Category: “civil rights”

Sitting Down in the Middle of History in Bunkie, Louisiana

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All the hot button issues were on the table in Bunkie, Louisiana last week. 

At seven in the morning I hooked up with a couple of French journalists and headed down to Church Point to pick up Ann Colomb, the central actor in Radley Balko’s excellent feature article.  The journalists were interested in doing a Jena story (of course), but I talked them into considering the Colomb and Bunkie sagas as well.  After picking up Ann Colomb, we headed north to Jena where we had lunch with Caseptla Bailey.  Finally, we all drove down to Bunkie, a little community about an hour south of Jena.

None of this made any sense from a logistical standpoint; but in my mind all these stories are rooted in a common problem: small town authority figures who view poor people of color with thinly disguised disdain. 

The march to the Bunkie police station is well covered by Abbey Brown’s informative article in the Alexandria Town Talk.   The real action took place later that day in a little private club by the railroad tracks featuring a bar, a dance floor and a pool table.  As usual, local church leaders were distancing themselves from anything controversial.

“You know what side of town you on?” a middle-aged Bunkie resident asked me.

“I’m guessing, the black side,” I replied.

“You got that right,” he said.  “Everything on this side of them tracks is on the black side; all the money’s on the white side.  That’s all you gotta know about Bunkie, Louisiana.”

At about 6:30, the celebrities from Lafayette, Alexandria, Dallas and Baton Rouge arrived in black SUVs.  There were a couple of FBI agents, two Assistant US Attorneys from Lafayette, two representatives of the DOJ’s Community Relations Service, and Donald Washington, United States Attorney for the Western Division of Louisiana.

Mr. Washington informed me that he reads my blog.  “I thought you might,” I replied. 

Bunkie is the third Friends of Justice case that has tested the mettle of the US Attorney: the Colomb case, Jena, and now Bunkie. 

Washington got off to a rough start in the Colomb case by suggesting that Ms. Colomb and her three sons were guilty even though the DOJ had decided to drop all charges against them.  Fortunately, there are signs that Washington is reconsidering that hasty assessment.

The United States Attorney didn’t fare much better in Jena.  Entering the story before a tidal wave of international media attention broke over the community, Washington informed the media that (a) the official response to the noose incident and the prosecution of the Jena 6 was untainted by racial bias of any kind, and (b) there was no meaningful association between the hanging of the nooses and the assault on Justin Barker three months later. 

It wasn’t long before Donald Washington found himself in the nation’s capital face-to-face with Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson Lee.  The black politicians were outraged by his characterization of the Jena affair and demanded an explanation.  The US Attorney kept his wits about him while those around him were losing theirs and impressed observers with his thoughtful answers to vitriolic questions.

Now, in a weird juke joint in Bunkie, Louisiana, Donald Washington looked like a seasoned politician who had learned to parse his remarks for the wider world.  By the time the meeting was twenty minutes old it was standing room only and the little air conditioning unit in the wall was struggling to compete with the body heat.

It was difficult to know what to talk about.  Local residents facing pending charges were cautioned by representatives on both sides to avoid discussing legal particulars.  “If you are represented by counsel,” Donald Washington told the gathering, “you probably shouldn’t be talking to me.”

The issues in Bunkie revolve around charges of excessive force, the alleged falsification of evidence, and warantless searches.  One woman informed the meeting that the Bunkie Police Department (usually represented by Detective Chad Jeansonne) had searched her home eight or nine times, always without a warrant.  Jeansonne had informed her that he could search her place anytime he wanted without a warrant.

Technically, this is partly true.  Officers facing “exigent circumstances” are allowed to search a dwelling without taking the time to get permission from a local magistrate.  The operative term is “exigent”.  An officer must believe that something dreadful will happen if he waits even a few moments to enter a residence. 

For instance, if there is reason to believe that death or serious physical harm may be averted by a warrantless search, officers are permitted to proceed. 

But it didn’t sound as if the searches in question qualified.  If the woman was telling the truth (and there was no reason to believe she wasn’t) the Bunkie Police Department has some serious explaining to do.  If the woman’s experience is an egregious cased of normal practice, the protest staged earlier in the day was fully justified.

Many of the out-of-town activists were convinced that the issues in Bunkie are being understated.  “What we’ve got here is a house on fire,” one outspoken speaker from Lafayette told the assembled officials, “and we’re hearing from you that you’re going to get to it.”

Mr. Washington wasn’t sure how to respond to the accusations being lodged against local law enforcement.  On the one hand, he didn’t want to discuss criminal cases; on the other hand, he seemed frustrated by the general, non-specific nature of some of the complaints.  He had just come from a meeting of respectable Bunkie African American residents who had assailed him concerns about “loud music, sagging pants and drugs.”  Whom was he to believe?

Bunkie Police Chief, Mary Fanara had received 68% of the vote in the most recent election, Mr. Washington reminded the crowd.  If her police force was out of control, he seemed to ask, why was she so popular?

It was quickly obvious that many aggrieved Bunkie residents didn’t know where to go with their concerns.  “You go to Marksville [site of the Parish courthouse] and ask who to call, and they won’t tell you,” one resident complained.  “Then you bring a complaint to the police chief and she just laughs in your face.  A complaint goes from your mouth to the police chief, to the District Attorney, to the judge and into the garbage.”

“Sometimes, there are bona fide reasons that a person is reluctant to make a report,” Washington acknowledged; “but at the end of the day, you’ve got to make a report.  If you say, ‘I can’t report it,’ we’ve got a stalemate that can never be addressed.  The state police is an option; but you can also go to the FBI.”

This was the opening Jerriel Bazile had been waiting for.  Mr. Bazile’s brother, Larry, had been accused of selling drugs to an FBI agent . . . or to an FBI agent accompanied by a confidential informant . . . or to the agent and a second defendant . . . Chad Jeansonne’s incident reports reflect all three conspiracy theories. 

“I myself tried to contact the FBI in Alexandria,” the burly Dallas businessman said.  “Larry Lambert would not listen to me.  So I called the FBI in New Orleans.  They told me I had a legitimate case, but they didn’t want to cross jurisdictional lines.  So I called the FBI in Lafayette, and got the same message.  So I was forced back to Alexandria where I know Larry Lambert isn’t going to listen to me.”

That said, Mr. Bazile admitted that local residents needed to do a better job of documenting their complaints.  The woman who has endured repeated warrantless searches was immediately on her feet brandishing a sheaf of paper work.  “You want documentation?” she asked.  “I’ll show you documentation!”

Now it was time for King Downing of the national ACLU to ask a pointed question.  “What threshold of stories of this sort would warrant an investigation?” he asked.  “There’s another form of litigation called pattern and practice.”  Downing seemed to be suggesting that people like Donald Washington don’t need the kind of hard facts that would convince a jury if the volume and nature of complaint is sufficiently high.

One of the prosecutors told the group that the Department of Justice had prosecuted one pattern and practice case that he could recall.  He thought it was in New Iberia but, “I don’t want to mistake it because it happened so long ago.”

Finally, Donald Washington addressed the elephant in the room.  “We’ve heard Detective Jeansonne’s name a lot,” he said, “but detective Jeansonne has been involved in three drug roundups in the past year and we need to establish if we are dealing with backlash.”

This was essentially a restatement of Mary Fanara’s oft-published argument that the only folks complaining in Bunkie are drug defendants and their kinfolks. 

King Downing countered with a question about the Bunkie Police Department’s association with federal narcotics task forces.  He seemed to be suggesting that the feds may be reluctant to investigate the Bunkie Police Department because the FBI and the ATF (Alcohol, Tabacco and Firearms) are complicit in much of the trouble.

The Larry Bazile case suggests that this might occasionally be true.  When, according to Chad Jeansonne’s various reports, a single FBI agent is associated with three mutually exclusive versions of a single drug deal you wonder how that agent feels about it.  In fact, you wonder if the agent even exists.  How can you ask hard questions about Mr. Jeansonne without embarrassing the FBI?

Finally, King Downing asked the question the meeting had been circling for at least two hours.  Turning to the line of public officials seated on stools, Downing said, “What are you going to do when a citizen complaint is contradicted by a police statement?  How do you adjudicate between the two; or is it just a wash?”

“It’s not a wash,” Assistant US Attorney Stephanie Fielding assured Downing.  “But you have to ask some questions.  Was there a witness?  Does the report seem unusual?  Does this fit what a cop would normally do?  It is a process of analyzing the whole situation.”

Todd Cox, an FBI agent from New Orleans, brought the meeting to a close with his first comment of the evening.  “I don’t think a case like this could be built on one complaint,” he said.  “It’s a building process.”  If so, the process appears to be building in Bunkie.

Donald Washington was pointing to his watch.  It was well after nine o’clock and the meeting was well into it’s third hour.  There appeared to be a consensus that we had covered as much ground as we could cover in one meeting.

I was elated.  Donald Washington had brought an impressive array of high-ranking officials to a little two-bit town in Central Louisiana to talk to the local police department, an organization of respectable church people concerned about sagging pants and, finally, a roomful of aggrieved residents and concerned advocates from Louisiana, Texas and New York. 

I asked the French journalists for their take on the meeting.

“It was wonderful,” the photographer told me.  “It’s just like sitting down in the middle of history.”

 

 

 

The final word on Jena (and beyond)

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Jena, Louisiana still crops up in the media from time-to-time, usually as shorthand for abiding racism.  Darryl Fears’ Washington Post feature on the decline of traditional civil rights groups tips the hat to the Jena phenomenon in its closing paragraphs. 

When six black teenagers in Jena, La., were being prosecuted as adults last year in the beating of a white classmate, the local branch of the NAACP played a small role in defending their rights, but it was Color of Change.org that secured their release.

Color of Change deserves the accolade.  Under the leadership of James Rucker, COC collected hundreds of thousands of signatures for a Jena petition and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the legal fight (every penny of which landed in the right hands). 

Unfortunately, no one has won the release of the Jena 6; Mychal Bell is serving the last few months of his sentence and the other five defendants still face trial.

Moreover, the “local branch of the NAACP” was formed a year ago through the efforts of Friends of Justice, Tory Pegram, then of the La. ACLU, and Jena 6 families led by Caseptla Bailey and Catrina Wallace. 

In late January of 2007, ten Jena 6 family members and Alan Bean of Friends of Justice drove to Baton Rouge, La. to meet with NAACP leaders.  After waiting for three hours, we finally got five minutes with president Ernest Johnson.  His message was simple: create an NAACP branch with 100 dues-paying members and we’ll be there for ya’ll.

We held up our end.  The state NAACP waited for the story to go viral on the internet and become a staple item in the mainstream media–then they took an interest.

Darryl Fears is right about the endgame–Color of Change and radio personality Michael Baisden had far more to do with bringing 30,000 people to Jena than old-guard icons like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  

But how did James Rucker of COC and Michael Baisden hear about Jena in the first place?  Rucker was invited to participate by Tory Pegram (now a Friends of Justice board member).  Pegram remembered the great work Color of Change had performed in the wake of Katrina and made the critical call.

Dallas-based Michael Baisden learned about Jena from reading the paper, watching television and surfing the net. 

I have no problem with high-profile, high-capacity folks riding to the aid of the grassroots folks who do the heavy lefting early on.  But I do have a problem with the self-promoting arrogance media celebrities commonly demonstrated in Jena. 

James Rucker is a blessed exception.  He came to town and worked with the grassroots people while the story was still catching fire. 

Michael Baisden and Al Sharpton rolled into Jena in flashy limousines, grabbed a few soundbites from a compliant media, then headed off to Alexandria for a fundraiser.  The next day, when concerned citizens from across the nation flocked to Jena, the big boys bickered backstage about who should command the premier venue.

Catrina Wallace, the brother of Jena 6 defendant Robert Bailey, had organized a Hip-Hop concert for local youth.  The La. NAACP, afraid that the rappers might go to cussin’, bumped Catrina’s concert to the sidelines.  Finally, the NAACP was dissed and dismissed by Baisden and Sharpton.  In the end, there were two rallies: one featuring Baisden, Sharpton and friends; the other highlighting Jesse Jackson and the La. NAACP. 

The folks who endured two nights on a bus to get to Jena found themselves wandering from one venue to the other, wondering what was going on.  In the end, it didn’t matter.  Few were aware of the internecine squabbling and a good time was had by all.

It was all good; but it could have been so much better.

Now, folks are wondering what happened to the Jena movement.  We all gathered for a big rally; the House Judiciary Committee held a highly-publicized hearing into the matter; then interest dropped like a rock.  What was that all about?

Any “movement” that owes its existence to the undeniable power of celebrity will eventually be done-in by celebrity’s impotent downside. 

Michael Baisden was flying by the seat of his pants.  He didn’t understand what Jena was all about and he never bothered to talk to those of us who had been living the story for half a year.  The story got under The Bad Boy’s skin.  He was outraged, and his passion translated powerfully to millions of listeners.  Baisden called his “family” to join him in Jena for a big rally.  The logistical ramifications were enormous.  No one had time to ask what came next. 

So nothing came next.

Al Sharpton doesn’t investigate civil rights abuses; he waits for other people to get the story to the media, then he swoops in wagging his finger at the evil doers.  But Sharpton never knew what Jena was all about.  Everything was reduced to his stock storyline: unequal justice for black folks. 

Sharpton concluded that the criminal justice system should either try to noose boys as hate criminals or turn the Jena 6 loose.  Like any good controversialist, Al doesn’t do nuance.

Because Sharpton is a media celebrity, his take on Jena became the last word.

Make no mistake; Jena is a story about unequal justice.  But what lies at the root of this inequality? 

Jena is a story about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children.  Jena is about racial insensitivity translating into bizarre public policy.  Superintendent Roy Breithaupt should have known that nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree were a sign of fear and deep loathing.  Relations between the noose boys and certain black football players were bad and steadily worsening.  Everybody knew it.  The issues needed to be addressed. 

Trying the noose boys as hate criminals would have missed the point.  These were kids, after all.  They needed to be dealt with firmly, fairly and compassionately.  They were not responsible for the legacy of Jim Crow racism, but their minds and hearts had certainly been twisted by it.  Nothing short of a full program of education addressing all the historical, ethical, and relational issues the Jim Crow South has left in its weary wake would have been sufficient.

But Mr. Breithaupt wasn’t ready to confront Jena’s history, so he tossed his town’s dirty linen into the clothes hamper and hoped it would disappear.

When the noose incident was dismissed as a childish prank, the black community was outraged and the school was placed on lockdown.  Reed Walters was called to an emergency assembly.  This was another teachable moment, a second chance for someone in authority to address the key issue.  Like the superintendent, Mr. Walters dropped the ball. 

In a June hearing at the LaSalle Parish courthouse, Walters was asked if he had waved his pen in the air and told the students that he could make their lives disappear with a stroke of his pen.  Walters owned up to the remark without hesitation.  He thought the black students were overreacting to the handling of the noose incident and he wanted to give them a reality check.  Black and white students, Walters told the court, needed to “work things out by themselves.”

This is America’s problem–we are leaving the children to work things out for themselves.  When adolescent males are left to their own devices bones are broken and the blood flows freely.  Thus it has every been; thus it will ever be.  It’s the male code, and it will be followed with tragic inevitability unless the adults in the room step in and do some teaching.

That, Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Baisden, is what Jena is all about. 

The real Jena story could have sparked a productive national debate.  In fact, despite all the misplaced emphasis and the hollow theatrics, the real story has been told.  It could have been told better, no mistake.  But Jena has sparked a boistrous and sustained conversation about how we can break the chain of violence that eventually engulfed Justin Barker and Robert Bailey in Jena.

The most articulate response thus far has come from Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that’s asking the right questions and providing sane and workable answers.

So what’s next for Jena?

It all depends.  If Reed Walters takes even one of these cases to trial, Jena will be back in the news.  It might not make the front page, but the fires of controversy will be rekindled.

If Reed Walters agrees to a universal settlement involving no additional prison time, there will be a few passing references in the media and the story will quickly fade from view.

Frankly, I’m praying for the second solution because it is in the best interest of the Jena 6, the Barker family and the good people of Jena. 

What’s it to be, Mr. Walters?  The next move is yours.

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question.  Instead of asking “What’s next for Jena?”, we should be asking what’s next for the criminal justice movement.  Jena’s name is legion. 

Friends of Justice continues to monitor the situation in Jena, but we have moved on.  We’re working in Bunkie, Lousiana.  We’re playing a bit part in a large coalition working for justice for the Angola 3.  And we’re currently researching a case in Little Rock, Arkansas that cuts to the heart of America’s prison problem. 

Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentleman, we’re in for a bumpy ride!

Alan Bean

Friends of Justice

 

The Pen is Mightier than the Noose

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I have given only passing attention to the current spate of “Jena sparks noose madness” stories.  The more noose stories we see; the more nooses appear.  You don’t put out a fire by pumping in more oxygen.

But this noose article in the New Orleans Times-Picaynue moves beyond a knee-jerk, “Look at all them crazy people hanging them nooses!” theme.  Lance Hill, director of Tulane University’s Southern Institute for Education and Research, cuts to the heart of the problem:

It’s troublesome that we don’t dig as a nation, we don’t dig much deeper than just the symbolic images and that it just leaves us unprepared for injustices that can be happening right under our nose.  We don’t recognize that injustice because it doesn’t have a noose around its neck.

The symbol of a noose hanging from a tree in a segregated school yard is powerful . . . maybe too powerful. 

As I have stated ad nauseam, Jena isn’t about a hate crime; it’s about public officials turning a teaching opportunity into a tacit endosrsement of de facto segregation.  This is a story bristling with weapons: a noose, a pen, a fist and a tennis shoe.  Of the lot, the pen is by far the most dangerous.

The noose hanging phase will only proliferate so long as we respond with wailing, lamentation and calls for aggressive prosecution.  No one would ever have heard about Jena, Louisiana if Reed Walters had confronted high school students with a noose instead of a pen.  “Look at this thing,” Walters should have said.  “It’s a symbol of hatred and mob justice.  It’s a sign of craven cowardice.  It tells me that some students at this school don’t believe in the basic American values of equality and free association.  Well, I’m here to tell you that this ugly rope, and the hatred it symbolizes, will not be tolerated in LaSalle Parish or at this school.  Have I made myself understood?”

That speech would have drained all the demonic power out of the noose symbol, and it would have settled the beef between black and white students. 

But Reed Walters didn’t deliver that speech, and Justin Barker paid the price.  The Department of Justice still insists that there is no connection between the noose incident and the racial charged altercations three months later.  The connection is Reed Walters’ pen.  With one click of his ball-point, a stupid prank became an act of official oppression. (more…)

Jena 6 case caught up in a whirlwind of distortion, opportunism

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 http://www.kansascity.com/sports/columnists/jason_whitlock/v-print/story/296701.html

Jason Whitlock is a sports writer for the Kansas City Star.  Lately, however, he’s been on a mission that is only tangentially related to football–the Jena 6.  Whitlock flipped the Jena script a couple of weeks ago in a column that unleashed a whole string of revisionist history columns and articles. The Kansas City Star columnist used dubious quotes from LaSalle Parish officials, US Attorney Donald Washington and the regional media to suggest that people like me had the story all wrong.

Now Mr. Whitlock has actually traveled to Jena to listen to white folks talk trash about Mychal Bell and Alan Bean.  The whole Jena story, Whitlock asserts, is my creation.

Like everyone, I like to get credit for what I do.  Jason Whitlock’s stinging indictment isn’t exactly what I had in mind.  He’s right about one thing–the Jena 6 story, as it was initially reported in the media, followed a script I had carefully cobbled together from media reports, court documents and personal interviews.  He’s also right in asserting that my goal was to make the Jena 6 (and Justin Barker) look like the victims of malevolent public officials. 

In tennis, you have to put reverse spin on the ball to make it sail straight.  The original Jena narrative was created by public officials like Craig and Sammy Franklin of the Jena Times, Superintendent Roy Breithaupt and the now-famous Reed Walters.  According to their script, the assault on Justin Barker had no relation to a lunch-hour trash-talking session, the school fire, the shotgun incident a the Gotta Go, or the assault on Robert Bailey at a local dance.  In particular, the events of December 4th were completely separate from the noose controversy.  US Attorney, Donald Washington, has recently re-introduced this narrative . . . And he’s black, so he must be telling the truth!

According to the “isolated incident” scenario, Justin Barker was picked out of the crowd at random by a roaming band of black thugs who wanted to beat the crap out of a white boy–any white boy.  Ergo, all white people are in danger–they might be coming for you next.  Hence the attempted murder and conspiracy charges.

Two months of intense investigation and research exposed this story as a crude and cynical hoax.  The isolated incident story was clearly designed to cover up the egregious behavior of Mssrs. Breithaupt and Walters.  They play the villain role in my narrative because their behavior was, and remains, villainous.  I never accused these men of breaking the law; I accused them of immoral and unethical conduct (I am a Baptist preacher, remember).  By neglecting urgent issues, Reed and Roy created a Lord of the Flies scenario that could only end badly for black and white students alike.  Many white folks in LaSalle Parish are gradually, and grudgingly, shifting to my view.  They don’t appreciate the scrutiny I have brought to their town; but they now understand where things went wrong and why it must never happen again.

I am tempted to issue a point-by-point refutation of everything Jason Whitlock got wrong.  The list of errors is long.  But Whitlock doesn’t really care about me.  Like everyone associated with this story, he is using the Jena saga to advance a personal agenda.  Whitlock knows that Friends of Justice is right about the criminal justice system.  He knows the war on drugs is a scam designed to attract dollars to law enforcement under the false pretext of getting drugs off the street.  So what is Whitlock’s beef?

He doesn’t like Sharpton and Jackson.  He thinks they’re bad for black America.  I applaud the reverends for attracting attention to the Jena 6 and for galvanizing the black churches of LaSalle parish.  Whitlock doesn’t care about any of that; he is convinced (ala Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and Bill Cosby) that black Americans need to stop blaming all their woes on white racism.  The Jena story gives Jason a long-awaited pulpit and he’s making the most of it.  Hey, this is America; let the man have his say. 

A couple of clarifications are in order, however.

First, I am not a “self-proclaimed” Baptist minister.  My wife and I are both ordained by the American Baptist Churches, USA, the racially diverse denomination that provided a seminary education for Martin Luther King Jr.  I spent three years in seminary and five years working on a doctorate in church history and theology, so I know my stuff.  The American Baptist Churches have formally endorsed the work of Friends of Justice in general and our stand on Jena in particular. Enough said.

Secondly, I did not spoon-feed the Jena story to people like Howard Witt and Bill Quigley.  I sent my narrative to Witt and asked him to look into it.  Professor Quigley was introduced to my version of the Jena story through Tory Pegram of the La. ACLU.  Journalists and bloggers didn’t write until they had made a thorough and independent  investigation of the facts.  My narrative influenced their writing only to the extent I got it right.  As I explained to Mr. Whitlock, nobody is going to write a groundbreaking story about Jena, Louisiana simply because some white preacher told them to.  I was the first to visit Jena and put the facts together; but I didn’t make this stuff up.  Who could?

Jena, O.J. and the Jailing of Black America

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Check out this piece by Orlando Patterson in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30patterson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Americans needs to talk.  We need to talk about race, poverty and mass incarceration.  In particular, we need to shift our primary focus from Mississippi Burning-Rosa Parks racism to the new reality: Jena-Mychal Bell racism–what we call “the New Jim Crow.”

I just got back from a Children’s Defense Fund sponsored conference at Howard University dedicated to “dismantling the cradle to prison pipeline”.  The conversation swirled around three topics: institutional racism (the New Jim Crow) and the relationship between poverty and dysfunctional behavior.

On Tuesday, Bill Cosby, Juan Williams (NPR) and Morehouse President, Robert Michael Franklin, talked about the need for personal and community responsibility.  A large audience, swelled by hundreds of Howard University students, applauded Cosby, Williams and Franklin as they lamented the breakdown of family values.  The next night, the same audience roared its support for the Jena 6 (I was on a panel that included four relatives of Jena 6 defendants).  A week before the historic, September 20th rally for justice in Jena, 2500 Howard students crammed into Cramton Auditorium for a rally in support of Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey, Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis, Jesse Ray Beard, and Carwin Jones.

The Cradle to Prison Pipeline conference demonstrated that America’s sharpest African American students love Bill Cosby as much as they love the Jena 6.  They don’t have to choose between criminal justice reform and personal responsibility, and they don’t.

Orlando Patterson teaches sociology at Harvard University.  I spent half an hour with him last year talking about the mission of Friends of Justice.  Patterson thinks that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are stuck in what I call the Old Jim Crow paradigm.  His criticism is practical rather than personal.

I endorse Patternson’s critique.  Initially, I was pleased to see America’s most famous black “reverends” entering the lists on behalf of the Jena 6.  Tens of thousands of people weren’t going to make the pilgrimaget to isolated Jena, Lousiana because the Rev. Al Bean issued the invitation.  The Rev. Al Sharpton, working through a long list of radio talk jocks, got the job done.  Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III helped out as well.  They deserve credit for a remarkable accomplishment.

But there’s a problem–the message is out of focus.  Like everyone (including Orlando Patterson), the reverends are using Jena to advance their agenda.  It’s an agenda that hasn’t changed much in the past forty years, and it needs to change.  How?  Ask the students at Howard University.

SPLC responds to Walters, getting back to the point

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The Southern Poverty Law Center responds to D.A. Reed Walters’ Op-Ed in the New York Times.

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=286

San Diego columnist Ruben Navarette critiques the protests in Jena:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/navarrette/20070923-9999-lz1e23navarre.html

Ruben Navarette is a gifted, even-handed columnist. Unfortunately, his
weird treatment of the Jena 6 story illustrates why all the details of this
story must be on the table before any of it comes into focus. Notice that
Navarette doesn’t even mention the noose incident or the official,
“stroke-of-my-pen” response to it. Reed Walters’ bizarre overcharging of
the Jena 6 pales in comparison to his crude attempt to use the power of his
office to clamp down on legitimate protest. In the process, Walters placed
the white country boys who hung the nooses and the black football players
who led the student protest on a collision course that was guaranteed to end
badly.

I wonder if Mr. Navarette has dealt with the image of black and gold nooses
hanging from a “white tree”? Or has he come to grips with Reed’s pen?
Apparently not. These omissions are so appalling they call for an
explanation. What, precisely, is going on here?

Here’s what’s going on: Mr. Navarette is tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse
Jackson, and this case provides the perfect opportunity to get in a few
licks. I probably talked to twenty reporters from across the nation
yesterday, and they all seemed to have it in for Al and Jesse. That’s a
problem for a man in my position. Clearly, celebrities like Jackson,
Sharpton, and Michael Baisden attracted a great deal of attention to this
story. That’s the upside.

But this nickel also has a tails side–America, black and white, old and
young, isn’t responding to the Al and Jesse show anymore. You can celebrate
or lament this fact, but it cannot be denied. Their shtick is growing
stale. The cameras still come running when the household names speak–but
the gravitas is gone.

The celebrities who have latched onto this case have inadvertently messed
with the message. As I just suggested, this has been a story that gets
badly out of focus if essential aspects are ignored. The media is an
entertainment medium. It goes for the graphic images: nooses in a white
tree; Justin Barker’s battered visage. All good stories are driven by
conflict, so the media phoney competitions (which is worse, nooses or
assault?) and “town divided” scenarios in which black residents lament their
communities racist ways and white residents say it ain’t so. That’s hot; it
sizzles.

At its core, this is a story about Reed Walters’ pen; a story about bigotry
and hubris combining to create a toxic environment for Jena’s young
people–black and white. Many CNN viewers were surprised to hear the
LaSalle Parish district attorney explaining how the Lord Jesus Christ tamed
a pack of wild-eyed black superpredators on September 20th. Left to
themselves, Walters suggested, these folks would have run riot–just like
the Jena 6.

My Jena, Louisiana song (available on our home page) has Reed Walters
describing his role thusly: “Sunday morning I’m a church mouse, but Monday
morning at the courthouse, with a stroke of my pen, I’ll make your whole
world end. And all the King’s horses, and all the king’s mean, won’t put
your world back together again. I can do it all; ’cause I’m sitting on the
wall . . . Between the free and the fallen, between the sinner and the
saint; between the is and the ain’t. I can make you crawl, ya’ll, ’cause
I’m sitting on the wall.”

This guy sees himself as the Vicar of Christ in LaSalle Parish. I’m
serious. All power resides in his pen. All opposition to his righteous
reign will be crushed mercilessly. Robert Bailey Jr. and Justin Barker both
fell victim to Reed Walters’ megalomania. Reed got this way because he has
unlimited discretionary powers. Power, as they say corrupts–and Reed’s
power is absolute.

You can’t blame Ruben Navarette for getting the story so very wrong. Blame
story tellers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who are too stuck in the
categories of the old civil rights movement to understand what this story is
about. Mychal Bell ain’t Rosa Parks, ya’ll. Rosa Parks isn’t going to jail
anymore. We can either pretend that Mychal is Rosa, or we can defend Mychal
Bell’s right to due process because he is an American citizen.

That much, Mr. Navarette understands.

Can we get back on message here? I hope so. I spent two months framing
this story before I fed it to the journalists and the bloggers. It hurts to
watch celebrity activists wandering so far off-message. Mychal Bell
deserves better.

L.A. Times on Mychal Bell’s release on bail

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This L.A. Times article gives us a rare sympathetic image of a young black defendant, Mychal Bell, smiling bashfully for the cameras as he goes home to his relieved parents. Yes, jail is a bad place to raise a teenager, whether they’re black or white, rich or poor. It also quotes Reed Walter’s bizarre statement that only intervention by the Lord Jesus Christ prevented the protesters from erupting into violence.

It’s interesting that Walters fails to notice that most of the protesters were devoted Christians, who felt the Lord Jesus Christ was the one who compelled them to be there in the first place. Maybe he should watch that video we posted last week, filmed by a Jena protester, who declared that God was with them, and that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Or shoot, Reed Walters could read what the Bible has to say to government leaders about upholding justice for the poor and marginalized. Friends of Justice is quoted at the end of this article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-jena28sep28,1,5340911.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true

Christian Broadcasting Network takes on race, inequality and power

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Christian Broadcasting Network filmed this interview with Friends of Justice’s Executive Director, Alan Bean. (You may know CBN as the network built by Pat Robertson of the 700 Club.) Notice that the Christian Broadcasting Network gave us the space to talk honestly about the problem of race, inequality, and power in America today. Contrast this with the lukewarm coverage of the allegedly “liberal” New York Times, which ignored the Jena story entirely and then let D.A. Reed Walters write an Op-Ed.

So we’ve got the conservative Christian media letting us talk openly about race, inequality, and power, while the New York Times sticks their fingers in their ears and focuses on “important” news (like, uh, the buzz around Guiliani’s effort to rebrand himself since 9/11.) Congratulations to CBN for stepping up to the plate–shame on the New York Times.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/237744.aspx

Clarence Page takes a few determined steps toward a new civil rights strategy in this probing column. We need to get the churches and college students into the fight while minimizing the role of self aggrandizing shock jocks and polarizing prima donnas. The release of Mychal Bell will be a Pyrrhic victory if we can’t swing the support of Middle America behind the Jena 6. Question: can we organize an effective civil rights movement void of celebrities? Could we win justice for the Jena 6 without the support of folks like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Yes, but only if we create a new advocacy model from the ground up. As Clarence Page suggests, we need to stress the principle of equal justice and we need to be racially inclusive. Morally, this is the right approach. Pragmatically, it is the only strategy capable of producing a profound cultural shift.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.page25sep25,0,2383627.story

Last week, Friends of Justice spoke at a conference in Washington D.C. on the “Cradle to Prison Pipeline” sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund:

http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=63312&provider=gnews

After ignoring Jena, NYTimes gives Reed Walters a pulpit

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The New York Times didn’t cover the Jena story until they were faced with a protest so big that they had to put it on the front page. But now, apparently they can find the space for this disingenuous screed from Reed Walters, the D.A. responsible for the Jena debacle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/opinion/26walters.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Reed Walters complains that hanging nooses is no excuse to jump a white boy. But he conveniently leaves out his own shameful role in fanning the flames of racial unrest in Jena. He neglects to tell America how he also refused to protect Jena’s black youth from a series of attacks by white youth, in the days leading up to the attack on Justin Barker. He neglects to mention how a black youth was assaulted by a gang of white youth at a party, and how another white high school graduate threatened black youth with a shotgun outside a convenience store. This is the critical information we need to understand the attack on Justin Barker–it was the mirror image of a similar attack by white youth on a single, defenseless black youth that weekend. Except Reed Walters didn’t punish all the participants in that attack. Apparently some young people are worth more than others.

New York Times, now you need to publish a rebuttal from Friends of Justice that holds Reed Walters responsible for Jena’s racial unrest.

Also in the New York Times is an interesting commentary by Paul Krugman, connecting Jena to the Republican’s problem with race–i.e., having built their power by scapegoating people of color, they are now having trouble meaningfully campaigning for the vote of all Americans, especially our country’s growing ranks of Hispanic voters. Interesting…although Krugman is wrong to associate Jena only with the vestiges of Old Southern racism. Black youth are denied due process across America, not just in small Southern towns like Jena. So the problem is just as bad in Boston, MA as it is in Jena, Louisiana or Tulia, Texas. Talking from friends who minister in low-income black communities in Boston, it’s painfully obvious that the New Jim Crow is a national problem. That’s why Friends of Justice sticks to our guns on this point: Jena is America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?ex=1206331200&en=80a4ef7269125bb7&ei=5087&mkt=opinphoto