It’s true: half a million dollars (that we know of) has been raised for the legal defense of the Jena 6.  Much of that money has already been dispersed, most of it to cover expenses–none of the lawyers are being paid fees out of donated money, and most are working pro bono.  The money in the families’ account will be paid to attorneys over the next few months.

In short, the money is being devoted for its intended purpose.

As Howard Witt’s article suggests, the family fund has been inactive.  Parents of the Jena 6 have been so overwhelmed with interview requests, travel opportunities and threats from white supremacists nut-jobs, that they haven’t had the time to reflect on financial matters.  But as Tina Jones told Mr. Witt, the money will soon be in the hands of a trustee who will ensure that disbursements are handled responsibly and in a transparent manner. 

And then there is Michael Baisden.  How much money has he raised?  No one knows.  All we know is that the legal fight hasn’t received dime one.

Baisden has issued a lame apology for his assault on the integrity of Color of Change.  That’s a good start, but the Bad Boy needs to issue a public apology to James Rucker and he needs to give Mr. Rucker an opportunity to present the facts from his perspective.

As the Chicago Tribune article suggests, Color of Change is the only organization collecting funds for the Jena 6 legal fight who comes off looking good. 

Controversy over the Jena 6 funds

Questions grow over use of donations made to aid teens’ defense

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

7:16 AM CST, November 10, 2007

HOUSTON

Just weeks after some 20,000 demonstrators protested what they decried as unequal justice aimed at six black teenagers in the Louisiana town of Jena, controversy is growing over the accounting and disbursing of at least $500,000 donated to pay for the teenagers’ legal defense.

Parents of the “Jena 6” teens have refused to publicly account for how they are spending a large portion of the cash, estimated at up to $250,000, that resides in a bank account they control.

Michael Baisden, a nationally syndicated black radio host who is leading a major fundraising drive on behalf of the Jena 6, has declined to reveal how much he has collected. Attorneys for the first defendant to go to trial, Mychal Bell, say they have yet to receive any money from him.

Meanwhile, photos and videos are circulating across the Internet that raise questions about how the donated money is being spent. One photo shows Robert Bailey, one of the Jena 6 defendants, smiling and posing with $100 bills stuffed in his mouth. Another shows defendants Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis modeling like rap stars at the Black Entertainment Television Hip-Hop music awards last month in Atlanta.

The teenagers’ parents have strongly denied that they have misused any of the donated money. Bailey’s mother, for example, insisted that the $100 bills shown in the photograph were cash her son had earned as a park maintenance worker.

But civil rights leaders who helped organize support for the youths say they are concerned about the perceptions that are spreading.

“There are definitely questions out there about the money,” said Alan Bean, director of a Texas-based group, Friends of Justice, who was the first civil rights activist to investigate the Jena 6 case. “I hate to even address this issue because it inevitably will raise questions as to all of the money that has been raised, and that is going to hurt the defendants.”

Only one national civil rights group, Color of Change, has fully disclosed how the $212,000 it collected for the Jena 6 via a massive Internet campaign has been distributed. The grass-roots group, which has nearly 400,000 members, has posted images of canceled checks and other signed documents on its Web site showing that all but $1,230 was paid out in October in roughly equal amounts to attorneys for the Jena youths.

Yet that transparency did not halt acrimony over the fundraising from breaking into public view on Baisden’s popular radio show last week, when Baisden invited Bell’s father, Marcus Jones, to accuse Color of Change founder James Rucker of misapplying the funds.

Jones offered no evidence for his assertion. But Baisden told his listeners that Rucker “sounds shady to me,” before promoting his own fundraiser, scheduled for this weekend, which aims to collect at least $1 million for the Jena 6 and other black defendants nationwide.

On the eve of the Sept. 20 civil rights march, Baisden advertised a book-signing and solicited cash donations for the Jena 6 families at an Alexandria, La., rally, but his business manager, Pamela Exum, declined to specify how much was collected or how the money was distributed.

Color of Change officials call Baisden’s broadcast comments slanderous and say they are contemplating legal action.

“We are trying to clear our good name,” said Mervyn Marcano, the group’s spokesman. “It’s distressing that right now the conversation around the Jena 6 is on a ‘Jenagate’ that doesn’t exist, not the actual issues of how justice is administered in that town.”

On Friday, after several prominent African-American bloggers criticized Baisden for his comments, the radio host issued a statement apologizing to Color of Change “for not seeking more reliable sources.”

Civil rights groups report that donations to the Jena 6 defendants had slowed to a trickle in recent weeks as the story fell out of the headlines.

A spokesman for the NAACP, which collected nearly $20,000, including a $10,000 check from rock star David Bowie, said it is winding down its Jena 6 fund and preparing to distribute the remaining cash to the attorneys for the six youths after deducting some of its expenses.

The case, now a national civil rights touchstone, grew out of a September 2006 incident at the high school in Jena when three white students hung nooses from a tree in the school’s courtyard in a warning directed at black students not to try to sit in its shade. School officials dismissed the nooses as a prank, angering black students and their families who regarded the incident as a hate crime.

A series of fights between black and white youths ensued, culminating in a Dec. 4 attack in which the six black students are alleged to have beaten a white student, knocking him briefly unconscious. Although the white student was not hospitalized, the prosecutor initially charged the six teenagers with attempted murder, while declining to charge white youths who had earlier attacked blacks with similarly serious crimes.

The prosecutor, Reed Walters, later reduced the charges against the black teenagers to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. But civil rights groups have denounced the prosecutions as excessive and say they reflect racial injustice in the mostly white town.

Exactly how much money has been collected for the Jena 6 defendants is impossible to know, because many donors did not go through Color of Change, the NAACP or other mainstream groups and instead contributed directly to the defendants’ families. Many Internet operators raised money by selling T-shirts or otherwise invoking the Jena 6 cause, but much of that money disappeared without a trace.

Tensions over the money have begun to surface among the Jena 6 families, most of whom are impoverished. Marcus Jones broke with the other families, for example, in criticizing Color of Change.

The largest remaining Jena 6 account, said by some activists close to the families to contain up to $250,000, is under the control of Tina Jones, mother of defendant Purvis.

Jones said her attorney had advised her not to reveal how much was in the account or how it had been disbursed so far. But she said the families recently agreed to transfer the funds into a trust account under the control of an outside trustee, to ensure the money was tracked and distributed properly.

“I think there are a lot of organizations out there collecting money on behalf of the Jena 6 that we didn’t give authorization for,” Jones said. “So when we’re called and asked, ‘Did you receive this money?’ and we know nothing about it, then it becomes a problem. The finger is being pointed at us. We’re not criticizing anybody. We’re just trying to get a handle on it.”

hwitt@tribune.com

The Jena story has revealed an uncomfortable truth: America remains a highly segregated nation.  The problem is getting worse, not better.  Segregation creates two distinct sets of life experience.  The experience gap produces a perception gap.  So how do we fix the problem?

Marcia Wade and Leslie Royal of Black Enterprise.com put that question to a number of people.  Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center says that American children need to learn about America’s troubled racial history.  I say we need a new conversation among American adults–especially white and black adults.  Unfortunately, most Americans are hoping that if we pretend racism isn’t a problem it won’t be. 

This hope is naive but it is also understandable.  When Americans talk about race, we don’t converse, we don’t listen, we tend to approach the issue not as students hoping to learn someting but as combatants looking to crush and embarrass the opposition. 

Most of us would just as soon avoid the subject altogether.  We retreat into tribal enclaves where everyone sees things the way we do.  Since we say there’s no problem, and everyone around us agrees–there is no problem; unless, that is, we step out of our comfort zone.

Can we talk about race?  Please give this timely article a quick read and give us your reaction.

A Lot of Nooses, Not Enough Talk

Events in Jena, Louisiana, unearth the breakdown of race relations in America

by Marcia A. Wade

November 8, 2007–Despite America’s idyllic stance on racial tolerance, the last several months have seen an uptick in the number of reported noose incidents across the nation, believed to be prompted by events in Jena, Louisiana.In September 2006, several nooses, painted with school colors, were hung from a tree on school grounds at a public high school in Jena, allegedly after a black student asked the principal if black students could sit under that same tree, which reportedly had been reserved for white students. Over the next year, the town saw repeated altercations between black and white students including one incident in which six black teenagers were arrested after attacking a white teenager. It was the reported disparate punishments that sparked a demonstration where some 20,000 people protested the handling of the situation.

As America witnessed increased media coverage of the situation in Jena, there was also an increase in reports of “noose” intimidation across the country. Reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggest that in years past, noose sightings amounted to a half dozen to a dozen per year. That number has increased to 50 incidents in September alone since Jena’s media splash. “Jena did not create the racial hatred behind the hate crimes. It merely brought the bigotry and rage to the surface,” says Alan Bean, executive director for Friends of Justice, a criminal justice reform organization.

For many, such events show that even if the juveniles responsible for hanging the Jena nooses were ignorant to its symbolism, the act isn’t any less incendiary.

“Most white kids…most kids, really, don’t know the history of the Klan or lynching in America,” says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project, the hate crimes division at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “At the end of the day, a noose is a simple message to understand. It means murder by hanging. It is a threat and it is unmistakable, no matter what amount of history you know or don’t know.”

“I think that the noose incidents [across the country] represent a very broad white backlash,” says Potok, who doesn’t think U.S. race relations are going very well. “Literally, tens of thousands of white people view Jena as an example of a complete distortion by the press and as a six on one, black on white hate crime.”

“It is perfectly obvious that as a society we are resegregating, residentially and especially educationally,” offers Potok. “In the last six years the number of hate groups in America by our count has gone up 40%.”

Potok suggests that hate crime offenders are scapegoating minorities for their anger over globalization, the flight of industry overseas, and increased Latino immigration.

“Black and white Americans need to have a good long talk about race,” says Bean. “The initial attempts at communication will likely generate more heat than light. But we’ve got to start somewhere and we need to be intentional.”

Historically, more than 4,700 people were reported murdered by lynch mobs in the U.S. Only in 2005 did Congress apologize to the families of lynching victims for their failure to enact anti-lynching laws.The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, passed in the House and the Senate, may give federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crime investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue. However, President Bush has indicated that he will veto the legislation. According to an FBI spokesperson, it is up to the individual law enforcement agency to determine if a crime is a hate crime. The agency has to determine the motivation behind the incident in order to define it as a hate crime.

According to Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), the district attorney for LaSalle Parrish said “he would not prosecute students who hung a noose in a tree because the state law prohibits only cross-burning.” Landrieu asked the Justice Department to review the Jena 6 cases and commissioned a Congressional Research Services Report on how various states treat the “displays of intimidating symbols,” such as nooses.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee which oversees civil and criminal proceedings, civil liberties, criminal law enforcement, and federal courts, says “The solution lies in ensuring that competent and fair-minded individuals occupy the crucial positions in the justice process throughout America.”

Additional reporting by Leslie E. Royal

Eddie Griffin is just one of the Black bloggers wondering why radio personality Michael Baisden has chosen to attack the integrity of Color of Change when the facts (a) are a matter of public record and (b) clearly contradict Baisden’s claims.

Why would the Bad Boy of Talk Radio place an entire movement in jeopardy for five minutes of cheap sensationalism?

Baisden says he has a letter from the parents of the Jena 6 supporting his allegations.  I just got back from Jena.  I spoke to most of the parents.  They have no idea what Baisden is talking about. 

I talked to attorneys for all six defendants.  They all affirm that, with the full approval of the parents and defendants, they received generous disbursements from Color of Change. 

Color of Change follows transparent accounting principles; Michael Baisden ain’t sayin’ what he is doing with the Jena 6 money he has raised.  Yet Baisden questions the integrity of Color of Change. 

Mr. Baisden, when you say “2 + 2 = 5”, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the world’s sexiest baritone, your audience is going to say, “What?”

Some statements are wrong by definition because they are immediately and obviously falsifiable: “The world is flat; 2 + 2 = 5; the Colts beat the Patriots on Sunday evening . . . Color of Change mishandled donations.”  The last statement is as untenable as the others, and for the same reason.

Cast your eyes over the latest post from Black blogger Eddie Griffin.  Mr. Griffin is just getting started.  Today, he fired off a letter to Al Sharpton, one of the featured speakers at the gala fundraiser Michael Baisden is sponsoring this coming weekend. 

_________________

Thursday, November 08, 2007

 

RE: Cloud over Michael Baisden Foundation Charity Fundraiser

 

Dear Al,

 

It is with utmost regret that I should raise this issue about radio personality Michael Baisden and your invitation to his fundraiser.

 

Mr. Baisden has cast a cloud of suspicion upon the head of a highly respected online activist organization with outrageous allegations which we have investigated and found baseless and slanderous.

 

Mr. Baisden singled out Color of Change for his allegation of Jena 6 funds misappropriation. This organization of 400,000 online activists has a long and credible history in Civil Rights. When called into question, the organization published all its fundraising record for full disclosure.

 

First, the question of authorization to raise funds for the Jena 6 families, here are the authorizations.

 

Second, the question of disbursements, here are the facsimile of cancelled checks.

 

Third, the question of David Bowie’s $10,000 donation to the Jena 6 Defense Fund, here the NAACP acknowledges receipt of funds.

 

We ask of you, seeing that you are Mr. Baisden’s invited guest, to raise this issue of this accusation against Color of Change, and other bloggers. Or, would you be complicit in falsely accusing the innocent?

 

As the conscious of our nation and a voice in the black community, it should be a moral imperative to ask the question. Did the parents make and receive all their financial requests addressed to Color of Change? Can anyone refute the documents above?

 

Sincerely,

Eddie Griffin (BASG)

Vijay Prashad has just published an essay in Counterpunch on the recent election of Bobby Jindal as governor of Louisiana.  The entire article is worthy of your consideration, but I have only pasted the Jena-related portion below.  Prashad, a professor of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, relates Jena to Katrina, and both events to the emerging shape of post civil rights American politics. 

The Rot of Racism.

One reason Jindal did not defeat Blanco in 2003 is that he was unable to draw the full weight of the white vote. Many conservative whites preferred to vote for a white, Cajun (“native” Louisianan) Democrat than an Indian American (albeit one born in Louisiana) conservative Republican. It should be borne in mind that the leader of the virulently racist Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, won 44% of the Republican vote in a 1990 primary election (60% of the white vote); a year later, Duke repeated this feat, and bragged, “I won my constituency. I won 55 percent of the white vote.” Despite having the second largest African American population in the US (after neighboring Mississippi), Louisiana’s politics are structured around the ability of the state-wide candidate to draw in the white vote.

Racist vigilante violence marks the state’s history. After the Civil War ended in 1865, for example, some local legislators considered a change in the state’s constitution that might allow blacks the franchise. Recalcitrant citizens formed the White League, whose violent tactics succeeded in ending any talk of equality. It was in New Orleans that Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was removed from a train in 1892 because he sat in a “whites only” section. The Plessy v. Ferguson case went to the US Supreme Court, which decided that blacks and whites should have separate facilities although these should be equal (the “separate but equal” statute). In New Orleans, as well, a black man, Oliver Bush, began a court case to get his son, Earl, into an all-white school. Eventually, in 1954, the US Supreme Court decided in Brown v. The Board of Education that segregation of this kind (known as Jim Crow) is illegal and should be abolished. Drawing energy from this decision, a young Martin Luther King, Jr., and his fellow liberal clergy formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in New Orleans in 1957. In response, the White Citizens’ Council, an organization of the landed white aristocracy of the region, announced, “Integration is the Southern expression of Communism.” King and others took the fight against racism to the doorstep of the enemy.

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, it revealed the rot of a racist, segregated society. King’s movement ended de jure segregation, but it did little against de facto segregation and inequality. Almost twenty percent of Louisiana’s residents live beneath the US poverty line, and a dramatic number of blacks live not only in poverty but also in jail. The incarceration rate in New Orleans, where most blacks in the state live, is twice that of the US rate: 1,480 prisoners per 100,000 residents of the city. Katrina tore through the city and state, exposing the inequality and shocking the nation. Bobby Jindal, then a Congressman, held his tongue. His main gripe was not against the Bush administration that had sent the bulk of the state’s National Guard to Iraq (and so away from their posts when the disaster struck), nor was it against the long history of inequality revealed by the aftermath. Jindal decided to speak out against the “red-tape” of the government response. Katrina, which had come to mean the racism of the federal and state government, provided the young Congressman with an opportunity to champion less government and more “faith-based” reconstruction solutions. No word about the dispossession of his fellow citizens, and little care that the white elites were now moving to grab the land which once housed a large black population. Scott Crow, who worked in the reconstruction of the city, recalls how white militias roamed the city after Katrina, making sure to run blacks out of town, “These white militias made it their jobs to secure law and order in the absence of the police. Their brand of justice was to intimidate any black person walking on the street alone, or in any number that was smaller than the militia.” Blanco’s inaction compromised her; Jindal’s silence on issues of racism enamored him to a section of the white voters.

As the election campaign heated up, a terrible incident in the town of Jena, Louisiana, brought national attention to the enduring racism in the state. When white students intimidated black students at Jena High School (by hanging nooses on a tree and by pointing shotguns at them), the school authorities blamed the black students for making trouble. The police joined the administration and in the course of an altercation arrested and jailed six black students. The case of the Jena 6 (all teenagers) angered the nation. On September 20, 2007, thousands of people converged on the town to demand the release the Jena 6. Bobby Jindal, in the thick of his election battle, took a strong stand against the demonstrations. “We certainly don’t need any outside agitators coming in here,” he said. The phrase “outside agitator” has a long lineage in the anti-Civil Rights movement and within the White Citizens Councils. Jindal’s heavy-handed code sent a strong message to the racist vote that he could be trusted not to “pander” to the black population. Jena is in LaSalle Parish, whose white voters overwhelmingly voted for David Duke in 1991. This time Jindal carried that vote, winning the parish with a handy 55% (his closest opponent, Walter Boasso won short of 15%). “Don’t let anyone talk bad about Louisiana,” Jindal said as he claimed his victory. In other words, don’t talk about racism. “Those days are officially over.”

The CNN truck was back in front of the LaSalle Parish courthouse yesterday morning; but they didn’t have much to report.  Bryant Purvis has finally been arraigned, a full eleven months after the assault on Justin Barker.  As Sherrel Wheeler-Stewart’s article (below) reports, Bryant is playing basketball for a Dallas High School and trying to stay positive.  When I asked him how his season was going, a big smile spread across his face.  “I’m a beast,” he told me, “nobody can stop me.”  I reached up, way up, and gave Bryant a pat on the back.  At six-foot-six, he reminds me of my son, Adam, who was played high school basketball during a four-year fight for justice.

Anyone who has glanced through the eye witness accounts of the December 4th incident realizes that Bryant Purvis had nothing to do with the assault on Justin Barker.  District Attorney Reed Walters didn’t arraign the gifted young man until yesterday because he hoped Bryant would “flip” on his friends.  But Bryant was 30 feet from the incident and has no idea what happened.  That’s what he told me in January–that’s what he’s saying now. 

My guess is that Reed Walters will wait until all the other cases have been adjudicated before quietly dropping the charges on Mr. Purvis.

How long will this sword of Damocles dangle over the head of Bryant Purvis and his family? 

It’s hard to say.  As I suggest in the story below, many people  have the mistaken belief that “Jena” is over.  How anyone could think that after the recent re-arrest of Mychal Bell I’m not sure.  My fear is that people invested so much emotional capital in the September 20th event that they have nothing left. 

The fight in Jena is a marathon, not a sprint.   A sprint requires ten seconds of intense concentration; a marathon demands patience, endurance and a high pain threshold.  Suck it up, folks, there may be a long road ahead for the Jena 6.

Friends of Justice has been calling for the recusal of DA Reed Walters and Judge J.P.  Mauffray from the beginning.  We have also been calling for a change of venue–preferably to a location where an all-white jury isn’t a foregone conclusion.

The legal teams working for the Jena 6 are have been putting together state-of-the-art recusal and change of venue motions.  If the substance of these motions is ever argued in open court, Reed Walters’ professional reputation will be badly damaged, and the prosecutor knows it.  Hence,  there is a possibility that the fate of the Jena 6 will be settled out of court, but if this hasn’t happened by Christmas it could take years for these cases to be tried.  Each case will probably be adjudicated in a different venue.  The cost, on both sides, will be staggering. 

The legal system is designed to keep the cost of prosecuting indigent defendatns to an absolute minimum.  That is why only 5% of criminal cases (on both the state and federal levels) are tried before a jury.  Defendants who can bankroll investigators and qualified attorneys get Tier 1 justice; those who must make do with a court appointed attorney get Tier 2 justice.  Tier 1 justice is expensive and time consuming.  Tier 2 trials are lightning fast, brutally efficient and almost always end badly for the defendant no matter how shoddy the evidence. 

The Jena 6 would all be serving long prison sentences if they had to rely on Tier 2 justice.    Tier 2 justice usually ends in a first round knock out, with the referee and the state working as tag team partners.  Tier 1 justice is like two well-prepared fighters, circling, feinting, sizing each other up, looking for an opening.  Tier 1 justice is slow justice.

But when the punches begin to fly in a Tier 1 courtroom, it’s total war.  Like most court appointed defense attorneys, Reed Walters has little experience with the slow deliberation of  Tier 1 justice, and he knows it.  The man needs a little time to consider his options.  So let’s just stand back, take a deep breath, and wait for the slow, sure wheels of Tier 1 justice to turn. 

Charges Reduced for Last Jena Six Member

Date: Wednesday, November 07, 2007
By: Sherrel Wheeler-Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Charges were reduced Wednesday for Bryant Purvis, the last of six Jena, La., youths accused of attacking a white schoolmate in December, following several weeks of racial tension in the tiny, rural town. 

Purvis, 18, now faces charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, said his attorney Darrell Hickman. A trial date has been set for March 2008. 

The charges carry a maximum possible sentence of 22 years, Hickman told BlackAmericaweb.com. Earlier charges that had included attempted second-degree murder carried a possible maximum sentence of 75 years imprisonment upon conviction. 

Purvis, who now lives in Dallas where he attends a private school, pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyer said they are preparing for a vigorous defense and will also request a change of venue. 

“The best thing for Bryant has been that he got out of Jena,” Hickman said. “His family saw the need to get him removed from all of this.” 

The reduction in charges was not a surprise, Hickman said. 

“We expected to get a reduction in the charges in light of what had happened with Mychal Bell and the others,” Hickman said. Charges have now been reduced for all of the youths in the case who are accused of beating Justin Barker unconscious at Jena High School. 

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters has said the charges were stiff because the attack was vicious and more than a schoolyard fight. 

Charges were reduced for Mychal Bell first this summer, and he was convicted of battery. Later, a Louisiana appeals court overturned that sentence and said Bell’s case should be handled in juvenile court because of his age at the time of the alleged incident. Bell has since been sent to a juvenile facility because Judge J.P.Mauffrey said by fighting in December he violated the terms of parole from an earlier, unrelated case. 

The case of the six Jena youths prompted U.S. Rep. John Conyers to convene a hearing on the matter before the House Judiciary Committee last month. And in September, it brought together more than 20,000 people from across the country for one of the biggest civil rights protests in recent history. 

Activists say Jena has two separate systems of justice for blacks and whites. Whites who hung nooses at the school in August 2006 were suspended several days. Walters has said there were no hate crime laws in Louisiana that would apply to the hanging of the nooses by the high school students. 

The black students, who also were in high school at the time of the alleged incident, were arrested, jailed and expelled from school. They also had bond amounts set as high as $130,000. Only two of the six youths currently are in school according to family and friends. 

Support for the Jena Six continued on Wednesday, with rallies coordinated by the Answer Coalition in at least 11 cities. 

“We had a good group of people. About 50,” said Chris Gonsalves, a coordinator for the rally in Boston. “It was cold, but people still came out. When we started it was around in the 40s, then it dropped to the high 30s.”

For Gonsalves and the others who came out Jena is real, though it’s more than a thousand miles away, he said. 

When he was told of Wednesday’s court results, Gonsalves said: “That’s another sign of the strength of support for the Jena Six.” 

Tuesday night, some organizers of Jena Six supporters, a majority of the attorneys involved and all of the families got together to discuss the case.

Alan Bean of the Texas-based Friends of Justice said all who participated agreed not to discuss the specifics of that meeting with others. But he described it as “a very positive experience.”

“This was an incredible assemblage of attorneys,” Bean said. “Some of the best lawyers in the country are involved in this case.” 

While he is encouraged by the work of the various legal teams, Bean said he is concerned that some supporters have the perception that the worst is behind the Jena Six. 

“Really, they are just starting,” Bean said, adding that all six have to face trials and lawyers are working to get cases moved from Jena to other areas of the state. Some lawyers also have filed motions seeking to get LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters and Judge J.P. Mauffrey removed from the case. 

“Our position all along has been that we just want these young men to have the justice they deserve,” Bean said.

On November 9th, the stars will be coming out in Atlanta for the Michael Baisden Charity Reception, Concert and Fundraiser.  Some of you will recognize Mr. Baisden as the radio talk show host who took up the cause of the Jena 6 and helped publicize the September 20th event in Jena.   Unfortunately, the Bad Boy of Talk Radio has recently demonstrated that he is no friend of the Jena 6.

 Fearful that some folks may want to donate to the Jena 6 Defense Fund via the Color of Change Website, Mr. Baisden has repeatedly informed his listeners that money donated to this fund isn’t getting to the families.  Technically, this is true: the money is going to the attorneys to reimburse legal expenses such as travel, investigators and the like.

Moreover, Michael Baisden knows where all the money Color of Change has raised is going because James Rucker and his associates have made a complete financial accounting to the radio personality and his team.  They didn’t have to do this; they chose to because that’s the kind of organization Mr. Rucker runs. 

Where are the thousands of dollars Mr. Baisden has collected for his fund?  You will notice that the Bad Boy never claims that the money he is raising money is destined for the legal defense of the Jena 6.  Since two of Mychal Bell’s attorneys are listed among the guest speakers, I am assuming that some of the money (perhaps all of it) is going to fund Mr. Bell’s legal team. 

I have no problem with Mr. Love, Lust and Lies supporting Mychal Bell’s legal team; but let’s get one thing straight–not a dime of this money is going to the attorneys representing the other five defendants.  To date, none of them has seen dollar one.

And let’s get something else straight; while Michael Baisden refuses to reveal how much money he has raised or how the funds are being dispersed, every penny donated through Color of Change is now in the hands of the attorneys representing all six defendants.

The Atlanta gala makes me a little nervous–possibly because everything associated with the Jena 6 reflects on me and every other person connected to this struggle for justice.  Do the sponsoring organizations cooperating with Mr. Baisden know what they are supporting?  Are they asking the right questions?  Will there be a full accounting of all funds donated?

I don’t know.  I don’t need to know.  But if you have donated any money to Mr. Baisden’s war chest, or if you intend to,  you need to know.

Michael Gaynor is worried to death about “the political correctness danger“.  His lengthy rant was inspired by Stuart Taylor’s recent book currently being marketed under the provocative subtitle: “”Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.”

To make his point, Michael Gaynor provides a lengthly series of quotations from a recent PBS interview in which Jeffrey Brown interviewed the author of the Duke Lacrosse book.  According to Brown, the Duke Lacross team was almost railroaded by “Bias in favor of the idea that, well, the privileged white male athletes are accused of abusing the poor black woman, we love that. It’s in synch with all of our preconceptions and our ideology. Let’s pile on and make it a morality play. And an awful lot of people, including the New York Times, for example, were not a bit deterred by contrary evidence from making it a morality play of that kind.”

In the PBS interview, Jeffrey Brown, like any sane observer of the American scene, had no problem believing that the mainstream media was guilty of sensationalism; but he was surprised to hear Stuart Taylor applying an ideological explanation to this phenomenon. 

Michael Gaynor isn’t the least surprised.  “If you think the politically correct media reformed after the [Duke Lacrosse] Hoax was exposed and therefore the situation in Jena, Louisiana was accurately reported generally instead of politically correctly reported, read Craig Franklin’s “Media Myths About The Jena 6” in The Christian Science Monitor”.

Actually, Craig Franklin’s willingness to believe the worst about the Jena 6 (even if that requires a bizarre revision of the historical record) is reminiscent of the national media’s rush to judgment in North Carolina.  In both cases, biased and irresponsible prosecutors were determined to hold student athletes to account. 

That’s where the similarities end. 

One case deals with college athletes; the other is about high school kids. 

One case is exclusively about guilt, innocence and the reliability of a single witness; the other is about a prosecutor who produced and directed the tragic events he is now prosecuting. 

One case was a cause celebre from day one; the other would have passed unnoticed if Friends of Justice hadn’t intervened.

One set of defendants had the resources to hire top flight legal representation; the other set of defendants were initially dependent on court appointed attorneys like the unspeakably inept Blane Williams (the man who “defended” Mychal Bell in late June).

One case was about affluent white lacrosse players; the other was about poor black football players.

One case demonstrates that Americans love to see rich people laid low by the criminal justice system (primarily because it happens so rarely in real life).  If you don’t believe that Americans have it in for rich people, just watch re-runs legal dramas like CSI and Law and Order and see who gets busted 95% of the time–rich white guys with skeletons in the closet.  The Duke lacrosse case fit this pattern perfectly.

American television audiences have little interest in the plight of poor black defendants (primarily because, in real life, young black males are convicted so frequently, so silently, and so anonymously that their plight is just another unremarkable, and unremarked, fact of life).

The New York Times was all over the Duke Lacrosse case because it followed the familiar script of a Law and Order drama.  The Times ignored Jena, possibly because their coverage of the Duke case was almost as appalling as their coverage of the build up to the Iraq war. 

Besides, the Duke lacrosse story featured a crusading white prosecutor standing up for a black victim (another favorite media trope (think, “To Kill a Mockingbird”); Jena featured a white prosecutor nailing poor black guys accused of beating up a poor white guy.  The liberal media likes “sympathetic” black victims, and the Jena 6 didn’t qualify.

And yet “Jena” has become as prominent as the Duke Lacrosse case.  Why?

You can’t blame it on the mainstream media.  Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune gave the story early attention, but his coverage was sober, carefully researched, and straight forward.  Besides, apart from CNN, few media outlets followed Witt’s lead until the story blew up in August.

Jena became a national story because black America made it a national story.  But why? Why would anyone want to stand up for black kids accused of jumping a white kid?

Black America came to the aid of the Jena 6 because the Jena story is a blatant example of America’s two tier system of criminal justice.  The message goes something like this: so long as public officials in Jena refuse to admit that they are every bit as responsible for what happened to Justin Barker as the Jena 6, Jena justice has no credibility in our eyes.

Here are the facts that matter to black America (and to a few white folks who care enough to reflect on the matter): 1. A hate crime was dismissed as a childish prank; 2. students protesting this dismissive remark were threatened with felony prosecution; 3. the same man who issued this threat is prosecuting the Jena 6.

Hence the cry, “Free the Jena 6!” 

It isn’t that people want the defendants freed from taking responsibility for their actions; they simply refuse to let high school kids reap the whirlwind after public officials like DA Reed “Stroke of my pen” Walters and school superintende Roy “Childish Prank” Breithaupt sewed the wind.  Black America has determined that, in this case at least, the sins of the fathers will not be visited upon the children.

“It is necessary that temptations to sin come,” Jesus told his disciples, “but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes!”  By refusing to call a hate crime by its proper name, and by refusing to validate the legitimate protest of black parents and their children, Roy and Reed created an adversarial relationship between the noose hangers and their white friends, on one side, and the black student athletes who reacted to the noose provocation, on the other.  In the process, a spark of crude and clumsy racism that could have been used as a teaching opportunity was transformed into a torch that eventually engulfed an entire community.

Jesus refuses to serve as “a judge and divider” in human affairs.  But Jesus leaves little doubt how he feels about adults who lure children into sin: “It would be be better for him to have a great millstone fastend found his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea!”

This morning, a journalist asked me why these cases have taken so long to go to court.  “We’re dealing with a standoff,” I told her.  “Jena officials can’t admit their personal culpability, and they can’t drop the charges against the Jena 6 without risking a backlash from angry whites.  On the other hand, black America rejects the validity of any verdict handed down by an all-white jury in Jena, Louisiana, and that creates a problem for the system.

So, how do we bring resolution to this mess?

The first step, clearly, is to find a new venue (perhaps Alexandria, La.) in which a multi-racial jury is at least a possibility.  Another all-white jury in these cases is not an option. 

The second step is to demand that the prosecutor and the judge recuse themselves.  

Once we have an objective prosecutor working in front of a multi-racial jury, black America will be able to live with the outcome.  

The cry, “Free the Jena 6” was originally a demand that incarcerated defendants to be released on bond awaiting trial.  But the cry is now best interpreted as a demand that these young men be freed from a complicit prosecutor and Jena juries awash in prejudicial propaganda. 
 

http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/11965/1/397

Author: Tim Wheeler

People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 11/01/07 11:38

The NAACP has declared a “state of emergency” in the criminal justice system’s brutal mistreatment of Black youth across the nation. The declaration cites the zealous over-prosecution of the Jena Six teenagers in Louisiana, the killing by guards of Martin Lee Anderson, 14, at a Florida boot camp last year and the Oct. 4 beating and pepper-spraying of Shelwanda Riley, 15, for curfew violation in Fort Pierce, Fla.

“The NAACP denounces overly aggressive handling of Black youth by law enforcement entities, a blatant disregard toward investigating hate crimes and racially discriminatory utilization of prosecutorial discretion,” Dennis Courtland Hayes, the NAACP’s interim president and CEO, said in a statement Oct. 23. “Violence and intimidation of our young people is not acceptable; it’s against the law and must end now.”

Hayes declared the emergency on the eve of a Nov. 7 hearing for four of the Jena Six teenagers at the LaSalle Parish Courthouse in Jena, La. They are Theodore Shaw, Robert Bailey, Bryan Purvis and Mychal Bell. All were charged with “aggravated battery” for a fistfight that erupted after a Black youth sat under a so-called “white tree” on their high school lawn. The next day, three lynch nooses were hanging from the tree, widely considered a hate crime but dismissed by the school superintendent as a “prank.”

Judge J.P. Mauffray, who has presided over the Jena Six case from the beginning, revoked Bell’s $90,000 bail and threw him back in jail last month for a parole violation related to a previous conviction. An appeals court had overturned Bell’s more recent conviction, saying he was improperly tried as an adult. The prosecutor, Reed Walters, promised he would not retry Bell as a juvenile. The judge’s latest action was denounced by many as an act of revenge in response to the huge outpouring of support for the six youths.

Along with other groups, the Louisiana NAACP and NAACP chapters throughout the South filled hundreds of buses that brought an estimated 50,000 protesters to Jena Sept. 20 demanding “Justice for the Jena Six.”

Alan Bean, director of Dallas-based Friends of Justice, said he will be in the LaSalle Parish courtroom for the Nov. 7 hearing. “These youths are in jeopardy. They are facing a very hostile court,” Bean said. He decried the media focus on the back-and-forth between the white and African American students at the school. “We need to focus on the complicity of the adults, their completely inept handling of the noose-hanging incident,” he said. “Their treating it as a prank set up a very poisonous atmosphere. We need to take the emphasis off the kids and put the spotlight on Reed Walters and the other adults who have been driving this from the beginning.”

The National Lawyers Guild has called for disbarring Walters and Judge Mauffray for flagrant abuse of their offices and trampling on the constitutional rights of the Jena Six.

The NAACP declaration calls for “immediate action by local and state authorities as well as the U.S. Justice Department” to halt the mistreatment symbolized by the beating death of Anderson, the assault on Riley, the Jena Six “and countless other recent dehumanizing attacks” on African American youth by law enforcement officers.

The Florida NAACP staged a march in Tallahassee Oct. 23 demanding justice for young Anderson, who died while in custody at the Bay County Boot Camp last year. “To add insult to injury,” the statement says, “on Oct. 12, an all-white jury acquitted deputies and a nurse who participated in the videotaped violent abuse of Anderson that resulted in his death hours later.”

Other incidents cited by the NAACP include the following:

• In Inglewood, Calif., a July 2006 videotape showed police officers slamming Donovan Jackson-Chavis to the ground, tossing him in the air, bouncing him on the hood of a squad car and choking him for failing to drop a bag of potato chips.

• In Cincinnati, April 7, 2001, Timothy Thomas was fatally shot by a cop during a foot chase. He was unarmed and was holding up his pants as he ran. He was wanted on traffic violations. The officer was cleared in the shooting.

• In July 2003, Marcus Dixon, a straight-A student with a scholarship to Vanderbilt University, was charged with rape and held in prison for over a year for engaging in consensual sex with a white classmate. His 10-year conviction was overturned once jurors learned that the Georgia prosecutor withheld evidence from them.

A report titled “And Justice For Some,” using U.S. Justice Department data, reveals that while minority youth are one-third the adolescent population, they constitute two-thirds of the more than 100,000 young people confined in local and state detention facilities.

“When white youth and minority youth were charged with the same offenses, African American youth … were six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth with the same background,” the NAACP declaration charges.

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

This article in the Philadelphia Inquirer deals with a form of “anti-racism” training sponsored by the University of Delaware.  Conservative and libertarian blogs, to no ones surprise, have been having a field day with this issue.  Bloggers are particularly offended by the suggestion that white people are inevitably and incurably racist because, whether they know it or not, they benefit from white privilege. 

White supremacy, according to some anti-racist theorists, is a natural and unavoidable outgrowth of white privilege which is the only kind of racism that matters.  In other words, racism isn’t primarily a matter of believing that non-white people are inferior, nor is it about behaving as if white people are superior; racism is about white privilege, period.

Take me, for example.  I see white privilege as  an obvious and undeniable reality.  Being white confers all manner of advantages on me, whether I like it or not.  Thus, I am a participant in a racist system, and, if racism means benefiting from whiteness, I guess that makes me a racist.

If critical race theorists choose to define “racist” in this way they are free to do so.  As Frank Stagg, my old New Testament professor at Southern Seminary used to say, “words have usages, not meanings.”  The word “racist” can be used in all sorts of ways; like all words, it means different things to different people.

Does the anti-racist definition of “racist” comport with common usage?  Certainly not.  Is there much chance that more than, say, 10% of the American population will ever adopt the anti-racist analysis?  Probably not. 

Conservative Black intellectuals like John McWhorter and Shelby Steele have argued that blaming all of society’s ills on white racism forces young people of color into fatalism and victimhood.  I tend to agree; but that doesn’t mean the anti-racists are necessarily wrong. 

My concern is more practical than ideological.  The racial divide Jena has exposed tells us that Americans (particularly those of the African and European persuasion) need to talk.  Conversation is the key; indoctrination is both impractical and ineffective.  We need to start where people are and move from there.  Real conversation is open-ended.  That means we can’t know at the outset where the process will lead, or if it will lead anywhere.

Getting any kind of a conversation about race started in America represents a pretty high hurdle.  We aren’t trying to usher in the Kingdom of God here; we’re trying to grope and stumble our way to a rough and ready consensus.  We’re trying to get us a little justice.

The racial history of these United States needs to be part of the conversation–I’ll stipulate to that.  But defining white people as moral lepers will create the kind of backlash we are presently seeing at the University of Delaware. 

I am the kind of Christian who sees the human race (black, white and indifferent) as fallen, broken and in desperate need of redemption.   I am not the redeemer; and neither are you.  My ideas are full of holes; and so are yours.  Talking about race won’t fix anything in the absolute sense; but it might nudge our nation down a better road, and that’s all deck hands on a ship of fools have any right to expect.

_____________

Diversity program creates division

Delaware freshmen unsettled.

By Kathy Boccella

Inquirer Staff Writer

When University of Delaware freshmen showed up at their dorms this semester, their orientation included an exercise aimed at bridging cultural divides.But the program backfired after they were told to write down stereotypes of different ethnic and religious groups and publicly give their views on issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action.

“You have girls giving you hard looks because they’re Jewish, and you just wrote something offensive, like they’re cheap, even though you don’t believe it,” said Grace Banks, 18, of Smyrna. “It caused a lot of separations. . . . The whole situation was really uncomfortable.”

Delaware’s diversity training program is under scrutiny after students complained that they were pressed to adopt university-approved views on race and other sensitive topics, participate in squirm-inducing exercises, and rated on their responses to questions about their sexual and cultural beliefs.

Parents and professors also complained that the program is politically slanted, citing training material that claims all white people living in the United States are racist.

“It’s straight-out indoctrination,” said Linda Gottfredson, an education professor who looked into the program after her Honors Program students grumbled about it.

Another education professor, Jan Blits, president of the Delaware Association of Scholars, labeled the program “political propaganda and brain-washing.”

“I’d be out of a job in a day if I asked students questions about their sex lives or their experiences as oppressors. . . . It’s illegal,” he said.

In a letter to Delaware president Patrick T. Harker, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a Philadelphia-based free-speech group, called the program a “threat to freedom of conscience” and asked that it be dismantled immediately.

“The most terrifying thing is it’s teaching a generation of students that it’s OK to force people to believe what you believe, if you believe you’re right, and that’s not what a free society is supposed to be about,” said FIRE president Greg Lukianoff.

Michael Gilbert, the university’s vice president for student life, acknowledged “missteps” in the program, which is intended for the 7,000 students living in dormitories on the 970-acre Newark campus.

Among the problems Gilbert acknowledges: Resident advisers told students the sessions were mandatory when they were voluntary; the term “treatment” was used, which he said could be “easily misinterpreted” and “construed as inappropriate”; and students were rated “best and worst” by RAs after their one-on-one meetings.

Students “are not required to adopt any particular points of view but are presented with a range of ideas to challenge them and stimulate conversation and debate,” Gilbert said in a posting on the university’s Web site.

A few “overzealous” RAs told students they had to attend the meetings, he said. After students complained recently, they were informed last week that they did not have to attend.

As for the prying sex question, Gilbert said the exercise was intended to help students “reflect on a number of things” and to become “critical thinkers,” and would continue.

It a student declines to answer “our obligation is to accept that and respect that,” he said.

An RA who asked that he not be identified for fear of being fired said he was so uncomfortable asking students about sex and race in the one-one-ones that he never did it.

“It’s an insane thing to ask,” he said.

During the interviews, which are held twice a semester, staff evaluate students on their “level of change or acceptance,” he said.

Gilbert said the only ratings were of RA interview skills.

The senior, who is in his second year as an RA, said: “There’s very little dialogue. It’s very much a monologue.

“They call it diversity, but what it really is acceptance of a specific set of dogma,” the student said.

The 20,000-student brick-and-ivy school, which started as a private academy in 1743, is overwhelmingly white, 83 percent; African American, 5.3 percent; Hispanic 4.4 percent; and Asian, 3.8 percent.

There are few racial problems on campus, according to students and administrators. The diversity program was started, Gilbert said, to help students become “active and successful citizens” of the world.

Topics such as internalized and institutional racism, diversity, and environmental and social justice are taught at various dorms.

Materials from an August 2007 training session for Whole New World included articles that described a racist as “one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States . . . ”

Another article said “white culture is a melting pot of greed, guys, guns and god. It is a deadly brew.”

Gilbert said those were not the university’s views and should not have been posted on the school’s Web site without some “context.” The material is among “thousands” of documents used to teach the course, he said.

Other articles on the Web site included the confessions of a “recovering racist” and a list of the daily effects of “white privilege.”

Students said they felt pressured by RAs to agree with an ideology in which whites were oppressors and minorities were victims.

“It made me feel that because I was white and not at the lower economic spectrum of society, I was in some way racist, when in reality I do not think differently of anyone because of their race or gender or sexual identity,” said Brooke Aldrich, 18, who lives in Russell Hall dorm.

In one exercise, she said students had to go to different sides of the room if they agreed or disagreed with statements about gay marriage or affirmative action.

“You had to take a stance, yes or no. There were no gray areas. It was very uncomfortable,” Aldrich said.

In another session, students had to step forward or backward depending on their response to statements about race and sexual identity. Those who ended up at the front were supposed to be white males, which they were told were the least oppressed members of society, she said.

Kelsey Lanan, 19, a sophomore, said, “It seemed like they were trying to convince us we were racist and sexist and were horrible people.”

For many students, the worst was the one-on-one meetings in which they were given a sheet of questions such as, “When were you first made aware of your race?” and “When did you discover your sexual identity?

Matthew King, 19, said that when he asked his RA if he could skip the question on sexuality, she said, “I’m really going to need you to answer it.”

They sat in silence until he wrote something down.

One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” was a young woman who said she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat” and that the questions that were being asked were nobody’s business.

Another “worst” student who was angry about the program was said to be “very set in her ways – to the point of annoyance.”

A parent of a biracial boy said he found the program “very disturbing” and was hesitant about keeping his son at Delaware.

Peter Johnson’s 18-year-old son told him there was pressure to agree that “all white people are the committers of racial oppression and everybody else is a victim.”

He said he was stonewalled when he asked the school for program materials but when he insisted, he received them.

An RA who is Latina, Lorraine Makond, agreed that the program was a flop because students didn’t really want to be there.

“For the most part students put up a wall,” said the 19-year-old junior, who is president of the Latino student union. “When people hear diversity training, they put their politically correct sensors on for three hours, then go back to their regular behavior.”

---

One-on-One Sample Questions The University of Delaware’s student diversity training required freshmen to meet one on one with dorm resident advisers to answer these questions and others. The university says the program was voluntary, but students in some dorms were told it was mandatory.

1. When were you first made aware of your race?

2. When did you discover your sexual identity?

3. Who taught you a lesson in regard to some sort of diversity awareness? What was that lesson?

4. When was a time when you confronted someone regarding an issue of diversity? What was the confrontation about? If haven’t, why not?

5. When was a time you felt oppressed? Who was oppressing you? How did you feel?

6. Can you think of a time when someone was offended by what you said? How did that make you feel? How do you think it made them feel? How did his/her behavior change toward you?

This essay by Barbara Raye is based on the mainstream media’s version of the Jena story: white kids hang nooses; black kids beat up white kid.  The media tells the Jena story this way because Al Sharpton has been shaping the message since mid-August. and Sharpton’s primary argument seems to be that because the noose hangers aren’t doing prison time, the Jena 6 shouldn’t be prosecuted either.  I don’t think that’s what Sharpton really believes, but his soundbites clearly give this impression, and you can’t blame the casual reader for (a) thinking this is what Jena is about, and (b) being a bit bewildered.

But Ms. Raye isn’t that concerned about the precise details of the Jena story–she is asking how the principles of restorative justice could have forestalled a tragedy.  Please give her reflections your serious attention, and tell us what you think.

Missed Opportunity for Peace: Restorative Justice and Jena Louisiana

Last year black students asked for the “right” to sit under a tree on campus that had historically been reserved for white students. The tree, instead of becoming a symbol of harmony and progress, no longer lives on campus. But before it was cut down, nooses were strung from it by white students. Those students knew the symbolism of the act and they knew the threat and history it provoked. But, they might not have known the harm it caused. How could they? They probably didn’t intend to hang black students from the tree–they merely wanted to be “one-up” in the power dynamics of a situation that seemed to be threatening the separation of the races on school grounds and the superiority of white students. It was determined that a “crime” had not been committed and school suspensions were meted out to those involved.  Reports indicate that tensions and fights between black and white students have flared up over the several months since the first noose was found in the tree. School officials, students, parents, and community members considered them a normal part of high school life–schoolyard fights between boys, often between boys in groups of their friends, often based on racial identity. Each situation was probably handled by the rules and what seemed reasonable to school officials. However, they did not understand the ongoing harm that occurred in the school community. Fear, anger, suspicion, tension, and reminders of “place” and social divides that many had hoped would have been long irrelevant were affecting everyone. There were likely both white and black students who worried about violence on campus.  

Then the group of black students now called the Jena 6 was charged with attempted murder for the beating of a white student. We’ve seen the consequences. Thousands of people converging in Jena, national news and interviews of some involved, political comments and reminders of the civil rights movement, acknowledgment of systemic racial discrimination in our criminal justice system, and a “protecting of their own” by prosecutors and other officials within the system. Charges have subsequently been reduced and five of the students are out on bail while the prosecutor tries to make a distinction between them and the sixth (Bell) who has had previous arrests.

 These details are hard to surface in the turmoil and big picture experience of racial prejudice. There have also been more nooses tied to car/truck bumpers recalling the 1998 killing of James Byrd Jr. a black man dragged to his death from a noose tied to a truck in Jasper Texas.  

Here is an important example of the consequences of not understanding the harm that happens–even if the action doesn’t reach the level of being named a ‘crime”. It is an example of how actions–known to be symbolic–have enormous impact. It is also a searing example of the collective harm that occurs from systemic discrimination.

The thousands of demonstrators and rhetoric of the case being a new symbol of the 21^st Century civil rights movement reinforce the need to address overt racism in our criminal justice system. But, it also compromises all of us to suggest that a six-on-one beating should be endorsed as either an acceptable or necessary response to a harmful situation.

This is also a case where the reliance on the results of the beating rather than the harm it induced creates even more harm. When people note that the student was released from the hospital and attended a school function the same evening, they are in effect saying the crime was less severe than the charges indicate. I have no doubt that the student beaten by the Jena 6 feared for his life. I think both he and they are lucky that he did not die. Not because there was an intention to kill, but because permanent injury or death can be so easily a result from this type of physical violence. The societal attitude that violence (especially group violence) should be accepted also reinforces an approach to harm that young men (and growing numbers of young women) in this county model to their long-term detriment.  An alternative approach would have been to recognize harm and deal with it. Knowingly fostering racial discrimination by allowing race-designated places (informal or formal) is the responsibility of the school and addressing the harm that occurred to students is part of the obligation school leaders needs to assume. Those who hung the first nooses might have better understood the impact of their actions if there had been dialogue rather than quiet suspensions. Students who were impacted and found racial tensions and fights occurring in the school could have had a venue for letting out the experience, feelings, and story of what did and was happening on campus.

The Jena 6 could have had the opportunity to name their experience and understand the impact of their actions. The student, beaten by a group of six and surrounded by onlookers, and his family/friends could have had the opportunity to share their fears and concerns without being named racists. And, the community of the school could have learned more about the needs of its students and engaged them in creating a safer place for everyone.  I know that Jena doesn’t want this incident to define it in the national consciousness–and yet it does. The legal process and rules of school administrators and policy makers have their place. However, they have not served these students and this community well. A restorative model of dialogue and conflict resolution could define Jena as a place that strives to heal hurt, allows experience to be expressed in the context of time and symbolism, and engages those impacted by harm to seek and define resolution.

I wish for Jena, the Jena 6, and the students expelled, beaten, and suspended a place and a process of dialogue that offers an opportunity for understanding and the power to define their own resolution to the harm. Through their wisdom, sustainable and effective guidelines for their future school community could be developed. I offer our dialogue facilitators who understand the dynamics of race, violence, adolescence, and harm to help in any way we can.  Barbara Raye International Association for Restorative Justice and Dialogue Victim Offender Mediation Association 2233 University Avenue West #300 St. Paul, MN 55114 Email: voma@voma.org or braye@effective.orgWeb: http://www.voma.org or http://www.rjdialogue.org Tel: 612-874-0570 or 612-