Thursday’s ruling by judge JP Mauffray is yet another reason why the Jena 6 cases must be taken out of his hands.  Mauffray’s bias is emotional and personal.  The same, obviously can be said for District Attorney Reed Walters.  No potential juror in LaSalle Parish can claim to be unaffected by the unprecedented floodtide of controversial coverage this case has seen, thus a change of venue is essential.  Attorneys have been silenced by a gag order, but, as Howard Witt’s story suggests, a whirlwind of indignation is sweeping across the nation in the wake of Mauffray’s arbitrary and capricious ruling. 

_____________________________________

Jena 6 teen’s return to jail draws queries

Judge’s probation ruling called ‘revenge’

By Howard Witt | Tribune senior correspondent October 13, 2007

Houston

Civil rights leaders and juvenile justice experts on Friday sharply questioned the legality of a judge’s surprise decision to send back to jail a black teenager whose prosecution in a racially charged case helped inspire a massive demonstration in the small Louisiana town of Jena last month.

Attorneys for Mychal Bell, 17, said they would quickly appeal the decision made late Thursday by LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray to revoke Bell’s probation and sentence him to 18 months in juvenile detention on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property.

Bell’s juvenile convictions on those charges preceded and were unrelated to a Dec. 4 assault on a white student at Jena High School for which Bell and five other black students, known as the Jena 6, are still awaiting trial in a case that national civil rights leaders say exemplifies unequal treatment of blacks in the mostly white town.

Mauffray’s ruling Thursday night came just two weeks after he was forced to release Bell on $45,000 bond after the teenager had been jailed for more than nine months on the Dec. 4 charges. A Louisiana appellate court overturned Bell’s aggravated battery conviction in that case on the grounds that Mauffray had improperly allowed the youth to be tried as an adult. The appellate court ordered the case back to juvenile court.

“This is judicial revenge,” said Al Sharpton, one of the civil rights leaders who have taken up the Jena 6 case. “The judge was already defeated once by the appellate court, and now he’s taking his frustrations out on Mychal Bell.”

It was unclear why Mauffray decided to send Bell to jail on the prior charges. The judge has ordered all the proceedings in Bell’s case to be closed and directed all the lawyers in the case not speak about it publicly.

Other experts on Louisiana’s juvenile laws said that Mauffray’s decision to jail Bell on the earlier charges appeared to run counter to the state’s juvenile statutes.

“I don’t know the motivation for this judge and the district attorney, but what they did goes against the grain of our own juvenile code, which holds that home and the community is the best place to treat juveniles,” said David Utter, an attorney and founder of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. Utter is representing one of the Jena 6 defendants.

Mychal Bell is back behind bars.  This story by Mary Foster of the AP summarizes all the information available.  Judge JP Mauffray could have refused to release Mychal on the basis of his juvenile record; but he decided to yield to public pressure, then snap the young football sensation back into the system at the earliest opportunity.  I will have more to say on this matter as facts emerge.    Mychal Bell of the `Jena 6′ Back in Jail By MARY FOSTER – 4 hours ago NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A judge ordered a black teenager back to jail, deciding the fight that put him in the national spotlight violated terms of his probation for a previous conviction, his attorney said. Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers in the so-called Jena Six case is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court in Jena on Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys. Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said. “We are definitely going to appeal this,” she said. “We’ll continue to fight.” Bell had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear. Mauffrey, reached at his home Thursday night, had no comment. “He’s locked up again,” Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. “No bail has been set or nothing. He’s a young man who’s been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it.” After the attack on Barker, Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced and he was convicted of battery. An appeals court threw that conviction out, saying Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that charge. Racial tensions began rising in August 2006 in Jena after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended but not prosecuted. More than 20,000 demonstrators gathered last month in the small central Louisiana town to protest what they perceive as differences in how black and white suspects are treated. The case has drawn the attention of civil rights activists including the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Sharpton reacted swiftly upon learning Bell was back in jail Thursday. “We feel this was a cruel and unusual punishment and is a revenge by this judge for the Jena Six movement,” said Sharpton, who helped organize the protest held Sept. 20, the day Bell was originally supposed to be sentenced. Bell’s parents were also ordered to pay all court costs and witness costs, Sharpton said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Jones said. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay for any of this. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.” Bell and the other five defendants have been charged in the attack on Barker, which left him unconscious and bleeding with facial injuries. According to court testimony, he was repeatedly kicked by a group of students at the high school. Barker was treated for three hours at an emergency room but was able to attend a school function that evening, authorities have said. Bell, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw were all initially charged — as adults — with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit the same. A sixth defendant was charged in the case as a juvenile. Bell, who was 16 at the time, was convicted in June of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime. LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters reduced the charges just before the trial. Since then, both of those convictions were dismissed and tossed back to juvenile court, where they now are being tried. Charges against Bailey, 18, Jones, 19, and Shaw, 18, have been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. Purvis, 18, has not yet been arraigned. Associated Press writer Chevel Johnson contributed to this report.

This column from the Afro American Newspaper focuses on an alleged tiff between the Louisiana NAACP and the Rev. Al Sharpton.  Mercifully, I was unaware of these tensions during the rally.  When the big dogs get into the act, the little people who have been on the ground from the drop are reduced to the position of mere spectators.  That was fine with me–I wanted to mingle with the grassroots organizers.  Most of the people who attended the mammoth rally were church people or college students–and, whatever may have been transpiring between the leading light, the hoi poloi had a great time.  As Valencia Mohammad suggests, we need to be focusing on the Jena 6 as a group.  Valuable information concerning the legal calendar is included.

It is true, by the way, that the NAACP of La. learned about this case in January.  I travelled to Baton Rouge with several family members to an NAACP meeting.  We were told that if we wanted help from the NAACP we needed to show our support by forming a local branch.  That meant signing up 100 dues-paying members in a town with only 350 black residents.  Thanks to the families of the Jena 6, led by the redoubtable Caseptla Bailey, we made it happen!

It should also be noted that regular rallies, at Antioch Baptist Church and on the courthouse steps, have been held in Jena since February.  The earliest support for the families of the Jena 6 came from Pastor Brian Moran (who allowed us to use his building), Tory Pegram of the La. ACLU (who has worked tirelessly as a grassroots organizer), King Downing (who helped shape the rallies), Tony Brown (who repeatedly featured the Jena 6 on his Alexandria-based radio show), and, of course, Friends of Justice. 

I worked hard to get Ms. Pegram involved because I knew her to be a dedicated and gifted organizer with a deep love for hurting people.  I have no desire to bash the big boys; but we need to honor and respect the work of grassroots organizers who keep these stories alive during the long, hard months when nobody seems to be listening.

Jena Six Update

All Jena 6 await court; activists spar

By Valencia Mohammed
AFRO Staff Writer

With all the focus primarily on Mychal Bell, one of the youth defendants in the Jena 6 case, many people around the country wonder what has occurred with the remaining teens charged with aggravated second degree battery  for beating a White teenager.

Bell, the first defendant to be tried in court, received lots of international attention with high profile figures including the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, congressional and civil rights leaders leading the fray. Radio personalities Michael Baisden and Tom Joyner organized a successful march with 100,000 participants converging on the small town.

Now that Bell has been released and awaits future court appearances, the trials of the other defendants have come under the microscope.

NAACP vs. Al Sharpton

* Theodore Shaw —— According to Robert McDuff, one of three legal representatives for Shaw, there will be a hearing on Nov. 7 and the trial begins on Jan. 28, 2008. Shaw has not received any education since he was expelled by the school board December 2006.

* Ryan Simmons —— has the least amount of charges, according to his attorney William Whatley. His family moved away from Jena, La. No trial date has been set.

* Robert Bailey has more charges than any other defendant. According to his attorney Jim Boren, there will be a motion hearing on Nov. 7. Bailey is set for trial on Nov. 28.

The day after the rally his mother Caseptla Bailey said her son has not received any education since he was expelled. Several attempts to reinstate Bailey have failed. The family still lives in Jena, La.

* Bryan Purvis has a hearing on Nov. 7. According to his mother Tina Jones, he has moved to another state. He attended private school last year. Purvis is attending public school this year.

* Carwin Jones, the youngest member of the group has retained a team of attorneys.

Discord among civil rights leaders

At the Jena 6 rally on Sept. 20 in Jena, La., there was a little known jockeying for power among the civil rights elite.

The Louisiana State Chapter of the NAACP was quietly feuding with the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network based in New York.

A letter was sent by the NAACP to the governor of Louisiana after the march in protest of Sharpton’s demand that the NAACP and only a select group of people be allowed to participate in press conferences.

For three days, several NAACP representatives stood near the courtyard. When Sharpton drove up in his limousine, they said, he greeted the NAACP leaders, walked passed them with his entourage and proceeded towards the cameras. It was obvious something was not running smoothly in the leadership camp.

“It was hard to work with the egos,” said Ernest Johnson, president of the Louisiana State Chapter of the NAACP.

“We saw a draft of a contract between Caseptla Bailey (Mychal Bell’s mother) and Rev. Sharpton, which made us very concerned. It seemed like this was to promote someone’s career,” said Johnson.

In a letter dated Oct.1 to Rev. Sharpton, Johnson accused him of sowing discord by demanding Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Bianco not allow the NAACP members to be present at Mychal Bell’s release from jail.

For the record, the NAACP asserted it had been working on the Jena 6 case since January and was very instrumental in the release of Bell. Johnson claimed Sharpton seemed not to have a clue what to do except keep the media hype going.

Other groups chose to stay out of the media limelight and focus on the issue.

Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice, made 17 trips down to Jena, La., since January after he heard about the case.

“We wanted to get justice for these students by countering false narratives by local media and the judicial system,” said Bean.

Bean said those groups pictured the incident involving the attack of Justin Barker, a White student in Jena and what came before it. “The media tried to portray the Black youth as a group of street thugs who beat Justin simply because he was White. But it was not true and we wanted to get the message out,” said Bean.
Bean said the key to the whole story was the nooses around the tree.

Bean watched as the “media hounds” started coming to town and watched the dynamics from a distance.

“There may have been some groups there with underlying motives. We just wanted to get justice for the kids,” said Bean.

This insightful column from Stephen Ward deals with the complex reality Friends of Justice calls the New Jim Crow.  The preamble catches the key issue: “Established Black leadership has for generations avoided the subject of mass incarceration, or confined itself to preaching and lecturing young people who live under constant surveillance and threat from the criminal justice system.”

This isn’t your daddy’s civil rights movement, Ward insists.  “Nostalgia for the 1960s can also be disempowering for young people who are searching for models of activism and organizing. It tends to re-inscribe the primacy of charismatic leaders like Sharpton and Jackson who take their place at the front of the march, draw the cameras and provide the sound bites. This type of leadership is designed for public spectacle, not serious movement building.”

Let the church say, “Amen!”

Living for Change: The Jena 6 and Black Leadership       

African America – Freedom Movement  Wednesday, 10 October 2007  by Stephen Ward  

The most salient aspects of the recent demonstration in Jena, Louisiana, are the grassroots nature of the protest and massive involvement of African American youth. The plight of the Jena 6 touched young Blacks where they live – in a world “that over-polices and criminalizes Black youth.” Established Black leadership has for generations avoided the subject of mass incarceration, or confined itself to preaching and lecturing young people who live under constant surveillance and threat from the criminal justice system. “To uncover and nurture the emerging black leadership,” the author calls for elders to engage young people directly, to discover how they view their world and how it should be changed.  

Living for Change: The Jena 6 and Black Leadershipby Stephen Ward “Statements from young people saying that they were changed forever through the Jena protest highlight the central importance of transformation in black leadership.” This article originally appeared in the Michigan Citizen. Many people view the September 20 march in Jena as a re-kindling of the spirit of the civil rights movement. With thousands of peaceful marchers, nationally recognized figures (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King III), and the bright lights of the national news media, the march did appear to be in the mode of the 50s and 60s. 

But this should not lead us to view the Jena 6 case as simply a continuation of 1950s racism or to suggest that “nothing has changed.” To do so not only disrespects the efforts of those who made monumental contributions to our struggle and to our society during that period, but also ignores the unique circumstances and great challenges of our time. The aim of today’s struggles should not and cannot be to reproduce the protests of the civil rights era. Those struggles were designed to draw the nation’s attention to the brutal injustice of Jim Crow segregation, mobilize African American communities, and force the federal government to secure the rights of black citizens – with the underlying goal of full access for black people into the institutions of American life.  “The blatant injustice in the Jena 6 case is a manifestation of a 21st century criminal justice system that over-polices and criminalizes black youth.” 

What are the goals of today’s protests? White supremacist ideas and practices still confront us, but the world in which we live and the forces against which we struggle today are in many ways different. Despite obvious similarities, the blatant injustice in the Jena 6 case is not a reflection of 1950s Jim Crow injustice. Rather, it is a manifestation of a 21st century criminal justice system that over-polices and criminalizes black youth. It is not, then, a matter of access to the system, but a need to transform the system.  

Nostalgia for the 1960s can also be disempowering for young people who are searching for models of activism and organizing. It tends to re-inscribe the primacy of charismatic leaders like Sharpton and Jackson who take their place at the front of the march, draw the cameras and provide the sound bites. This type of leadership is designed for public spectacle, not serious movement building. Their talents and commitments notwithstanding, Sharpton and Jackson remain stuck in a mode of protest politics that is increasingly out of line with current realities and challenges.  Which brings us to the wide and impressive participation of young African Americans in the Jena 6 mobilization. To uncover and nurture the emerging black leadership that I believe is inherent in this mobilization, we need to ask young people why so many of them were moved to protest the injustice in Jena.

There are obvious answers – outrage at the unfair treatment of their peers; a basic sense of fairness, etc. But to engage them in a substantive discussion of this question is to seek a deeper understanding of how black youth see the world and their relationship to it and invite them to share their visions for changing the world. We should also ask young people what participation in the march meant to them. They have already begun to tell us.

For example, Michigan Citizen readers will recall that Amber Jeffries, a seventh grade student at Nsoroma, wrote that her participation in the protest “was life changing” (September 30, 2007). University of Michigan students who participated in the protest organized a program titled “From Jim Crow to Jena 6” on Sept. 26 to share their experiences and discuss the meanings of the case. They also described their participation as a powerful, life changing experience.  “We need to ask young people why so many of them were moved to protest the injustice in Jena.” 

These and other statements from young people saying that they were changed forever through this protest highlight the central importance of transformation in black leadership. Let us develop leaders who seek both to transform themselves (that is, to continually grow, develop their capacity for political action, and realize their fullest potential) while also working to transform the society.

 

The Jena 6 case can help to do this if we use it to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue and a substantive, sustained discourse (and mobilization) within black communities around the criminally unjust system – as well as the crisis of our schools (the Jena 6 case, after all, began within the context of a school). In this way we can begin to imagine and engage in struggles to transform these systems so that they work for our youth.Stephen Ward teaches at the University of Michigan and is a member of the Boggs Center board. 

Friends of Justice didn’t stand up for the Jena 6 because we approve of school yard violence. We issued a demand that these cases be transferred out of LaSalle Parish and out of the hands of Judge JP Mauffray and prosecutor Reed Walters. It was neither fair nor appropriate, we argued, that the community that created the context for the assault on Justin Barker should now be adjudicating the fate of his alleged assailants.

In this short piece, Tom Head extends the same argument to town mayor Murphy McMillin.

http://racerelations.about.com/b/a/257608.htm

John Mellencamp Isn’t the Problem

^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo:

Imagine you’re the mayor of Jena, a small Louisiana town made famous for a series of unprosecuted white-on-black beatings followed by a ludicrously over-the-top prosecution of a black-on-white beating. Basic issues of moral decency and social justice aside, which is the more serious PR problem?

1. John Mellencamp just released a video comparing the Jena Six trials to the show trials and lynchings of the pre-civil rights era.
2. The town mayor gave an interview in which he thanked a white supremacist group for its “moral support.”

Apparently, Jena mayor Murphy McMillin feels that Mr. Mellencamp is the more serious problem. More than two weeks after telling Mississippi white nationalist Richard Barrett how much he appreciates having people in town during the September 20th rally “opposing the colored folks,” McMillin has made no attempt to apologize or otherwise back away from his remarks.

I’ve been trying very hard to give the mayor of Jena and the district attorney of LaSalle Parish the benefit of the doubt, but every time one of them steps in front of a microphone, they make that task more difficult. Both of them have inflammatory remarks of their own to apologize for. John Mellencamp should be the least of their worries.

This column in the Kansas City Star deals with the role of the outsider in effecting change.  In case you are wondering, the “Tom Bean” referenced below isn’t my evil twin.  Charles Coulter is clearly answering the, “If it hadn’t been for outsiders,” comments made by Jena residents, aided and abbeted by Star columnist Jason Whitlock.  These complaints, says Mr. Coulter, have a familiar ring.

The New York Times may have been hesitant to touch the Jena story, but they have partially redeemed themselves with this report on the noose hanging at Columbia.  Note the sense of outrage the noose hanging inspired in Manhattan and compare that with the “boys-will-be-boys” reaction in Central Louisiana (and, regretably, in some of the comments posted on this blog).  Jena may be America; but Jena is also Jena.

Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune was the first American journalist to receive my Jena narrative.  This wasn’t coincidental.  Howard’s reporting on the Shaquanda Cotton story (Paris, Texas) impressed me.  It was another story about a school student sent to juvenile prison (Texas Youth Commission) for shoving a teacher’s aid.  Most journalists wouldn’t have touched that story because, as we all know, students aren’t supposed to shove adults.  But Witt had the sensitivity to know the difference between appropriate punishment and excessive punishment.

The story below suggests that the justice problem transcends race.  America has decided to use prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities as a cure-all.  Regardless of the problem, we want to lock-em-up.  Sometimes there is no alternative to incarceration; but usually there is.

If the noose boys in Jena had been tried and convicted as hate criminals they would likely have done a stretch in a juvenile facility.  If so, there is a good chance they would have experienced the kind of hell described in Witt’s article on a troubled white girl’s tragic encounter with the Texas Youth Commission.

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chicagotribune.com

TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE

Girl alleges sex abuse in Texas prison

White teen whose sentence led to uproar over racial disparities says guard molested her

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

12:16 PM CDT, October 9, 2007

HOUSTON

When the Chicago Tribune published the story last March of Shaquanda Cotton, the 14-year-old black girl from Paris, Texas, who was imprisoned for shoving a hall monitor at her high school, the article quickly provoked a national civil rights scandal because of apparent racial disparities in the way justice was administered in the small east Texas town.

Shaquanda had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor was not seriously injured. Yet the teenager was convicted in March 2006 of assault and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of the more serious crime of arson, to probation.

The furor that erupted over the disparity in how the two girls were treated prompted Texas authorities to release Shaquanda from prison three weeks after the Tribune article appeared.

This is the story of what happened to the white girl in that saga.

It appears she has suffered a fate far worse than Shaquanda’s.

The emotionally troubled teenager, who has been diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, was sent to the same youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, where Shaquanda was incarcerated, because she subsequently violated her probation twice.

While there, the teenager—whom the Tribune is not identifying—was allegedly sexually molested by a male prison guard, who then threatened her to keep her quiet, according to documents and witness statements examined by the Tribune. The girl self-mutilated her arms with a knife, carving the word “Why” into her flesh, her mother said.

Last spring, the girl attempted suicide by swallowing a handful of pills prescribed for another inmate. When a guard rushed into her cell to rescue her, authorities allege, the girl knocked the officer to the ground—an assault that tacked another 6 months onto her sentence.

Even worse, officials at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex knew of allegations that the guard was sexually abusing the girl but did not remove him from contact with female inmates until four months later.

In a letter to the girl’s parents dated Oct. 18, 2006, prison Supt. Teresa Stroud wrote that “a formal investigation has been initiated” into allegations that a prison guard “touched [the girl’s] buttocks and made comments about her anatomy.”

The girl would later tell authorities that she was too frightened to talk to investigators about the incident, and prison officials ruled that the allegation was “unconfirmed,” according to Tim Savoy, a spokesman for the Texas Youth Commission, the state’s juvenile corrections agency.

But on Feb. 24, 2007, another abuse allegation against the same guard surfaced, and he was suspended with pay the same day.

In August, a Brown County, Texas, grand jury indicted the guard, Jaime Segura, 30, on multiple felony counts including sexual assault, indecency with a child, improper sexual activity with a person in custody and official oppression.

Authorities allege that Segura molested other female inmates at the Brownwood youth prison in addition to the Paris teenager. Officials in the Texas attorney general’s office were unable to clarify Monday whether the Paris girl’s case was among those cited in the indictment.

Segura’s arrest came six months after a series of abuse incidents at other Texas Youth Commission facilities exploded into public view in a scandal that rocked the agency and forced the resignation or firing of all of its top leaders. Segura is the fifth guard at the Brownwood facility to face felony charges for allegedly molesting youths incarcerated there as part of this investigation.

Stroud declined to answer questions from the Tribune about why she did not immediately remove Segura from contact with youthful prisoners after he was first alleged to have molested the girl from Paris.

Girl describes alleged abuse

“I can’t explain or try to justify what happened back then,” Savoy, the youth commission spokesman, said. “I can tell you what we do now: If there’s an allegation, they will pull the person away from the kids, either put the guard on suspension or in an area where they will not be around the kids.”

But today, even as the youth commission moves forward with administrative reforms and the abuse scandal recedes into history, the Paris girl, who turned 16 in July, remains locked up in the Brownwood prison, where she has been for the past year. The girl’s assault on the prison guard pushed her earliest possible release date to June of next year; she was originally due to be released Dec. 15.

That assault—and the suicide attempt, the self-mutilation and the girl’s deepened depression—would never have happened if she had not been victimized by a prison guard, the girl’s mother believes.

“I understand there are processes and procedures they need to go through,” said the mother, whom the Tribune is not identifying to protect her daughter’s identity. “I understand [my daughter] needed to take responsibility for her actions and learn from them. But what is happening now is punishment, not rehabilitation. She’s being punished for something that should never have happened to her.”

Last July, during an interview conducted by an investigator from the Texas attorney general’s office, the girl related the details of what she said Segura had done to her, starting just a few days after she arrived at the Brownwood prison in October 2006 at the age of 15.

Among other things, the girl alleged that Segura watched her while she showered, offered her extra food if she would show him her breasts and threatened that she “was not going to like the outcome of it” if she revealed what the guard was doing to her.

“Mr. Segura put his hands up my shirt and grabbed both of my breasts,” the girl wrote in her witness statement. “Mr. Segura rubbed my breasts. I was scared and did not know what to say or do.”

Long before she arrived at the Brownwood youth prison, the Paris girl was emotionally troubled, her mother said. She takes medication for depression and bipolar disorder and has been in and out of alternative schools and special facilities for emotionally disturbed children.

State denies girl’s appeal

In December 2005, the girl set fire to her family’s Paris home and watched it burn to the ground without calling for help—the crime for which Superville initially sentenced her to probation. The girl violated that probation twice, first by skipping school and later by kicking a baby at the home of a relative. The baby was not injured, the girl’s mother said, but the relative filed a complaint, causing Superville to revoke the girl’s probation and send her to the Brownwood prison on an indeterminate sentence.

The abuse the girl allegedly suffered once she got to Brownwood deepened her despondency, her mother said—a point she tried to make when she appealed her daughter’s sentence extension for knocking down the guard who interrupted her suicide attempt.

Texas Youth Commission officials denied that appeal last week, without ever considering the alleged sexual molestation as a potentially mitigating circumstance.

“The information in the file I have does not state what the alleged act of abuse was, who the alleged abuser was, or when the alleged abuse took place,” Doug Wise, an attorney for the Texas Youth Commission, wrote to the girl in a letter explaining the denial of the appeal.

“I don’t want it looking like we’re trying to copycat the attention that Shaquanda got, but I think my daughter’s story needs to be told,” the mother said. “They should take into consideration that she has tried to take her life over this issue. She’s really despondent. She blames herself for what the guard did. She just cannot forgive herself. And she is not receiving any counseling for what the guard did to her.”

Late Monday, after the Tribune published this story on its Web site, state Rep. Harold Dutton, chairman of the Texas Legislature’s juvenile justice committee, said he had contacted Texas Youth Commission officials “to seek an early remedy to this young lady’s situation.”

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

This thoughtful article in The New Republic is worthy of careful attention.  Initially, it sounds like just another hateful screed against Sharpton and Jackson; but the analysis goes much deeper than that. 

Mr. Olapade appears to suggest that the black blogosphere got this story first.  But if you click on the link to AfroSpear (the first African American blog to pick up on Jena) you will find that an article by the very white Howard Witt in the Chicago Tribune was the writer’s initial source.  Witt’s account was quickly fleshed out, after a little research, by my blogging and an article by Jordan Flaherty (also a white writer). 

It should also be noted that white folks at CNN also covered the story early on  (researcher Audrey Stewart is primarily responsible for CNN’s considerable coverage of the Jena story).  And then there are the white folks from across the pond who produced the story for the BBC.

The problem isn’t that the mainstream media or white progressive bloggers didn’t know about Jena; the problem is that they didn’t know what to do with it.  As Dayo Olapade suggests, this isn’t about Sharpton and Jackson, pre se; it’s about the fact that the mainstream media won’t take a story about black America seriously until these guys are on board.  How many media reports suggest that the massive Jena march was organized by Al and Jesse?  The churches and student groups that performed the organizational heavy lifting are left out of the story.  And that’s a shame, because they hold the keys to the kingdom.

Jena has drawn attention to a profound perception gap between average white and black Americans.  We need to talk, and, largely thanks to Jena, we are talking.  Actually, a lot of us are merely spitting and hissing back and forth across the color line; but every conversation has to start somewhere.

______________

Who Keeps Sharpton and Jackson Powerful? The White Media.

Listen Up!

by Dayo Olopade

Post date: 10.10.07

Mychal Bell, one of six black students jailed last year in Jena, Louisiana for allegedly beating a white classmate, was discharged from prison almost two weeks ago. His release comes in the thick of renewed discussion about race relations in the U.S. prompted by the 20,000-person strong protest in Jena last month. Bell, who has become the face of the “Jena Six,” kissed the sky outside the county prison before he headed home for the first time since December. Beside him was the Reverend Al Sharpton, as easy before the press microphones as Bell seemed dazed. “Upon this young man’s shoulders is a symbol of a movement,” Sharpton prayed, and the assembled friends, lawyers, cameras, and family said a hushed “Amen.”

The Jena case may be reaching a hopeful denouement, but Sharpton’s camera-ready role in it brings one aspect of American culture into harsh relief: The peculiar cult of the black political celebrity–which may have outlived its usefulness to black America–remains weirdly potent among the white-dominated media. By now, the Jena story is familiar: according to press accounts, a black student at the local high school sat under the de facto ‘white tree.’ After three nooses were hung from the tree in response, a spate of racialized taunts and tension soon escalated into full-on violence. The white noose-makers were given a short school suspension, while, even with recently-reduced charges, Bell and the five others face a combined 130 years in jail.At the September rally in Jena, Sharpton and his counterpart, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, were the marquee speakers, calling for the dismissal of all charges and railing against the prison “industry”. “Mychal Bell, we know you hear us. Hang on a little while longer,” Jackson thundered.

But the real story was the crowd, assembled by a flood of black activism on the Internet and on black talk radio. Black blogs like AfroSpear, Mirror On America and Prometheus 6 have written reliably on the story for months. As a result, black churches, historically black colleges and universities, and student groups of all stripes were protesting the Jena case as early as March. This brand of organizing was faster to focus on Jena, and its effectiveness far outstripped that of established groups like the NAACP, Sharpton’s National Action Network, and Jackson’s Rainbow/P.U.S.H. Coalition. The Color of Change, an Internet advocacy group sprung from MoveOn in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, generated an online petition to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco that boasts over 300,000 signatures. In fact, Sharpton admitted to the Chicago Tribune last month that his own knowledge about Jena had come from the black netroots. While the black community was galvanized to action through a multiplicity of new-media sources, Sharpton and Jackson retained their monopoly on major-media attention. The black blogosphere had been shouting about Jena for months, but the case gained traditional media momentum only after the anointed spokesmen stepped in. Sharpton first visited Jena in the beginning of August, turning the trickle of news on the incident into a firehose stream. Before then, only a spoonful of national outlets ran pieces on Jena.

Since then, celebrities have jumped onboard the cause; and statements from Democratic presidential hopefuls followed–first from Barack Obama, then Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The GOP had been reliably mute on the case, until President Bush curtly told reporters last month, “the events in Louisiana have saddened me.” And after ten months of dawdling, the swelling noise on Jena forced local District Attorney Reed Walters to account for his actions and, at the end of September, drop his appeal to the state supreme court and release Bell on bail.

Despite the effective e-organizing among blacks, it will be a long haul before the Internet generation makes Sharpton and Jackson’s methods totally obsolete. These famous figures present a unique connection to systems of publicity and power. Their loud harangues brought figures like Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and President Bush into the debate, and brought mainstream media outlets to dutiful–if peripatetic–attention. During a recent O’Reilly Factor appearance, for example, Sharpton’s rehearsed statements about Jena quickly segued into chatty jibes about the many dinners he and O’Reilly have shared. While Jackson performed better the following night on O’Reilly, this piecemeal statesmanship proved the only means for a story like Jena to enter the national conversation. White liberals gasp at what seems like atavism when such standoffs spotlight racial tension in America–yet have made these elder statesmen the only canaries in the mine.

The real blame, therefore, may rest with the media’s own ‘white tree.’ An April Brown University study showed that black contributors make up less than one percent of the political blogosphere. As the study notes–and the Jena movement proved–black blogs are successful at spurring black interest groups to action, but they hold little crossover appeal. Progressive blog Pam’s House Blend pointed out how, even on the day of the march, dozens of widely-read left-wing political sites run by whites continued to sleep on the story. The lack of publicity among non-blacks was evident at the Capitol Hill rally on the Jena Six Day of Action last month. I spoke to a white filmmaker documenting protest in America who said that even she knew nothing about Jena until that week, claiming the story “stayed segregated.” DC event organizer Lynetta Carson, who is black, gave the realist perspective while packing up the stage: “All we had was word of mouth, and unfortunately, that’s to our family.”

The last of the Jena Six who was behind bars now heads home to his family to await retrial. It is a shame to think that with more universal pressure, the steps toward equitable treatment for Bell could have begun months prior. Jackson and Sharpton’s soapbox oligarchy and the white media’s racial blind spots are more embarrassing than they are malicious–yet both have real consequences. Fifty years after the Little Rock Nine, new and old segregations persist. Last month, Barack Obama preempted any race-baiters by correctly casting Jena as “America’s problem.” Beyond revealing the casual racism of a small town in Lousiana, the case and its aftermath exposed a still-divided national conversation, and a media culture, establishment and blogosphere alike, that’s dangerously lazy in its reporting on black America.

Dayo Olopade is a reporter-researcher at The New Republic.

I’m not sure what to make of the recent upsurge in noose incidents, but they are getting a lot of play in the media.  Check out these stories and tell us what you think.

From CNN, Two are Arrested in Noose Incident near Jena, Louisiana

From the Chicago Tribune: Noose, racist slur found by builders of suburban Home Depot:

From Fox News: Noose Found on Black Columbia University Professor’s Door

From USA Today: Jena 6 case in La. spurs copycats