictions, but it’s a forked message, like the tongue on a serpent.  One side says: Zero tolerance, we’re tough on crime.  The other says, with a wink, “we like things done a certain way ‘round these parts.”

I am tired of otherwise rational white people going stoned deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to the racial realities of our country.

I came here looking for solutions and found none. All the comments I have read here, all great supportive comments against a racisist community, I fond nothing or anyone who would stand up and give a solution or a place to go to file a petion on the National level to help these kids and that small % of black people in a dominant “white” racist town.
What is happening on the National Level?  I can’t find anything other than the original mail I recived of the Amy Goodman expose’.
Is there anything from ACLU, Human Rights Commission, any advocacy group fighting for these kids?  Time is running out folks we need to react and stop talking.  Please let me know if I’m wrong and there is someone out there helping to do something!

regarding comment#87815;
Dude. What in the hell are you talking about? What does the word nigger have to do with this? This is simply just another outright case of racial jurisprudent inequality. The word nigger does not define justice. However, misled, uneducated, scapegoating supremist do. And if not for Katrina, the majority of Americans would still deny that racism is still a thriving industry in this country. The hell with you all, I’m moving to Canada.

To Mike I could not agree with you more.In my comment I alluded to the N word more to make a point rather than have people focus on it.I am a Lenny Bruce guy in terms of words have no meaning if you do not want them to.When you start to take ownership of words you give those words more power.Honky and cracker are words used to describe white people but because white people do not use the words themselves they have lost their meaning.Nothing warms a racist heart more than having black people refer to themselves as niggers.The battle is to stop black people from denigrating themselves.Italians do not refer to themselves as ginnies nor do Jews refer to themselves as kikes.Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star has a great take on this.To Al and Jesse the problem on this topic is not some white disc jockey in New York it is in your own community.

I must say that though disgusted, I am not amazed by the manner in which the case was handled. Being South African I have always maintained that racism within the nations from which the neo-colonialist are spawned cannot be non-existent if their treatment of those in a country they continue to colonize through financial means is anything to go by.

British and American corporations have continued to benefit from the blood and sweat of our indigenous brothers whilst maintaining the facade that convinces the ignorant that they have nothing to do with the suffering of the impoverished masses within Africa and elsewhere. Their puppets in government enrich themselves with money paid to show the world that their process of reconciliation has avoided bloodshed. It may have done so initially, but the deaths remain unchecked as the blood of South Africans continues to flow because of conditions created by the “house servant”. Their pompous attitude does nothing but feed the fire beneath the pressure pot that is close to blowing.

Debates about racial intolerance and suffering are dominated by those who have money and power while those that are being killed by white farmers are sent to their graves in silence. It is only now that there is mention of these ongoing atrocities in main stream South African media to be found in small articles somewhere in the middle of the print media. South Africans have adopted an ostrich approach to its troubles.

Therefore stories such as what happened in Jena does not amaze me, as this is just the well-known beast that cannot help exposing his ways.

This story, with deeper analysis, has been covered by Revolution Newspaper for the last 2 weeks. Black oppression is not a result of racist individuals but a system that is rooted in this oppression and exploitation.

Check out these articles:

Nooses and White Supremacy
http://revcom.us/a/095/free-jena-six-en.html
http://www.revcom.us/a/096/jena-six-en.html

A Better World Is Possible!

Does anyone else find it stange that on a site such as this dedicated to uncovering the truth and discussing the issues of the day that everyone pussyfoots around the ( n-word) what word need maybe noncom maybe its nose.  I understand how hurtfull the word is ( I grew up in the country in texas) but it just seem like we are acting like we are talking to children instead of using the word.  If we are to discuss the word niger and use the word that is completly different than using it as an insult.  I am really not trying to offend I would just like to hear other peoples thought on this.  If we cant dicuss this like adults we are completely screwed

Where is the NAAACP where is Al Sharpton where is Jesse Jackson.To busy burying the n word to deal with real problems.If this was about a white DJ and national attention you can bet your ass they would be there.The crime here is that the above bring with them tons of media and that media attention could really help these kids but no too busy burying the n word.These are the modern equilavents of lynchings.

I was a person born in the north and lived in Calif for 20 years and I went to La. to live, and the race issue is not below the surface it is on the surface, and the main reason is poverty, and in New Orleans the poor will not return because this administration has keep funds for the poor at a low level, what I am referring to is HUD money, the money is not there therefore the HUD Housing in N.O. is not there and the housing that can be fixed the money for that will not be available also, when you take lack of housing, lack of schools and lack of jobs that is the reason people will stay away from N.O.

The reason for the flood in N.O. was man made, you had this channel dug during the 50ies or 60 ies and little used, but it was perfect for the water surge and the water was toxic also, but people will say the levees should not be rebuilt, you know if Denmark and the Netherlands can do it why not here?

Again the race issue will be around as long as issues like what happens in La. Tx and Mississippi exist.

If these kids are actually convicted, they should file a lawsuit against NIKE for producing and manufacturing “dangerous weapons.”

In this way, NIKE would intervene to argue that their shoes are not “dangerous weapons” and the “aggravated battery” charges will be forced to even lesser ones.

It then forces the prosecution team to be scrutinized even closer as to what their real motives are.

Racism has become the most easiest thing to recognize and deal with in America. The only defense a racist has against the accusation is: “Nuh-unhhh!”

This is another disturbing story of the no so latent racism that continues to simmer, just under the surface, and then occasionally boil up down in these parts. Just to put things into geographic perspective consider that in June 1998 James Byrd was dragged to death by racist skinhead Neo-Nazi about 3 hrs southwest of Jena in Jasper, Tx (the three suspects were convicted and sentenced to life and/or long prison terms).

In 2003 a group of white kids at a ‘pasture party’ beat Billy Ray Johnson senseless in Linden, TX (home of ragtime composer Scott Joplin, the Eagles’ Don Henley, and birthplace of blues legend T-Bone Walker [They Call It Stormy Monday’]) about 4 hrs drive northwest of Jena. The “kids” received minimal sentences from an all-white jury in their criminal trial - “Just boys being boys” - but the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees recently won a $9 million settlement for Mr. Johnson in Jasper’s civil court . Mr. Johnson is confined to a care facility for the rest of his life as a result of his head injury.

On December 30, 2006 newly elected black mayor Gerald Washington of Westlake, LA - 3 hrs southwest of Jena (right near Lake Charles) was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest in a parking lot. Although much controversy arose over this death and the evidently cavalier investigation by the local sheriff’s dept it now appears that his death was a bona fide suicide brought on by the recognition that his new found notoriety would also make public his massive gambling losses and serial marital infidelities and the case has been closed. The family, it must be said, continues to contest the findings of several supporting investigations and a 3rd autopsy by an independent pathologist hired by the family was inconclusive due to insufficient material evidence - a likely result of the poor crime-scene management.

On the 1st Sunday of the New Year, parties still unknown fired two shotgun blasts through the front windowof the newly elected black mayor of Greenwood, LA - about 3 hrs northwest of Jena, just west of Shreveport - without injury to anyone. Despite an investigation including the FBI no charges have been filed.

On April 23rd, 2006, two Neo-Nazi skinheads in Spring, Texas - about 51/2 hours southwest of Jena - attacked 17 year-old Latino David Ritcheson for allegedly attempting to kiss a white girl.  They beat him senseless, burned him with cigarettes, sodomized him with an outdoor umbrella pole, poured bleach over him, carved a swastika on his chest, and left him for dead.  The assailants were both convicted of aggravated assault and imprisoned for life. After enduring more than 30 reparative surgeries, Ritcheson committed suicide earlier this month (delayed homicide?).

Viewed in this perspective, it’s not at all surprising to see the Jena Six charged, and convicted, from the Jim Crow edition of the U.S. Penal Code.