Al Sharpton and Chicago Tribune correspondent, Howard Witt appeared on the O’Reilly Factor a couple of nights ago to talk about Jena 6 money.  I don’t usually watch the Factor (largely because my wife and I didn’t break down and get cable until a few months ago).  But I was watching Wednesday night because an O’Reilly staffer had asked me to appear with Witt and Sharpton.  Inevitably, I was bumped, but I tuned in nonetheless.

Howard Witt knew he was on the show to state whatever facts could presently be discerned: a lot of money has been donated directly to the Jena 6 parents; to date, no accounting of this money has been made; contrary to internet rumor, there is no evidence that the money is being used inappropriately; Dallas-based radio personality Michael Baisden has also collected money; no one knows how much Baisden has raised or how the funds have been dispersed; Mr. Baisden has accused James Rucker’s ColorofChange organization of “shady” dealings; ironically, ColorofChange is the only organization associated with the Jena 6 fundraising effort to have made a full financial disclosure.

From these facts, Fox News conjured up a headline that says far more about Fox News than it says about the Jena 6 fundraising effort: “New Reports Claim Nearly Half a Million Dollars Donated to Jena Six is Missing.”

Howard Witt never hinted that any funds are “missing”.  He merely stated that spurious claims have been made by Mr. Baisden; that it is Mr. Baisden who needs to account for his Jena-related fundraising; and that the parents need to quell unfounded rumors by making a full financial disclosure.  The parent-controlled account lies in a bank in Jena, Lousiana.  I repeat, no funds are missing.

Bill O’Reilly and Al Sharpton understand one another.  Bill needs to have Al on his show every so often because Al knows how to turn it on for the cameras.  Al likes to be on the O’Reilly show because his status as a civil rights celebrity depends on being celebrated–and in America, that means being asked to appear on shows like the O’Reilly Factor.  By having Sharpton on his program, Bill deflects criticism that he is a racist nut-job. 

As Jon Stewart suggests, the American conversation has devolved into a Hardball-style screaming match between liberal and conservative partisans.  When ratings are at stake, nuance spells death.  Darth Vader needs Luke Skywalker; Luke needs Darth.  Bill needs Al; Al needs Bill.

Bill asked Al about Michael.  Al defended Michael.  The man asked a few questions; answers were given; case closed.

I wish it were that simple.  Ever since Michael Baisden, Al Sharpton et al entered the Jena fight, James Rucker has been putting out fires.  I have been with the ColorOfChange leader in Jena on several occasions and I’ve witnessed the agony.  Mr. Baisden has been tapping out a narrative of suspicion re: ColorofChange for months now.  Long before the September 20th march, I was on a radio talk show in Chicago.  A caller said, “I’ve been hearing over the radio that money raised for the Jena 6 isn’t getting to the families.  I gave $25 so those kids could hire good lawyers; should I be asking for my money back.”

“Well, Dr. Bean,” the host replied, “what advice would you give this woman?”

It wasn’t hard to stick my finger in that particular dam-leak.  Unfortunately, thanks to Mr. Baisden’s irresponsible rhetoric, similar questions were being posed in contexts where no one was around to provide simple answers. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Baisden was asking his listeners to send their Jena 6 contributions (more accurately, their Mychal Bell contributions) to him.

I never had a problem with Michael Baisden raising money for the Jena 6.  James Rucker didn’t have a problem with it either.  But how do we explain the constant anti-ColorOfChange innuendo?

Al Sharpton doesn’t think an explanation is necessary because Michael Baisden did so much to bring thousands of people to Jena.  I’m sorry; but success in one arena, however significant, doesn’t give anyone a free ethical ride. 

In fact, the very success of the march on Jena unleashed a string of consequences, some good, some bad, some downright ugly. 

Would we have seen 20,000 marchers in Jena without the involvement of Mssrs. Baisden, Jackson, Sharpton, etc? Obviously not.  If it had been left to the folks planning the event prior to the involvement of the celebrity figures (ColorOfChange, student groups at traditionally black colleges like Howard, the Black Blogoshere, Friends of Justice, etc.) we might have seen 2,500-5,000 people in Jena on September 20th.

Would a smaller rally have been a bad thing?

It all depends.  If the goal was to flex organizing muscle and send a signal, the massive turnout was terrific.  But if we’re talking about improving the legal fortunes of six young defendants, the waters muddy.

Why have we not received a full financial accounting of the Jena 6 moneys under the control of the parents? 

For one thing, until last week, no one had requested an accounting. 

But there’s another reason.  Until recently, the Jena 6 families have been so distracted with constant demands for interviews and invitations to appear in places like DC and Atlanta, that they haven’t had the time or energy to worry about how much money was in the bank account.

Al Sharpton’s people called Friends of Justice to get contact information for the families in Jena–that was the last we heard from them.  On July 31st, at the conclusion of a rally that drew 300 people to Jena from across the country, the original grassroots organizers were sitting under a big white tent with representatives from all six Jena 6 families.  The mood was relaxed.  Hopes were high.  Morale was strong. 

Then we got the call from our first civil rights celebrity.  Al Sharpton told the parents that he would come to Jena if two conditions were met: (a) he wanted several SUVs to pick up his entourage in New Orleans, and (b) he wanted to be the familys’ sole media representative.

The results were predictable; a few parents quickly acceded to Sharpton’s demands; others were adamantly opposed; a third group wasn’t sure what to do–they had no problems with Sharpton’s involvement, but they weren’t fussy about the terms.

 Sharpton solved the problem by giving the lion’s share of his attention to one family while ignoring those unwilling to play by his rules.  Soon Jesse Jackson was focusing on a second 6 family.  Nothing helps fundraising more than having a real live Jena 6 victim to show off in Chicago.

How did the families feel about this?  They didn’t know how to respond.  When your child’s life is on the line you want all the allies you can get.

Meanwhile, communication between the Jena 6 families became increasingly difficult.  Initially, parents would get together to count the money, keep the books, and write thank you notes.  But as the media circus expanded from one ring, to two, then three, the parents stopped getting together.  Phones were ringing from dawn to dusk.  Some parents had mixed feelings about the barrage of interest; others stopped answering their phones.  Some were willing to tolerate the hype for the sake of the fight; others withdrew in disgust.

The oft-lamented lapses in judgment (a defendant shoving money in his mouth on MySapce; two others “thuggin” for the cameras at the BET awards) cannot be fairly evaluated apart from this context.  The behind-the-scenes trauma of the Jena 6 and their parents should be nobody’s business–these people deserve their privacy.  But it is now in their best interest that a few salient facts be disclosed.

The young man who stuffed the bills in his mouth was mimicking the behavior of the rags-to-riches Hip Hop artists he listens to.  His MySpace page was getting hits from immature adolescents across the country.  In their eyes, the young defendant was a full-blown celebrity.  So he did what celebrities do–he put on a little show for the cameras following a script created by the performers he admired. 

This kid lives below the poverty line.  His mother is too poor to afford a car.  He shares an eight-by-eight bedroom with his younger brother.  Was the video a mistake?  Obviously.  But the entire affair was a direct (albeit unintended) result of the Sharpton-Baisden celebrity show.  Al and Mike can handle the hype–adolescent boys cannot.

Consider the BET fiasco.  Who invited these kids to travel to Atlanta?  Who handed them the tickets?  When they showed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting suits, who suggested they change into the Hip Hop duds?  Who’s idea was it to parade vulnerable defendants in front of the cameras?  In a celebrity culture like ours, a standing ovation was inevitable.  Of course the kids “thugged” for the cameras–they watch BET, so they know the drill. 

Now, suppose only 2500 people had come to Jena on September 20th; would the event have been frontpage news?  Probably not.  Would invitations to DC, New York and Atlanta have been issued if student leaders and no-name grassroots organizers had been in charge?  Nope. 

Now let’s flip the equation.  Apart from the celebrity factor, there would have been no MySpace video (and if there had been, nobody would have noticed).  Apart from ersatz, media generated star-power, the Jena 6 defendants would never have been invited to Atlanta to hand a trophy to Kanye West and mug for the cameras. 

More significantly, apart from the Al-Michael-Jesse show, the families would have maintained their initial unity.  You wouldn’t see a confused father being crudely manipulated by a media celebrity on national radio.  Mr. Witt wouldn’t have had an article to write and Mr. Sharpton wouldn’t have been asked to appear on the Factor.

Furthermore, the pre-celebrity media attention the Jena 6 story generated was perfectly sufficient to attract the attention and concern of gifted attorneys nationwide.  These dedicated men and women were lining up behind the Jena 6 long before September 20th.  Most of the attorneys currently involved in the fight for justice are media-averse individuals who do their best talking in the courtroom. 

Can you attract attention to injustice without celebrity support?  I wish I knew.

But one thing is clear: if your hands wander too close to the celebrity fire they are likely to get burned. 

I had nothing to do with attracting celebrity figures to this fight.  I can take no credit for the Jena 6 phenomenon that swept the nation in September.  Thus, I refuse to take responsibility for the media-generated fiascos that followed in the wake of this event. 

The Jena 6 parents have held up admirably under the onslaught.  They know they need to get the money into the hands of a trustee with a reputation for integrity, and they will.  Money isn’t missing.  This was a minor problem with a simple solution until celebrities started firing inexplicable broadsides at grassroots organizers.

The media’s interest in the money shows that Jena has legs.  We won’t be seeing any headlines until things fire up in the courtroom.  So let’s all sit back and let the lawyers work quietly behind the scenes.  The fate of the Jena 6 is now in their hands.

New Reports Claim Nearly Half A Million Dollars Donated to Jena Six is Missing

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Fox News

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: “Impact” segment tonight, you may remember the case of the Jena Six. African-American high school students charged with beating a white student after a racial incident at Jena High School, in Arkansas.

Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders rallied to assist the six students. And reports say about $500,000 was raised for their defense.

Now there are questions about where that money has gone. Pictures of defendant Robert Bailey with $100 bills have surfaced on the Net. Two other defendants appeared well heeled at a music awards event they traveled to.

Joining us now from Washington, where he’s leading a march for justice on Friday, is Al Sharpton. And from Dallas, Texas, Howard Witt, who broke the story for The Chicago Tribune.

You know, I like The Chicago Tribune. I think it’s one of the few newspapers in the country where you get an honest appraisal of the news. But if you had to put a headline on this story, Mr. Witt, what would it be?

HOWARD WITT, CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Well, I think the headline would be lots of question marks around the funds that were collected for the Jena Six defendants. There’s been rumors about the fate of that money floating around the Internet as you mentioned for quite a while now. Several weeks, but the controversy really broke into the open last week when Michael Basin, who’s a prominent black talk radio host based here in Dallas, actually went on the air and accused a group called Color of Change of having actually somehow been shady with the money.

The irony of that is that Color of Change, which has raised about $212,000 for the Jena Six defendants, they’re the only group in all of this that actually has been completely transparent about how they have distributed the money. And they’ve basically shown how they have paid it all out to the attorneys.

There’s a lot of other questions regarding the rest of this money hanging out there. And including Michael Basin himself, who until I started asking questions about it, he himself was not forthcoming about how he had distributed the money. So there’s a lot of questions.

O’REILLY: OK, how many charities are there? And they’re not really charities because they were just funds set up. But how many funds are there that are helping these defendants?

WITT:Well, it’s an unknown question how many there really are. There’s a lot of Internet scammers out there who were raising money on behalf of the Jena Six. And no one knows where that money went.

But of the big major groups, there’s Color of Change which is an Internet based civil rights group and an established group. There’s the NAACP. And there’s a group called the Jena Six Defense Fund. That is money that is controlled by the parents themselves. And it’s sitting in a bank account in Jena, Louisiana, controlled by the parents. Those are the major sources.

O’REILLY:All right, so the parents themselves are controlling — now we hear that the parents have bought Escalades, big cars, are driving around in them since these funds were established. Is that true?

WITT: No, I — I have no — see no evidence that that’s true. That’s one of the rumors that’s out there. There’s no evidence that that’s the case. The problem is in the absence of any kind of transparency about this money.

O’REILLY: Yes, you don’t know. You don’t know. But you haven’t found out that they did indeed spend money on expensive cars? That you haven’t found out, OK.

WITT: No, there’s no evidence that they’ve misused the money, but no one knows for sure because.

O’REILLY: Well, what — all right, what about this Robert Bailey, the picture where he’s holding $100 bills and his mother says that he earned this money parking cars. Do you know anything about this specifically?

WITT: Yes, in fact, I talked to his mother about that. Not parking cars. He works as a parks maintenance worker down there in Jena. She claims that that’s money he earned on his job. It could be.

The question is, you know, it wasn’t a very smart thing for him to do to be seen posing with this money, because again it just seems like

O’REILLY: Yes, $100 bills, I mean, that’s a lot of park maintenance.

All right, Reverend Sharpton, now when you have this kind of a flow of funds — and you’ve been doing this for a long time — into a system where there is an umbrella accountability here, one agency is accountable, the others aren’t, there is, you know, the perception that something may be going wrong because a half million dollars is a lot of dough. How do you see it?

AL SHARPTON, REV., CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER:Well, I think, first of all, let’s not confuse many of us that were involved had nothing to do with the fundraising. National Action Network, my group, had nothing to do with any of the funds. And so when we say civil rights leaders protested and put all that in with who’s on the Internet, those are not the same parties.

Secondly, I think that when you talk about the group Color of Change did over $200,000, that’s half of the money that you’re saying was raised. So half of it, you are saying is transparent.

As I understand state law, that you make annual reports. And people are required to report what they did in `07 and `08. So are we asking here for people to have to do a transparent report before it is due? And whether or not that is a legal requirement is another question, I don’t know.

I would be — I’m very happy to hear him say that there is no evidence that the parents have bought Escalades. There’s no evidence of people running around, misusing the money personally with the family. So I think this is all about a distraction.

I think Michael Basdin, because he was one of the moving forces of the protests, has this for Friday, was concerned about that and concerned about the families. And he legitimately raised it. He used his platform to do it.

When there was answers, he apologized. And I think that’s the responsible thing to do. But I think in any movement, there’s always distractions. At the end of the day, what are we saying? The parents we don’t think did anything. We don’t know who did, but it just looks funny.

O’REILLY: Well, it looks funny. And whenever you have cash, you guys know, whenever there’s cash coming in, you got to account for it.

SHARPTON: All right. Well, let me ask a question. Do you, Mr. Witt, have any evidence that someone has done something wrong with the money? Who? I mean, let’s say. Rather than tarnish a movement for justice with some ifs and maybes, be straight. What is it that you’re saying is happening?

O’REILLY: Well, I think he’s just raising questions. I mean, Mr. Witt — as a journalist, I would raise them, too.

SHARPTON: Well, let’s raise the question about unequal justice. Let’s raise the question about the cost.

O’REILLY: Well, I think we’ve already done that, reverend. You’ve been on this program and every other program raising the questions.

SHARPTON:You’ve been very fair about that, Mr. O’Reilly. But what I’m saying is to raise the question without any substantive charge is really a distraction.

O’REILLY: No, no, no. That’s where you’re — reverend, now if I’m going to train you in journalism, you got to listen to me now.

SHARPTON: All right. Go ahead.

O’REILLY:You raise the question and then evidence comes forth.

SHARPTON: Right.

O’REILLY: It’s like Watergate.

SHARPTON: And my question is.

O’REILLY: You have a little evidence, and then it starts to grow. This is a legitimate story.

SHARPTON:My question is if you are showing me journalism, the question is that if you’re already saying there’s no Escalades, there’s no evidence of splurging, then what is the question?

O’REILLY: The question is where’s the other $250,000? And what’s being done with it? Gentlemen..

SHARPTON: And who are you asking the question.

O’REILLY: And we will stay on this story. Reverend.

SHARPTON: And you need to ask those that raised it, because.

O’REILLY: And we are going to do it. We’re going to do it.

SHARPTON: (INAUDIBLE) did not raise the money.

O’REILLY: All right.

SHARPTON: And I think he would tell you that.

O’REILLY: If you want to get some exercise, you can join the reverend in D.C. on Friday. He’ll be marching for justice as we do here every day on “The Factor .” Gentlemen, thanks very much.

No real surprise here.  Judge Mauffray was uncomfortable with the media presence in his courtroom during Mychal Bell’s trial in late June–and that was before Jena became a national story.  But the legal precedent for allowing media into the courtroom in trials of this nature was simply too strong, so Mauffray abandoned that fortress and retreated to the “no media in hearings” position.  That probably won’t stand either; but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

chicagotribune.com

TRIBUNE UPDATE

Judge says he’ll open Jena trial to public

But jurist won’t allow access to preliminary hearings

By Howard Witt

Tribune senior correspondent

9:08 PM CST, November 15, 2007

HOUSTON

Replying to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of U.S. media companies, the judge overseeing the trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, reversed course Thursday and agreed to open Bell’s upcoming juvenile trial to the public.

But LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, in a court filing, maintained that he is not required to open pre-trial hearings in Bell’s case to the news media or the public, and he argued that the media lawsuit seeking full access to Bell’s case should be dismissed.

The lawsuit, initiated by the Chicago Tribune and joined by the Associated Press, The New York Times Co., CNN and other major media organizations, asserts that Mauffray’s earlier decision to close all the proceedings in Bell’s case runs counter to Louisiana juvenile laws and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions.

The suit cites, among other arguments, a 2004 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that all juvenile proceedings involving certain categories of violent crime must be conducted in open court.

“Judge Mauffray does acknowledge that [sections of the Louisiana Children’s Code] permit or require adjudication, disposition and modification hearings in those specified cases to be public, and he intends to comply with applicable law,” Mauffray’s attorney, Donald Wilson, wrote in response to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is set to be heard Wednesday. Bell, 17, is scheduled to go on trial Dec. 6 on charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy for his alleged part in an attack on a white student at Jena High School last December.

Six black teenagers have been charged with jumping the white student and kicking him while he lay unconscious. The incident capped months of violent racial tensions in the small, mostly white central Louisiana town, and civil rights leaders have asserted that the charges against the black youths were excessive.

Bell was initially tried and convicted of the charges as an adult, but an appellate court threw out the conviction, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

hwitt@tribune.com

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Please give this recent survey from the Pew Research Center you careful attention.  I have linked you to the full report instead of summary articles because the document deserves to be read in full. 

It is easy to pontificate about “perception gaps” between white and black Americans (I do it all the time), but sometimes we need to wrestle with objective statistical surveys.  Do black and white Americans differ in their perceptions?  It all depends on the question.

For the most part, blacks and whites like each other just fine.  There is little evidence of widespread bigotry in the Pew numbers.  But ask whether African Americans experience prejudice on a day-to-day basis and an enormous perception gap is immediately apparent.  Whites don’t think prejudice is a big deal; blacks disagree.  Respondents, regardless of race, tend to think integrated schools are a good thing.  But whites are far more likely than blacks to value neighborhood schools over integrated schools.  This, I suspect, is because black parents know the quality of education rises with the percentage of white students, while white parents know that the presence of black students does not correlate positively with good teachers or state of the art facilities.

On the other hand, the numbers suggest that a slim majority of African Americans believe that if black workers are having trouble getting ahead it is their own damn fault.  Black support for Bill Cosby is twenty percentage points higher than support for Al Sharpton (Although Sharpton’s approval ratings among African American respondents are respectable). 

For some reason, the survey didn’t think to ask white respondents what they think of black notables.  My guess is that Sharpton’s approval ratings would have been dramatically lower among whites than blacks–but that must remain a gut feeling because the folks at Pew didn’t ask the question.

 The most dramatic perception gap of all appears when black and white respondents are asked about their confidence in the criminal justice system.  Forty-two percent of whites (hardly an encouraging figure) believe the police can be trusted to treat the races equally; among blacks, that figure drops to fourteen percent.

Curiously, the criminal justice questions are restricted to attitudes toward police officers–a clear sign that the folks asking the questions (a) were tied to questions originally formulated in the 1970s, and (b) have precious little first-hand experience with the criminal justice system.  Ask blacks and whites how much confidence they place in the courts, or how they perceive the credibility of all-white juries, and you would really see a gap open up. 

Nonetheless, the statistics provided validate the perception gap I have been blathering on about.

By the way, negative attitudes toward police officers are highly correlated with income level.  Poor respondents, black, white and Latino, hold the police in low regard.  This is largely because law enforcement has a tendency to treat the residents of poor neighborhoods like potential criminals.  People get tired of the suspicion.

The Pew report reveals some trends that should give criminal justice reform advocates more than a moment’s pause.  For one thing, black people are just as likely to have a low view of black people as white people do.  This is particularly true of high-income, Republican-leaning, African Americans.  Most black respondents take a dim view of the Hip Hop industry (naughty lyrics seem to be the big problem here), and concern over issues like low marriage rates and high birthrates among unmarried mothers are extraordinarily high in the black community. 

In other words, trendy white liberal skepticism about “family values” doesn’t resonate in black America.  The poorer black respondents are, the more likely they are to express concerns about the social disintegration of the neighborhoods they live in. 

The numbers indicate a large and growing “values gap” between the black middle class and low-income black people.  Most black respondents feel that the black middle class is becoming more like the white middle class even as the gap between low and high-income blacks widens.  

In other words, the black middle class distrusts low income blacks almost as much as it distrusts the criminal justice system. 

The Pew survey suggests that black families are almost three times as likely to live in poverty as are white families.   Poverty, as everyone knows, is highly associated with incarceration.  This helps explain why white America (66% of the general population) accounts for only 36% of the prison population while black Americans (a scant 12% of the population) comprise 40% of the prison population.

The incarceration gap between middle class and poor blacks is almost as great as the incarceration gap between whites and blacks generally.   Social influence rises with income and social class.  The more prominent the citizen, the less likely they are to have first-hand experience with the inequities of the criminal justice system.  This explains why it can be so difficult to get black opinion leaders on the right side of criminal justice reform issues.

These trends help explain the steadily falling popularity of black preachers and the NAACP.  The civil rights crisis used to impact all black Americans; now the poor are affected far more profoundly than the affluent.  Black Americans are much more aware of the minequities within the criminal justice system than are white Americans; but awareness doesn’t always translate into advocacy. 

We have seen that a slim majority of black respondents believe that black workers should blame themselves for their failure to get ahead.  I suspect there is a similar tendency for the black middle class to blame young black males who run afoul of the law for their plight: “do the crime, do the time.”

This doesn’t mean that black America is deaf to the cry for justice; it just means the issues must be spelled out with prisine clarity if you want the support of mainstream black America. 

Take Jena, for example.  The 20,000 people who came to the central Louisiana town on September 20th were overwhelmingly middle class.  They rode the buses because they identified with the Jena 6.  Support cooled, however, when one of the defendants made the mistake of emulating his Hip Hop heroes by stuffing large denomination bills into his mouth on MySpace.  Days later, when two Jena 6 defendants showed up at the Hip Hop awards “thugin'” for the cameras in trendy Hip Hop attire, support for the defendants declined further.

The Jena 6 still enjoy widespread support within the black community, but that support cannot be taken for granted.  I don’t blame the kids for their missteps; I blame civil rights celebrities who “market” the defendants and their families. 

The Jena 6 are normal kids caught up in a toxic situation–nothing more, nothing less.  They are not heroes, nor are they commodities to be hawked in the public square.  They are human beings who need to be protected from the American celebrity machine.  We need to humanize the victims of the New Jim Crow–we do not need to glamorize them.

The Pew survey makes one thing clear: white America represents the ultimate challenge for criminal justice reformers.  Most white folks believe that life is getting better for black people, that the police treat all people equally, and that black Americans face little prejudice in their daily lives.  We won’t get anywhere until we start to change these perceptions.  Public policy is shaped by popular perception.

If the Pew survey is anything to go by (and I think it is) we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Journalists report the facts; they aren’t supposed to weigh them.  They fly to Alexandria, rent a car, drive to Jena, gather quotes from five or six white people, three or four black people, then it’s back to the airport and home. 

He-said-she-said journalism is supposed to be balanced and objective; it is really a thinly veiled form of entertainment.  Dueling quotations create conflict, and conflict, as writing guru Robert McKee will tell you, provides the foundation for a good story.  Much journalism has all the balance and objectivity of a Punch and Judy puppet show.

James West Davidson is an historian.  Historians are trained to sift and weigh the vestigial remains of the past; the primary sources (usually written documents) that provide the only clues we have to go on.  As Sherlock Holmes frequently told Watson, not all clues are created equal.  There are self-serving red herrings designed to distort and cover up the truth; and there are luminous details that open windows on a distant world.

We can’t know with scientific certitude what happened in Jena.  Eye witness accounts conflict, so what are we to do?  Journalists serve up dueling quotations; historians probe for credibility.

Between 1989 and 1994, I was a doctoral student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  Few will be impressed by that fact, I’ll grant you.  Baptists have a largely-deserved reputation for valuing orthodoxy over objectivity; but the professors I toiled under didn’t fit the stereotype.  With degrees from places like Yale, the University of Chicago, Oxford and Boston University, these men and women had been drilled in the principles of “historiography”.  Sloppy thinking was not tolerated.  Doctoral students couldn’t get away with citing heaps of quotations from “the authorities”; every opinion was subjected to rigorous and critical scrutiny. 

“I realize that’s what Roland Bainton believed,” my professors would say; “but what do you think?”

I’m not sure why I spent five purgatorial years working on an unmarketable degree.  I had three young children at the time and we lived below the poverty line.  To make matters worse, the once-venerable Southern Seminary was being taken over by fundamentalist zealots while I slaved away on my dissertation.  My professors likened “the fundies” to barbarians at the gates of Rome.  Objective scholarship was anathema to these Visigoths.  In their view, a seminary existed to defend the tenets of orthodoxy as “orthodoxy” was defined by the folks in the pews.

The barbarians had a point, of course; parish ministers can’t afford to be too objective unless they enjoy loading U-Haul trucks.

As a pastor, my training was an albatross; but once I found myself engaged in criminal justice reform work, the strict tenets of historiography became profoundly relevant.  When you are dealing with issues of race and crime you confront prosecutors skilled in the arts of character assassination; small town editors marching in lock step with the affluent and the influential; police officers who relate to poor neighborhoods the way occupying armies relate to a vanquished population.  In other words, you’re up against great, heaping, malodorous piles of bull shit.  The canons of historiography come in very handy when you need to blow a hole through the crap and get to the truth. 

Getting “the facts” ain’t easy when it is in everyone’s best interest to fudge and obfuscate.  So it was in Tulia; so it was in Church Point, Louisiana; so it is in Jena.

James West Davidson is the author of They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race.  At the turn of the 20th century, Ms. Wells cut through the cant and propaganda printed in white Southern newspapers to get to the real facts about race riots and lynchings.  The editors of the Jena Times, Mr. Davidson believes, are following in a long and ignoble tradition when they promote a revisionist history that raises far more questions than it answers.

I agree.

Jena Is More than Jena and a Noose Is More than a Nuisance

By James West Davidson

Mr. Davidson is a historian and the author of the recently published ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race.

There’s no need any longer to make Jena, Louisiana our whipping boy. Over the past few weeks the New York Times, the Washington Post and other papers have catalogued a string of incidents in which nooses were displayed in New York City, Long Island, College Park, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Macon, Greensboro, and San Antonio.

The nooses were hung on flagpoles, strung up in a police locker room, placed on a Coast Guard ship, dangled from the stage of a Memphis theater, looped over the door of a professor’s office, and displayed with the blackened face of a stuffed animal stuck through.

Meanwhile some folks in Jena were looking to put the troubles there in a more hopeful light. “If you compare us today to fifty years ago,” pointed out one school board member, “we have come a long way.”

No doubt the nation has come even further from the nadir of race relations in the 1890s, when the redoubtable Ida B. Wells of Memphis began her campaign against lynching. Born a slave around the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, Wells was a schoolteacher before launching her campaign against white violence. During those years, not just noose hangings but lynchings were being reported once or twice a week.

If she were alive today, Wells (or Wells-Barnett as she was known, after marrying in 1895) would surely grant the progress made. But the lynching in 1892 that led her to become an activist bears more than a little similarity to the incident at Jena. Not in the level of violence, but in the way events unfolded and the way the nation reacted to them.

Jena began with a schoolyard quarrel: black students asking if they could sit under a tree where whites congregated; two nooses hung in evident retaliation; several brawls the following week. In Memphis in 1892, the spark was a fight over a game of marbles at “the Bend,” a section on the city outskirts. A black boy bested a white boy in a scuffle; the white boy’s father thrashed the black boy; black parents gathered to protest.

The violence soon escalated. Plainclothes police raided a nearby black-owned grocery, sent there by the white owner of a rival grocery. When the black proprietors opened fire on what they believed was a lawless mob, they and other bystanders were arrested. Four nights later a real mob snatched the storeowners from jail and riddled them with bullets.

At the time Wells had already left teaching to become a journalist protesting the deteriorating state of race relations. “Separate car” laws were being enacted for intercity railroads, as a full-blown policy of segregation spread across the South. Twice Wells was ejected from the first-class “ladies car,” and twice she successfully sued the railroads for damages. (The Tennessee supreme court eventually ruled against her on appeal.)

Wells was out of town when the Memphis lynching occurred. Her absence, though, may have helped open her eyes to the underlying dynamics of lynching. Being away, she had to glean her information from white newspaper accounts, which spoke breathlessly about a “nest of turbulent and unruly negroes” who provoked the police.

But in this case Wells knew the accused personally. Thomas Moss was a close friend, a gentle and decent man. One of the supposedly “unruly” storeowners, he was found lying in a pool of blood, still carrying the pamphlets he used to teach Sunday school.

The massive distortions in the newspapers led Wells to realize that the other accounts of black crimes and white mobs were murky at best and utterly unreliable at worst. In the future, when news of a lynching broke, her first move was to travel to the scene to obtain direct information.

With Jena, the national press has shown only modest interest in imitating Wells. Most stories have relied on local accounts, concentrating on whether residents believed media coverage to be “fair.” The Jena Times, swamped by an “overwhelming number of requests from outside media,” assembled a chronology that firmly stated, among other things, that “there was no racial motivation behind the nooses and that the incident was a prank.” According to a child welfare supervisor who interviewed the perpetrators, “They honestly had no knowledge of the history concerning nooses and black citizens. This may seem hard to believe for some people, but this is exactly what everyone on the committee determined.”

Wells would have snorted in disbelief. If the nooses were not meant to intimidate, what was the point of this innocent “prank”? Why a noose and not, let us say, jockey shorts hung from the tree? What were the boys thinking and what was their motivation? On this the Jena Times remained mum. And even if the boys had “no knowledge of the history” of lynching, what does this say about the state of social studies courses being taught?

But we need not—should not—focus on Jena alone. The latest rash of noose sightings makes clear that intimidation remains at the heart of the act. Stay in your place. Keep away from white jobs.

At the construction site near Pittsburgh where one noose turned up, the white boss dismissed its placement as “just a joke.” Another “prank,” like Jena.

Wells understood differently. Lynching “is a national crime and requires a national remedy,” she insisted in her day. We should be exploring why, despite the demise of lynching, nooses and intimidation remain a clear threat to the wellbeing of our nation. The press should lead the way.

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.