Andrew Stephen , US Editor for the British New Statesman, came away from Jena, Louisiana with Tom Wolfe’s question ringing in his ears, “Why is there such a hunger in America to be lied to about race?”

Everyone associated with the Jena story is talking about liars and their damned lies.  Craig Franklin, co-editor of the Jena Times, thinks the liberal media is lying about the facts in Jena.  Reed Walters, pontificating from the lofty perch of the New York Times op-ed page, has leveled similar charges.  Black conservatives are scoring points with their white constituents by debunking the idea that Southern racism plays the slightest role in the criminal justice system.  It’s all lies . . . damned lies.

My critics assure me that the truth is sweeping the nation, and soon all men shall know that the Jena story I cooked up back in January is nothing but a bleeding heart, n-loving fantasy. 

Which brings us back to Mr. Wolfe’s question: Why is there such a hunger in America to be lied to about race?”  Why do we see the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitoropening their hallowed pages to the thin gruel Craig Franklin and DA Walters have been serving up?  Why is Middle America (including, I fear, a good percentage of white progressives) so willing to gulp down the convenient untruths perpetuated by desperate hacks like Jason Whitlock?

In part, I suspect, it’s an aesthetic recoil from sloganeering civil rights leaders more interested in jailing dim-witted high school students than in winning a modicum of justice for the Jena 6 defendants. 

But even here, Wolfe’s question reasserts itself.  America is brimming with huxters selling their wares in the open marketplace (it’s how we do business here).  So why are the Revs. Sharpton and Jackson met with such shrill denunciation each time they open their mouths? 

It should be remembered that Dr. King was routinely slandered in much the same way.  Could it be that Sharpton and Jackson are villified because, in the midst of all the opportunistic bombast, they speak uncomfortable truths about America?

The Jena story was playing in Britain, China and South Africa before it made much of a dent in the American consciousness.  America is widely regarded as the quintessential racist nation.  Much of the criticism is hypocrtical–the powerless always enjoy thumbing their noses at the powerful, and they usually aren’t too creful with the facts.  But, again, in the midst of all the self-serving condescension we find a disturbing kernel of truth: America is still living with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, whether or not we like to admit it.

 And we don’t like to admit it, do we?  We would rather crawl through broken glass than face the hard questions.  Brits, on the other hand, are perfectly willing to face our hard questions for us.  So, tell us, Mr. Stephen, why is there such a hunger in America to be lied to about race?

The Deep South, the white tree, the noose

Andrew Stephen

Published 25 October 2007

Shocking events in small-town Louisiana are confronting white Americans with a poisonous racism they usually ignore.

You have to drive 223 miles north-west of New Orleans and deep into the heart of Louisiana before you finally reach the town, which has a population of just 3,000. “Welcome to Jena,” says the signpost. “A Nice Place To Call Home.” True, it has a McDonald’s and a Wal-Mart if you like that sort of thing; but it is also poor and determinedly white, with an annual per-capita income of less than $14,000, and just 12 per cent of its popu lation is black. That means white people still rule Jena: civil rights reforms have passed it by, and housing, churches and even the cemetery are rigidly segregated. It is part of LaSalle Parish, which back in 1991 cast 4,910 votes for David Duke – a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and admirer of Hitler – and only 2,432 for the previous and future Democratic governor of Louisiana.

Thanks to word of mouth, the unstinting attention of black radio stations and (at last) muted coverage from the mainstream media, however, Jena is fast becoming as disconcertingly symbolic of 21st-century racial turmoil as places like Little Rock, Selma and Montgomery were in the 20th century. On a slow-moving march last month that stretched for miles beyond Jena itself, leaders such as the Reverends Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III linked arms with countless thousands of demonstrators to protest against what they see as the racism, hatred and injustice evoked by Jena. The likes of the rappers Mos Def, Salt’n’Pepa and Ice Cube joined them; and the rock singer John Cougar Mellencamp has already become the Joan Baez of this new era, singing his protest song “Jena” when he performed at the opening game in the NFL season on 6 September.

I will come to the reasons why Jena symbolises what Jackson calls “a defining moment” in the 21st-century civil rights movement shortly. First, however, a brief personal experience. Last year I wrote a long article for the Washington Post about slavery and its legacy of present-day racism, and found myself overwhelmed with emails from readers; two more, in fact, arrived just last week. Besides those from the usual crackpots and from middle-class white folk expressing polite scepticism, the overwhelming majority were from black people, repeating over and over again the same message, something like: “We already knew all about this, but thanks for bringing it to a wider audience.”

A foreigner, it seemed, had exposed an issue rarely faced here, in the newspaper of the nation’s capital or elsewhere in the white media. I found myself appearing on coast-to-coast black radio shows I didn’t even know existed – hosted by black broadcasters such as Michael Baisden and Tom Joyner, whom I later discovered were prominent early voices exposing the Jena scandals – and I realised, after almost two decades of living in the United States and complacently assuming that race relations were steadily improving, that so much of the 13 per cent of America that is black still considers itself ignored, forgotten and unheard in the white world that surrounds it.

“The real question here is why is there such a hunger in America to be lied to about race?” is how Tom Wolfe posed the conundrum two decades ago. Like anti-Semitism, racism in America today is rife but has been driven un derground since the 1964-65 legal reforms that followed the cataclysms of Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery. The statistics speak for themselves: black people are still perceived today as threats, human dangers that have to be kept down and contained, as they were from the earliest days of slavery.

No less an authority than the US justice department tells us that a black man in 2007 is three times more likely to be sent to prison than a white man; half the country’s prison population is black, and one in three black men in their thirties has a prison record. A black person is three times more likely to have his or her car searched than a white one, and black people are meted out prison sentences 20 per cent longer on average than those their white peers receive for identical crimes. Whites use illegal drugs more than blacks, but blacks are still 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drugs offences.

I can already hear the sublimated voices of the James Watsons of this world, whispering that this is all because black people have genetically lower IQs and are more disposed to crime. I invite Professor Watson to leave his Long Island lab and come down to Jena to investigate racial realities for himself – reading, for example, the handwritten witness statements of both black and white teenagers concerned in the so-called “Jena Six” tragedy. Having done so myself, I can say that those of the white youths involved are noticeably even more illiterate.

The saga began on 31 August last year, when a new black teenage pupil at Jena High School named Kenneth Purvis asked an assistant prin cipal if he was allowed to sit under a large oak in the school grounds known as “the white tree” – where only white kids, usually, shaded themselves from the searing hot sun of the Deep South. He was told he could, and duly did so. Next morning two (possibly three) nooses were found hanging from the tree’s branches, draped in school colours. The noose is symbol of 4,743 documented lynchings between 1882 and 1968 – hundreds of them, at the very least, in Louisiana.

Three white boys were soon identified as the culprits and the principal tried to expel them, but his decision was overturned by the school’s “expulsion committee”. Black students staged an impromptu protest under the tree and when police moved in with LaSalle’s district attorney, one Reed Waters, a school assembly was called. “See this pen?” Waters asked the kids rhetorically. “I can end your lives with a pen.” Waters later denied that he was specifically addressing the black youngsters, but white and black students alike – their outlooks conditioned by generations of racist hatred and violence – had few doubts about whom he was addressing.

Theft of a firearm

Tensions simmered until the end of the football season – one of the few diversions available for Jena teenagers – but on 1 December, five black schoolboys tried to join a Friday-night party in the town attended by both whites and blacks. Seventeen-year-old Robert Bailey, one of the black youths, was immediately attacked outside (with a beer bottle, he said later) by a 22-year-old white man, who was subsequently put on probation for assault.

The next day Bailey and two other black kids from Jena High were in the Gotta-Go Grocery store when a white schoolmate who had been at the party the previous night approached them; the white boy, Matt Windham, says he was threatened by the three others, but acknowledges that he then went outside to his truck to fetch a 12-gauge riot shotgun that had been specially equipped with a black laser sight. Bailey and his two friends wrestled the gun away from Windham but were subsequently charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. Windham was never arrested or charged with anything whatsoever.

Back at Jena High the following Monday lunchtime, a 17-year-old white boy called Justin Barker started taunting Bailey in the school gym for having had his “ass whipped” by a white man the previous Friday night. Moments later, says Barker in his handwritten police statement (and you think I’m exaggerating when I write about the declining standards of US education?), “Me and my girl frend was walking out of the gym and a group of blacks was standing out side the door and when we got out of the door i told my girl frend to tern left to go up the side walk and when I ternt my back to the one of them sad this will teech you to run your Fucken mouth and that was it.”

It was certainly a vicious attack: Robert Bailey, his two friends who had been with him at the Gotta-Go Grocery and three or four other black teenage boys now stand accused of ambushing Barker outside the gym and of punching and kicking him unconscious. Barker’s girlfriend, in her own handwriting, takes up the story: “When he got nnocked out they still kicked him just as heard! When I saw what was goen on I started yelling . . . I grabed on of there arms and pulled him away! Well, I tryed!” Barker was treated at the local hospital for three hours for concussion, an eye that had swollen shut, and cuts and bruises to his face, ears and hand; but what is indisputable is that he felt well enough to attend Jena High’s ring ceremony for departing seniors that evening.

Deadly tennis shoes

Enter, at this point, the sternly unyielding white-authority figure of DA Reed Waters. He promptly charged Bailey and five others with attempted murder as well as conspiracy to commit murder, charges that carry mandatory sentences of ten to 50 years’ hard labour with no chance of probation or parole. The black men, ranging in this case from 14 to 18 years of age, represented those ever-present threats that had to be kept down and contained, you see. Waters insisted on charging Mychal Bell, 16, as an adult because he had a police record and had initiated the attack, Waters claimed.

The charges were subsequently reduced to aggravated battery and conspiracy. But Bell’s trial last June, the first of the six that was presided over by an all-white jury (none of the potential black jurors turned up, according to the autho rities), still presented Waters with a problem. Legally, a “deadly weapon” had to be used in aggravated battery. Waters therefore argued that the humdrum tennis shoes Bell was wearing at the time of the assault on Barker constituted deadly weapons, an argument the jury found persuasive. Bell was duly pronounced guilty, but appeal courts subsequently ruled that he should never have been tried as an adult in the first place. His retrial is set for 6 December, and trials for the remaining five have yet to be scheduled.

Nooses, those most terrifying symbols of white American aggression during the Jim Crow century that was supposed to have ended in the aftermath of the Birmingham and Selma mutinies, are now proliferating at the homes and workplaces of black people here, there and everywhere. The FBI has set up a special task force to try to stamp down on what is fast threatening to become the 21st-century version of burning crosses or Nazi swastikas. Now that the mainstream media are belatedly paying attention to what has been happening in Jena, so politicians, too, are sitting up. The federal House judiciary committee held its first hearing on the events a fortnight ago. Waters and most Republicans declined to attend.

Bell is still only 17 but has no hope of pursuing the career as a professional footballer that was a very real possibility not so long ago. He was released from prison on 27 September on $45,000 bail after being held for ten months on the Barker charges. Within a fortnight, however, he was back in a cell after yet another Louisiana judge ruled that he had violated his probation on un related charges. Meanwhile, two of the other defendants were greeted with a standing ovation when they appeared on stage at the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Hip-Hop Awards in Atlanta on 13 October: a potent visual symbol of America’s racial divisions that would have horrified most white Americans, had they been watching BET.

The outcome of America’s civil war (1861-65) was the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments between 1865 and 1870, outlawing slavery, granting full citizenship to everybody born in the US and giving the vote to all (men). The revolts of Birmingham in 1963 and Selma in 1965 led to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, respectively. None of these amendments or acts worked as well as they should have done in ridding America of the poisonous racism that still runs through its bloodstream. But might the 21st-century uprisings in Jena, I wonder, at last lead to truly significant progress?

Craig Franklin never dreamed he’d be writing a feature story for the Christian Science Monitor, just as Reed Walters never expected to see his name gracing the pages of the New York Times Op-Ed page.  

There is an old rule in journalism; when you can’t wring another drop of juice out of a story, flip the script–tell the world the press has been getting it wrong.  Telling the “real story” about Jena has become a cottage industry.

“Jena” has always been a disagreement between Alan Bean and Craig Franklin, co-editor of the Jena Times.  Craig and his father, Sammy Franklin devoted several gallons of ink to the noose incident and the arrest and prosecution of the Jena 6.  My “Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana” narrative owed much to the copious detail of their reporting.  The Franklins publish a first class small-town newspaper.

Those of you who have been reading my posts won’t need to read Franklin’s deathless prose (you’ve heard it all before) or my responses (I will touch on a few new issues, but not many).  But if you are new to this debate, this back-and-forth discussion should proove instructive.  My comments appear in italics.

Media myths about the Jena 6

A local journalist tells the story you haven’t heard.

By Craig Franklin

Jena, La.

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they’ve all heard the story of the “Jena 6.” White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.

There’s just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.

I would suggest that coverage of the march to Iraq would constitute a much more serious media meltdown.  As you will see from later comments, most of the “myths” Franklin addresses rarely appear in mainstream reporting.  Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune, the first mainstream journalist to cover the story on the national level, spent a week in Jena before writing a word.  Dozens of reporters have followed in his footsteps (to the point where overwhelmed Jena residents refuse to comment) and most of them have been equally careful. 

I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.

Actually, Abbey Brown of the Alexandria TownTalk and Tony Brown, an Alexandria journalist and talk show host, have given careful attention to this story from the day nooses appeared on a tree at the high school.

The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side’s statements – the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they’d read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.

Few mainstream reporters have repeated blog gossip–they prefer to copy one another.

The real story of Jena and the Jena 6 is quite different from what the national media presented. It’s time to set the record straight.

Myth 1: The Whites-Only Tree. There has never been a “whites-only” tree at Jena High School. Students of all races sat underneath this tree. When a student asked during an assembly at the start of school last year if anyone could sit under the tree, it evoked laughter from everyone present – blacks and whites. As reported by students in the assembly, the question was asked to make a joke and to drag out the assembly and avoid class.

The “lazy Negro theory” was invented to address an obvious question: “If the Jena high school courtyard is as integrated as Mr. Franklin claims, why did Kenneth Purvis ask if he could sit under the tree?  I do not know if Mr. Purvis was laughing nervously as he asked the question, and I don’t see that it matters.  Initially, Jena High students, black and white, freely admitted that the courtyard has always been segregated–the sidewalk serving as the line of demarcation.  While it is true that black students occasionally wandered to the white side of the courtyard, this was not typical behavior. 

Hence the question.  It should also be noted that Kenneth and a few friends tested out their new freedom by sitting under the tree after school.

Myth 2: Nooses a Signal to Black Students. An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of “Lonesome Dove.”) The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends. Another myth concerns their punishment, which was not a three-day suspension, but rather nine days at an alternative facility followed by two weeks of in-school suspension, Saturday detentions, attendance at Discipline Court, and evaluation by licensed mental-health professionals. The students who hung the nooses have not publicly come forward to give their version of events.

There are actually three competing noose theories.  The default position is well known: the nooses were hung in response to Kenneth Purvis’s question and the bold action of actually sitting under the tree. 

Recently, Jena residents have suggested the nooses were aimed at supporters of Jena’s next football opponent–the Mustangs.

The Lonesome Dove theory was initially freestanding: the kids watched the Western on television and were so impressed with the hanging scene, they decided to hang a few nooses of their own.  But no one could explain why they chose this particular tree, or why the nooses appeared the day after Kenneth’s question and the Principal’s answer. 

Now we learn that the nooses were a poke at white members of the rodeo team.  We are to believe that some white kids on the rodeo team were playfully suggesting that they were going to string up other white members of the team because . . .

You see the problem.  What could possibly follow the “because”?  Mr. Franklins’ desperation is painfully evident at this point.  He’s doing the best with what he’s got–but he ain’t got much.  You can hardly blame the mainstream media (or any sensible person) for preferring the original explanation.  It has the advantage of making sense.

Finally, Franklin’s theory can’t explain why then-principal Scott Windham was so horrified by the noose incident that he recommended expulsion for the school year.  If this was simply a white-on-white practical joke, Windham’s response can only be seen as a bizarre over-reaction. 

The logical conclusion is that Windham was never exposed to the theory Mr. Franklin is selling.  Is it just a coincidence that Mr. Windham was quickly shuffled to a less controversial position within the school administration.  Perhaps, but the timing raises questions.  The mainstream media, for better or worse, has given very little attention to this issue.

Myth 3: Nooses Were a Hate Crime. Although many believe the three white students should have been prosecuted for a hate crime for hanging the nooses, the incident did not meet the legal criteria for a federal hate crime. It also did not meet the standard for Louisiana’s hate-crime statute, and though widely condemned by all officials, there was no crime to charge the youths with.

Last week, US Attorney Don Washington, finally admitted that the noose hanging in Jena constituted a hate crime under federal law.  Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center has argued persuasively that the act also satisfies the Louisiana definition of a hate crime.

But, like Mr. Cohen, I agree with the basic thrust of Franklin’s argument here–the noose hangers should not have been charged with committing a hate crime because they are juveniles who didn’t understand the full import of their actions.  I have no doubt that the noose hangers would have felt remorse if the horror of the noose symbol had been adequately explained to them; but I remain skeptical.  Now that the “remorseful noose boys” theory is on the table, I’m sure the media will report it; but this new wrinkle only surfaced last week.

Myth 4: DA’s Threat to Black Students. When District Attorney Reed Walters spoke to Jena High students at an assembly in September, he did not tell black students that he could make their life miserable with “the stroke of a pen.” Instead, according to Walters, “two or three girls, white girls, were chit-chatting on their cellphones or playing with their cellphones right in the middle of my dissertation. I got a little irritated at them and said, ‘Pay attention to me. I am right now having to deal with an aggravated rape case where I’ve got to decide whether the death penalty applies or not.’ I said, ‘Look, I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make your life miserable so I want you to call me before you do something stupid.'”

Mr. Walters had been called to the assembly by police, who had been at the school earlier that day dealing with some students who were causing disturbances. Teachers and students have confirmed Walters’s version of events.

 No one has ever suggested that Reed Walters threatened to make the lives of students “miserable”–he said he could make their lives disappear (a slight difference in tone, you’ll agree).  Also, we must remember that school assemblies in Jena have traditionally been segregated.  That’s the way it was when the high school integrated in 1970; and that’s the way it has remained.  Black students insist he was looking at the black side of the auditorium when he issued his threat; but I don’t think it matters where he was looking.

We are being asked to believe that an irate Reed Walters told chatty white girls that he would use the power of his office to destroy their lives if they didn’t shut up.  This is nonsense; but even if it’s true, is that the kind of prosecutor you want in the LaSalle Parish courthouse?

The mainstream media has never done much with this episode–even though Reed Walters has admitted under oath that he uttered these threats four months after I attributed the words to him back in February.  Walters even explained the context of his remarks (and it had nothing to do with talkative white girls).  At a June 12th hearing, Mr. Walters explained that he didn’t see why he needed to take time away from his important work simply because high school students had blown the noose incident out of proportion.  The black and white students, he testified, should have been able to “work things out on their own”. 

Reed Walters understood why he was standing in the school auditorium.  Black students and their parents were outraged by the decision to treat the noose incident as a childish prank.  Earlier that day, virtually the entire black student body, led by the boys we now know as the Jena 6, had taken a defiant stand under the now-famous tree.  Most white kids had no problem with this gesture–but some took offense.  Push was coming to shove.  Racially charged shoving matches had been reported.  Tensions ran high.

Reed Walters came to Jena High School to calm things down.  Like Superintendent Breithaupt, Reed Walters believed the students and their parents were making a mountain out of a molehill.  His message was simple: drop the protest or I will use my prosecutorial authority to make you wish you had.  Settle down and I’ll be your best friend; keep fussing and I’ll be your worst enemy.

Given the context, that is the only message that makes sense.  What else could Walters have been driving at.  His words were addressed to the kids causing the fuss–and those kids were all black.  True, a vocal minority within the white student body took violent exception to the protest under the tree–but then, so did Mr. Walters. 

Mr. Franklin neglects to mention that black parents attended a school board meeting in the wake of the disciplinary committees’ decision to over-rule the recommendation of the principal.  The parents were refused a hearing because they weren’t on the agenda.  Shortly thereafter, the same parents made a brief presentation to the school board (a meeting covered in detail by the Jena Times) and were greeted with silence. 

Why, if the school board had been swayed by the white-on-white hate crime theory did they not explain themselves to these parents?  The two groups had a simple difference of opinion and eight of the nine board members were white.  They could do whatever they wanted to do, so they sat in stony silence.

Reed Walters was right about one thing–in “Lord of the Flies” fashion, the white and black students were left to “work things out for themselves”.  And sure enough, the prosecutor was waiting at the end of the trail, pen in hand.

The mainstream media, I must stress again, has never understood how damning all of this is for the DA.  Even bloggers tend to pass over the pen incident. 

Myth 5: The Fair Barn Party Incident. On Dec. 1, 2006, a private party – not an all-white party as reported – was held at the local community center called the Fair Barn. Robert Bailey Jr., soon to be one of the Jena 6, came to the party with others seeking admittance.

When they were denied entrance by the renter of the facility, a white male named Justin Sloan (not a Jena High student) at the party attacked Bailey and hit him in the face with his fist. This is reported in witness statements to police, including the victim, Robert Bailey, Jr.

Months later, Bailey contended he was hit in the head with a beer bottle and required stitches. No medical records show this ever occurred. Mr. Sloan was prosecuted for simple battery, which according to Louisiana law, is the proper charge for hitting someone with a fist.

Robert Bailey Jr. didn’t wait several months to come up with the “bottle” theory; that was his story when I interviewed him for two hours in the LaSalle Parish jail back in January of 2007 and he has never deviated from it.  The fact that he didn’t mention every detail of the assault in his report to the police doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  But the bottle rarely appears in mainstream reporting because the Fair Barn incident is rarely discussed.

The 22 year-0ld white male who assaulted Robert Bailey as he entered the Fair Barn continued his aggressively violent behavior even after adult chaperons had restrained him.  Hostilities continued in the parking lot.  The “lone assailant” theory runs contrary to everything we know about adolescent fights.  When your buddy throws a punch, you jump in to show you’ve got his back.  The same social dynamic was on display, with tragic consequences, at the high school a few days later.

There are several alternative explanations for the assault on Robert Bailey.  Some Jena residents have suggested that Robert was attacked because he was leaving the dance with a white girl.  Eye witness testimony lends no support to this version of events; I mention it only to indicate the power of rumor.  The story was told, and a lot of people believed it.

The common explanation, repeated here by Editor Franklin, is that Robert Bailey was trespassing and his assailant found this offensive.  Robert claims he was allowed to enter the dance with the proviso that he not cause trouble.  That last bit adds credence to the story–it’s not the sort of thing Robert would have invented. 

Several eye witnesses back up Robert’s account.  Let’s leave it to the lawyers to sort this one out, but it would be surprising for the police to limit the filing of charges to Robert’s attacker if they believed Robert had openly defied the party gatekeeper.  If that had been true, a charge of disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct would have been virtually inevitable.

The important question is never addressed: Why was Robert’s attacker so angry?  There is a backstory here that has never been told.  This wasn’t the first encounter between the two young men.  They, and their friends, had been feuding ever since the noose incident.

Myth 6: The “Gotta-Go” Grocery Incident. On Dec. 2, 2006, Bailey and two other black Jena High students were involved in an altercation at this local convenience store, stemming from the incident that occurred the night before. The three were accused by police of jumping a white man as he entered the store and stealing a shotgun from him. The two parties gave conflicting statements to police. However, two unrelated eye witnesses of the event gave statements that corresponded with that of the white male.

I congratulate Mr. Franklin for his frank admission that the Gotta Go incident was related to the fight at the Fair Barn.  But how are the two events related?  Robert claims that Matt Wyndham, the boy with the shotgun, was one of the people who jumped him at the dance.  The Gotta Go incident cannot be understood unless this connection is recognized.

Again, the mainstream media generally skips over the convenience store incident; bloggers are much more likely to give the altercation the attention it deserves.

Everyone agrees that Robert Bailey and two friends, Theo Shaw and Ryan Simmons, were exiting the Gotta Go just as Matt Wyndham was approaching the store, that a fight ensued, and that a shotgun was involved in some way.  Two explanations have been put forward.

Mr. Wyndam seems to suggest that Robert and his friends stole his gun and then beat him up.  This is why the three boys stand accused of theft and assault. 

One thing is clear: Robert was confronting a kid who had jumped him the night before.  Robert had a score to settle. 

Fearing the worst, Matt Windham ran back to his vehicle to get his pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun.  It is not unusual for young men who live in the country around Jena to ride with this sort of weapon.  It is also clear that Windham had time to remove the shotgun from behind the seat of his truck before Robert arrived on the scene.

Now, imagine that you are Robert Bailey.  Maybe you just wanted to have a few words with your assailant; maybe you wanted a taste of revenge.  Who knows?  What we do know is that Robert followed Wyndham to his truck and saw him pull out a shotgun.  Theo and Ryan dived behind parked vehicles.  Robert would have done the same, but he was too close to the man with the gun; so he grabbed Wyndham’s arm and they wrestled for control of the weapon.

Now, imagine you are Theo Shaw and Ryan Simmons.  You see your buddy wrestling for control of a dangerous weapon with the kid who helped beat him up the night before.  What do you do?  You help your friend.  In the circumstances, no other course of action is even thinkable.

Nor is it surprising that, collectively, Robert and his friends were able to get the gun away from their would-be assassin.  But now they’ve got another problem; what do they do with the gun?  Hand it back?

Of course they should have called the police.  But you’ve got the gun now, and you just got physical with the gun owner.  How is a white officer going to interpret the scene?  You don’t know, but you can guess.  So you run off with the gun and stash it in the old red truck behind Robert’s trailer.

This entire scenario is unthinkable if you take the assault at the Fair Barn out of the equation.  Robert had met white boys coming out of the Gotta Go a thousand times; Matt Wyndham had met black boys under similar circumstances just as often.  So why do we have a violent interlude on this particular morning?  Because there had been a fight the night before.  And why had there been a fight the night before?  Because two groups of boys (white friends of the noose hangers, and black football players) had maintained a running feud ever since Reed Walters and Roy Breithaupt made their rulings and issued their threats.

Myth 7: The Schoolyard Fight. The event on Dec. 4, 2006 was consistently labeled a “schoolyard fight.” But witnesses described something much more horrific. Several black students, including those now known as the Jena 6, barricaded an exit to the school’s gym as they lay in wait for Justin Barker to exit. (It remains unclear why Mr. Barker was specifically targeted.)

When Barker tried to leave through another exit, court testimony indicates, he was hit from behind by Mychal Bell. Multiple witnesses confirmed that Barker was immediately knocked unconscious and lay on the floor defenseless as several other black students joined together to kick and stomp him, with most of the blows striking his head. Police speculate that the motivation for the attack was related to the racially charged fights that had occurred during the previous weekend.

First, Mr. Franklin suggests that the assault on Justin Barker was an isolated incident; then he says it may have been a carryover from the white-initiated violence of the weekend.  Which explanation makes sense?

Franklin is certainly right that the assault on Barker should not be characterized as a “fight” in the usual sense; neither should the assault on Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn.  Both boys were cold cocked–the primary difference being that Justin Barker was knocked unconscious by the initial blow while Robert Bailey was not.

The details of the assault are difficult to establish on the basis of eyewitness testimony.  (I obtained copies of the eyewitness statements before a single defense attorney had seen them.)  Only one witness, Christy Martin, a teacher, advances the barricade theory suggested above.  The same teacher is the only witness able to provide a detailed list of who attacked Justin Barker (although she admits she did not witness the attack because of the alleged barricade). 

A statement from yet another teacher says that he gave Ms. Martin a list of black students who had been acting up during the lunch hour.  I will leave it to defense counsel to piece all of this together, but if you see a pattern developing, your eyes do not deceive you.

The mainstream media has never minimized the extent of Justin Barker’s injuries.  Bloggers, on both sides of this issue, have been guilty of distorting the facts to their own advantage.  Supporters of the Jena 6 frequently dismiss the incident as a schoolyard dust-up.  No one who has seen the pictures of Mr. Barker’s bruised face would make that claim–the kid absorbed a genuine thumping. 

We must remember that Mr. Barker was unconscious, and therefore defenseless, when he hit the ground.  There can be no question that he was kicked by black students (although the identity of the kickers is difficult to establish).  It is also likely that anyone rushing to the scene or away from the scene (and eyewitness accounts suggest a wild scramble in both directions) could have added to the damage, and it is difficult to know with any certainty how the damage was done.  But just look at the pictures and you can only sympathize with Justin Barker and his family.  If my kid was beaten that badly I would be devastated, so I have never had any trouble understanding how the Barker family feels about all of this.

But the extent of Justin’s injuries can be exaggerated.  No bones were broken (a surprising fact considering the alleged murderous intent of the alleged assailants); no organs were damaged, and although there was a great deal of bruising and swelling, few serious cuts have been reported.  My respect for the Barker family makes me reluctant to relate these facts, but at the end of the day, Justin was up and walking.  There was no spring in his step, to be sure, and his face looked almost as bad as it had looked when pictures were taken at the hospital.  His injuries, in short, were both serious and superficial; small wonder, then, that pundits on both sides of the divide would spin things to their advantage. 

The mainstream media, however, has generally exercised great caution in this regard.

Myth 8: The Attack Is Linked to the Nooses. Nowhere in any of the evidence, including statements by witnesses and defendants, is there any reference to the noose incident that occurred three months prior. This was confirmed by the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, Donald Washington, on numerous occasions.

Eyewitnesses didn’t mention the noose incident because they weren’t asked about it.  The primary difference between my account of the facts and Mr. Franklin’s is that he has always presented the assault on Mr. Barker as an isolated incident while I see it as the final act in a tragic string of intimately related events beginning with Kenneth Purvis’s question. 

The mainstream media falls somewhere between my version of the truth and Mr. Franklin’s.  No one should be surprised that public officials in Jena are threatened by my narrative–they should be.  If any of these cases come to trial (and Mr. Franklin should be praying that they don’t) far more connective tissue will come to public attention.

Myth 9: Mychal Bell’s All-White Jury. While it is true that Mychal Bell was convicted as an adult by an all-white jury in June (a conviction that was later overturned with his case sent to juvenile court), the jury selection process was completely legal and withstood an investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Court officials insist that several black residents were summoned for jury duty, but did not appear.

Craig Franklin is absolutely right about this.  Few black residents qualified for jury duty and most of the handful of people who did qualify didn’t show up for health reasons, because they were acquainted with the defendant, or because they knew the prosecutor would strike them.  Minority jurors are always the first strikes when, as is usually the case, the defendant is a minority.  This is all standard procedure, however, and says nothing about LaSalle Parish per se.

Myth 10: Jena 6 as Model Youth. While some members were simply caught up in the moment, others had criminal records. Bell had at least four prior violent-crime arrests before the December attack, and was on probation during most of this year.

Notice that Mr. Franklin stops with Mychal Bell’s well-publicized juvenile record.  No one in the mainstream media has suggested that the defendants were “Model Youth”.  In fact, the disturbing nature of the allegations would have killed this story if the strange behavior of public officials didn’t raise questions about the quality of justice the Jena 6 could expect in LaSalle Parish. 

These are normal, small-town kids.  African Americans tend to identify with the Jena 6 because their story is so familiar, not because they see these kids as latter day incarnations of sister Rosa.  Black Americans know that ordinary kids can get swept up in a pathological social dynamic not of their own making.

Myth 11: Jena Is One of the Most Racist Towns in America. Actually, Jena is a wonderful place to live for both whites and blacks. The media’s distortion and outright lies concerning the case have given this rural Louisiana town a label it doesn’t deserve.

In general, I am in agreement with Mr. Franklin here.  Bloggers and radio personalities have frequently exaggerated the extent and the nature of the racism on display in Jena.  Civil rights leaders, for the most part, have been more cautious on this score.  I have always argued that Jena is a mirror for America, and I stand by that assessment.  

It must be said, however, that LaSalle Parish has retained some disturbing vestiges of the old Jim Crow South that need to be faced honestly and openly (although, I admit that the current environment is hardly conducive to serious self-examination).  Kenneth Purvis asked a question that Jena officials couldn’t answer–the issue wasn’t considered a proper subject for public conversation.  Did an informal, but influential, color line exist on the high school campus?  If so, should Jena renounce that line and turn over a new leaf?  The adults of Jena weren’t ready for these questions and now the kids, black and white, are paying the price.

Myth 12: Two Levels of Justice. Outside protesters were convinced that the prosecution of the Jena 6 was proof of a racially biased system of justice. But the US Justice Department’s investigation found no evidence to support such a claim. In fact, the percentage of blacks and whites prosecuted matches the parish’s population statistics.

It must be remembered that the US Justice Department is part of the American criminal justice system.  Donald Washington was right: most of what happened in Jena was legal.  That is because we have decided to gift prosecutors and judges with great discretion.  Mr. Walters’ threat to black students, the prejudicial announcement he published in the Jena Times in mid-December, 2006, and a number of his recent comments are clearly grounds for recusal.  Ethical standards have been violated.  But were these acts illegal?  We’ll see–the ethical bar for prosecutors is set very low.

Friends of Justice decided to bring this case to the attention of the nation because it illustrates what is happening, albeit in less spectacular fashion, across the nation.  We aren’t trying to get the Jena 6 off; we’ve been trying to get them some justice.  The next few stages in the legal process will demonstrate whether we have succeeded.  I suspect we have.  There will be no repeat of the fiasco that was the Mychal Bell trial.

Regrettably, however, the mainstream media has rarely asked what the Jena story says about the fairness of the American criminal justice system.  “Objective” journalists aren’t supposed to even address that question–they can only repeat the critique advanced by their sources.  And thus far, sources like Al Sharpton haven’t settled on a consistent message.  One moment, Jena is a throwback to Jim Crow justice; the next moment, Jena is about contemporary America.  Al Sharpton et al, need to clarify their message.

The media has created the illusion that Jena is a uniquely racist community by asking Jena residents the wrong question: “Do you think this is a racist town?”

Black residents, with few exceptions, do see Jena as a racist community; white folks disagree.  Conflicting quotations give the appearance of a town divided along racial lines.  Tulia, Texas received the same treatment, with similar results.

Journalists should be asking if the Jena 6 can get a semblance of Justice in LaSalle Parish.  They should be asking if the plight of the Jena 6 suggests unresolved issues within the American criminal justice system. Unfortunately, the mainstream media doesn’t like that question because they fear that Middle America doesn’t like it. 

These are just 12 of many myths that are portrayed as fact in the media concerning the Jena cases. (A more thorough review of all events can be found at www.thejenatimes.net – click on Chronological Order of Events.)

Click on this link and you will get an expanded version of the official-friendly history the Jena Times has been sponsoring from the beginning.

As with the Duke Lacrosse case, the truth about Jena will eventually be known. But the town of Jena isn’t expecting any apologies from the media. They will probably never admit their error and have already moved on to the next “big” story. Meanwhile in Jena, residents are getting back to their regular routines, where friends are friends regardless of race. Just as it has been all along.

Craig Franklin is right to compare Jena with the Duke Lacrosse imbroglio.  Mike Nifong and Reed Walters presented the public with a version of history unsupported by the facts and simple common sense.  If Mr. Nifong’s victims had been represented by the lamentable Blaine Williams they would have been convicted at the end of a brief and unheralded trial.  Had Mr. NJifong focused on an anonymous college with low-status students, the media wouldn’t have paid much attention.  Thanks to highly paid, motivated defense counsel, the Duke defendants were able to clear their names.  Now that the Jena 6 enjoy the same advantage, the scales in the hands of the blind lady are beginning to tilt in the direction of justice.

• Craig Franklin is assistant editor of The Jena Times.

Alan Bean is executive director of Friends of Justice.

Funds Raised for Jena Six Defense Covering Legal Fees, but Monies Drying Up, Activists Say

 http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/jenasixmoney1023

Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2007
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaweb.com

As thousands rallied in a Jena, Louisiana ballpark on Sept. 20 to support six black youths facing stiff charges for fighting a white school mate, realtor Robert Clark climbed atop his recreational vehicle with a public address system and went to work raising money.

“I was looking at all the slogans — ‘Free Mychal Bell’ and ‘Free the Jena Six,’” Clark told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “I said we can raise enough to free Mychal Bell right now if everyone puts in $2.”

His goal was to raise about $10,000 to bail Bell out of jail. He ended up raising about $27,000, with the first contribution of 500 $1 bills coming from a Monroe, Louisiana motorcycle rider. A Louisiana doctor paid Bell’s bail. The money raised by Clark was handed over to Louis Scott, the lead attorney for Bell.

In the weeks since thousands flooded the tiny Louisiana town calling for equal justice, groups raising funds for the defense say the inward flow of money has tapered off.

The Color of Change, a California-based group that began accepting contributions for the Jena Six’s defense early in the case, reported raising about $230,000 to help pay lawyers and court expenses. To date, $170,000 has been paid, said James Rucker, executive director of Color of Change. Lawyers representing five of the six youths have received money. The organization is awaiting invoices from a sixth attorney, Rucker said.

“The fund was building and building, then it peaked just after Sept. 20,” Rucker told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “After a week or so, it slowed down.”

The organization is planning later to restart its aggressive fundraising because the families face additional legal expenses that have not been met, he said.

The NAACP has been accepting contributions on behalf of the Jena Six for several weeks through its website and regular mail, said Richard McIntire, spokesman for the national organization.

“We’ve received hundreds of contributions. The average contribution has been $42. The largest contribution has been the $10,000 from David Bowie,” McIntire told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We were asked by the Louisiana state NAACP chapter to assist in fundraising because it was believed that some supporters would feel more comfortable contributing to a national organization they were more familiar with.”

The monies collected by NAACP will be distributed equitably among the families of the six youths to be used for expenses, McIntire said. He could not release the total amount collected by NAACP for Jena youths to date.

Another Jena Six defense fund is being handled by the families of the youths. Efforts by BlackAmericaWeb.com to reach the families to discuss fundraising were unsuccessful.

Across the country people, launched efforts large and small to raise monies for defense once word of the students’ plight began spreading.

In Tampa, Fla., a group of poets and spoken word artists organized an event on Sept. 20 and raised more than $2,000, said Lizz Straight, a Tampa-based spoken word artist.

“I got a money order and sent it all to the post office box in Jena designated for the Jena Defense Fund,” Straight told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We just wanted to do something.”

Some fundraising efforts have also been subjected to suspicion.

“Just as I was standing on my RV raising money, there was another guy on the back of a pick-up truck who said he was raising money for Jena Six,” said Clark. “No one knows what happened to that money.”

Also, some conservative Web sites have charged that some of the money raised on behalf of the Jena Six has been used for cars and jewelry for family members.

Alan Bean of the Texas-based Friends of Justice said he believes money being raised for the Jena Six is being spent properly.

“Any time you have a situation where informal accounting is used, it is possible that there will be the perception that funds are being mishandled,” Bean told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

“Robert Clark’s passing of the hat on Sept. 20 has been our biggest single fundraiser to date,” Bell’s attorney Louis Scott told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Though some folks may think everything is over, there is still more to come,” he said.

Mychal Bell, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Robert Bailey Jr., and a juvenile were arrested after a Dec. 4 fight with Justin Barker at Jena High school. The fight followed weeks of tension in the school touched off just as school started in August when whites hung nooses in a tree. Blacks had sat under that tree that was a traditional gathering post for whites.

The students who hung the nooses were suspended from school for several days and given in-school suspension, though their action was later called a hate crime by federal officials.

The black youths were jailed and faced bonds of up to $138,000.

Bell was convicted this summer in the case, but it was overturned. He was released on bail, and his bond was reduced a week after the Sept. 20 rally. Then about two weeks ago, State District Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. — the same judge who had him locked up in an adult jail — ordered him placed into custody, saying that he violated terms of parole from an earlier juvenile incident and sentencing him to 18 months.

Bell’s case is now being handled in juvenile court since an appeals court in September overturned his conviction in adult court. Several of the six have court motions pending in early November, lawyers said.

Because Bell’s case is now in juvenile court, the record of proceedings is sealed.

The Associated Press on Monday joined more than two dozen other organizations, including newspapers, television networks and network affiliates, in filing a court petition that challenges a judge’s decision to seal Bell’s case and close court proceedings to the news media and public.

The group seeks permission to attend upcoming hearings in the case, to review transcripts of previous hearings and other court records and to lift a gag order against participants in the case.

Judge Mauffray’s restrictions “substantially limit the (media’s) ability to report to the public the facts about this significant case and unconstitutionally stifle the flow of information to the public,” the petition claims.

Lawyers for the news organizations filed the petition in the 28th Judicial District Court in LaSalle Parish, the court where Bell’s case is being heard. Mauffray is expected to hear the petition, according to Mary Ellen Roy, a lawyer for the news organizations.

Mauffray’s secretary, Bobbie Smith, said Monday afternoon that the judge hadn’t received the petition.

Carol Powell Lexing, one of Bell’s lawyers, said the case should be open to the public. District Attorney Reed Walters, she added, “opened the door” for that when he publicly discussed Bell’s prior criminal history.

“This is a highly publicized case,” she said. “The nation has a right to know what’s going on with it.”

—

Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Color Spectrum Teaches Us About Justice
Izetta Mobley

On September 20^th, I wore black. I wore black, as many Black people did, in solidarity with the Jena 6, who are quickly becoming the 21^st century’s Scottsboro Boys. I am wearing black, even though I have the profound urge and desire to wear red, a Maoist, seductive, bold red – on this, the possible new dawn, of what Al Sharpton has begun calling the “Civil Rights Movement of the 21^st Century.” I am wearing black, even as I have conflicting thoughts and emotions. I am eager for this moment of solidarity – a chance to acknowledge the injustice of inequitable sentencing. So, for today, it is my lipstick that is crimson.  

But on Wednesday October 31, 2007 I will be wearing red; that uncomfortably womanish shade of scarlet that suggests a certain looseness, appreciation of blues, likelihood to walk the streets at night, willingness to be loud, dedication to self, and a deep refusal to be rendered invisible. Red, the color so many of us are told to avoid, because of its Western association, with the marked, fallen woman; red, that rich, rapturous, full, so-bright-it-looks-as-if-it’s-had-a-good-meal ruby color, red so intense, it’s nearly purple. Yes, that color – that’s the one I want to mark my outrage at the rape and torture of Megan Williams, a 20-year old woman in West Virginia; the sexual assault of a Haitian woman and her son in West Palm Beach, Florida; and the continued violence visited upon women of color.

 Red is the color I choose, because I am not interested in being invisible. I am not interested in being forgotten. I am not interested in being a sidebar conversation. I am not interested, because I will be the womyn who walks into the room wearing the color red, who makes the conversation stop, and gently suggests another topic – the role of violence and abuse in women’s lives perhaps? I am interested in being seen. I am interested in hearing what communities of color, so recently outfitted in black to mark the injustice done to the Jena 6, will do to mark the violence and injustice done to Megan Williams.

 For me, the color red is about boldness. It is a vibrant color that cannot be ignored. Beyond the pink of feminism, and even the purple of womanism, red is a color that says, “stop and see.” On October 31^st, we ask women of color and their allies, to break the silence and invisibility surrounding violence against women of color, by choosing to be seen. By choosing to be vocal, to be brave, to be bold and work to stop violence against women.

Press Release

Well, on October 31^st, Women of color from around the country will be gathering in spaces where acts of violence against women of color occurred to reclaim that space and take a stand against continued gender and or racially motivated violence. Stop the Violence, End the Silence

participants will wear red and transform the space with red objects as a sign of reclamation.  Events will commence at 9 pm EST all across the country. Participants are encouraged to read a solidarity litany at the close of their self designed program.

This call to action was sparked by University of Chicago Political Science graduate student Fallon Wilson and activist Izetta Mobley. After seeing very little media attention given to the plight of Megan Williams, a black woman brutally raped and tortured by 6 people for a week, and that of a Haitian woman in Dunbar Village, Florida who was also raped and forced to perform oral sex on her son, they created a short film How Do We Keep a Social Movement Alive?, asking those who mobilized on behalf of the Jena 6 to not neglect these instances of violence against women of color. As more and more web viewers saw the short film, they learned of other stories two of which are now in the documentary and countless others that have made their way onto the website http://www.documentthesilence.wordpress.com . So far over 28,000 people have seen the short movie clip. The movie clip can be found here, http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=E44BFBCE67BF11DC9030000423CF037A
Women of color from across the country will also be organizing Town Hall meetings in their homes, places of worship, and work places in the weeks leading up to the 31^st . These meetings are designed to document the silences surrounding women of color stories of violence by creating a “safe space” for both women and men to share their stories. Participants are encouraged to outline ways that people can stay engaged and make a difference within their own communities. Wilson’s and Mobley’s short documentary, How Do We Keep a Social Movement Alive?, will be the starting point for these discussions. Confirmed sites of participation include Atlanta , Chicago , and New York .

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-jena_lawsuit_weboct23,1,6041280.story

Tribune, other media firms file motion to to end Jena trial secrecy

By Howard Witt | Tribune senior correspondent

8:39 PM CDT, October 22, 2007

HOUSTON – A coalition of major American media companies filed a 1st Amendment petition Monday seeking to open to public scrutiny the criminal trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the controversial Jena 6 case in Louisiana.

The legal motion, filed in LaSalle Parish District Court, challenges the decisions by presiding Judge J.P. Mauffray to close the proceedings in Bell’s juvenile case and order all the parties involved not to speak about it. Mauffray’s orders run counter to Louisiana juvenile laws, precedents set by the Louisiana Supreme Court and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions, the petition asserts.

The Chicago Tribune is the lead plaintiff in the petition, which has been joined by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Co., the Associated Press, the Hearst Corp., the Belo Corp., the Gannett Corp., CNN and ABC News.

Bell, 17, is one of six black teenagers charged in an attack last Dec. 4 at Jena High School in which a white student was beaten and knocked briefly unconscious. That incident capped months of violent racial tensions in the small, mostly white central Louisiana town that was set off after three white youths hung nooses from a tree at the high school a day after a black student had asked school administrators whether blacks were permitted to sit beneath its shade.

LaSalle Parish District Atty. Reed Walters initially charged the six black youths with attempted murder for the attack, even though the white victim was treated and released at a local hospital. After the case gained national attention following a May 20 Chicago Tribune story, Walters reduced the charges to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery, arguing that the tennis shoes the defendants allegedly wore constituted a deadly weapon.

National civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well as civil rights leaders including Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, have all contended that the charges against the black youths are unusually harsh and racially discriminatory in light of Walters’ decision not to file equivalent charges against whites in the town who attacked blacks. The Congressional Black Caucus has denounced the prosecution and the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing into the matter.

On Sept. 20, more than 20,000 African Americans from across the country marched through Jena in a peaceful protest in support of the Jena 6 defendants.

Walters has denied that race played any role in his prosecutorial decisions. But his handling of Bell’s case, as well as Mauffray’s rulings, have been fraught with complications and controversies.

Bell, the first defendant to come to trial, was originally tried in June as an adult and convicted by an all-white jury after his court-appointed public defender called no witnesses on his behalf. But a Louisiana appellate court vacated that conviction in September, finding that Walters and Mauffray had improperly tried Bell as an adult rather than a juvenile.

After Walters decided to refile the battery and conspiracy charges against Bell in juvenile court, Mauffray agreed to release Bell on $45,000 bond after the youth had been held for nearly 10 months on the adult charges. But two weeks later, Mauffray abruptly reversed that decision and ordered Bell jailed for 18 months on four prior juvenile convictions, for simple battery and criminal destruction of property.

Mauffray’s reasons for sending Bell back to jail are unknown because the judge ordered all of Bell’s juvenile proceedings to be conducted in private. The petition brought Monday by the media consortium asserts, however, that Bell’s case must be open to the public according to state and federal laws.

The motion cites, among other arguments, a 2004 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that all juvenile proceedings involving certain categories of violent crime—including aggravated second-degree battery—must be conducted in open court.

The petition also contends that Mauffray improperly imposed a gag order on lawyers in the case.

“The underlying facts of this case have been published, broadcast, editorialized about, blogged and talked about throughout the country and across the globe,” the petition states. “There is simply no reason to refuse to allow the trial participants to comment as well.”

hwitt@tribune.com

Much has been said about the mainstream media’s slow reaction to the case of the Jena 6.  Actually, I was very pleased with the media’s response time: a slow response is better than no response (which is what I usually get when I try to interest journalists in a criminal justice horror story).  The mainstream folks have atoned for their supposed sins by generating an avalanche of Jena 6 and noose stories.  The real anomaly is the silence of the progressive media, in general, and the liberal blogosphere, in particular.

D. Yobachi Boswell’s BlackPerspective.net features a probing assessment of the virtual whiteout on the Jena story within the progressive white blogoshpere.  It has been suggested by some white lefty types that the a-list blogs restrict their attention to beltway politics and legal issues.  Well, Mr. Boswell says, doesn’t the recent Jena hearing in DC qualify on both counts?  Yet, once again, white liberal bloggers are MIA.  

A number of posts from black bloggers raised similar questions after the massive march on September 20th.

Conservative bloggers love the Jena story because it provides a coveted opportunity to trash Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  This is especially true after the Jena Geek Squad started flooding the web with self-serving misinformation–the kind of nonsense that inevitably follows any published story on Jena with a comment section (including every post I write). 

But what about the white progressives?  Don’t they care about racial inequality, social justice, hate crimes and all that good liberal stuff?

Not really.  Why should they?  These people have never seen a family member or a close friend mangled beyond recognition by the criminal justice system.  White drug dealers (and every American college campus is crawling with them) have little to fear from the criminal justice system.  The Duke Lacrosse team brushed up against a vindictive prosecutor, but they had the legal firepower to turn the tables.  White people desperately want to believe that America is a level-playing-field meritocracy: a comforting notion for those on top.

White liberals (or progressives, if you prefer) love the moral clarity of the civil rights movement, a time when the issues were simple and straightforward.  Or were they?  If the typical white progressive was suddenly transported back to 1962, he would join the sensible center in condemning Martin Luther King as a race baiter, a shit-stirrer, a polarizing radical. 

Some would suggest that white liberals are silent on the Jena 6 issue because they don’t want to be associated with Mychal Bell’s oft-lamented criminal history.  But they were ignoring this story long before Mychal’s juvenile record became accessible to the public. 

Here’s the simple truth, white liberals don’t like the kind of people who are routinely chewed up and spit out by the American criminal justice system.  They love poor people in the abstract, but they generally don’t know any and, more to the point, they arrange their lives so as to insure that they never do.  Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it gets in the way of moral clarity.

Mr. Boswell loves the people who are routinely chewed up and spit out by the American criminal justice sytsem because some of them are his friends and family members.  How do I know that?  Call it an educated guess.  Boswell is African American, and intimate association with the system is, with very few exceptions, an inescapable aspect of the black experience in our country.

The upside is that even the silence of progressive white bloggers on the Jena affair is contributing to the long-postponed conversation this story has unleashed.  Our silence defines who we are every bit as much as our rhetoric.  A lot of what we are learning about ourselves ain’t pretty, but we need to know.

___________________________

Coverage of the Jena 6 Hearings by White Progressive Bloggosphere

Back on the day of the Jena 6 March, Pam at Pam’s House Blend lamented the White Bloggosphere being MIA on Jena 6.

Well, we were enlightened that one reason for this was that the top tier so-called “progressive” bloggers that Pam specifically mentioned are “in the beltway” bloggers who blog on beltway issues.

Oh that’s it? Well, shame on me for my darn tong lashing.

Well certainly congress is in the beltway, so I know these blogs covered the October 16th hearing on the Jena 6 and hate crimes that took place with the House Judiciary Committee this week; because what’s more beltway than congress?

Well let’s run down that same list and see what good coverage we find this time:

Daily Kos, again nothing on the front page from the contributing writers, including Kos himself, though he had time to writer approximately 8 different post on the 16th alone.

Talkingpointsmemo.com, umm well, no commentary from them either; but at least their news headlines feed picked up an article by the associated press that ended up on their page by accident. They might want to look into that feed so that they won’t have that mistake again. I don’t think they intended to have that information on their.

As a matter of fact, a search of the site’s search engine only brings up one article ever on Talkingpoinsmemo, from September 22, lambasting Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson for not knowing anything about the Jena 6. The hysterically ironic part about a Talkingpointsmemo writer taking Thompson to task about that on the Talkingpointsmemo site, is that; even if Thompson read Talkingpointsmemo.com every single day, he still would not know a thing about the Jena 6.

atrios.blogspot.com/ – not a word!

How bout TalkLeft, which Pam previously described as having had “positioned itself as the leading progressive blog about criminal justice issues “

*Ding* *Ding* *Ding* *Ding* *Ding* TalkLeft actually dropped it’s readers a little note on the hearings and even minimally recognized what the real issue is.

So far we have all of a strapping 5 sentences from leading liberal white blog sites.

So let’s go on to firedoglake.com/to see if he can up the batting average…No! But I will give them credit, that their archive’s do at least contain 6 or 7 post on Jena since coming late to the party on the September 20th. Maybe I just needed to give them a couple more days to catch up again before doing this survey of “progressive” bloggers.

Well ya know the HuffingtonPostgot our back right – wrong. Not even the token black guy on the site could muster up one for the home team like last time. And this is with over 40 articles posted on Tuesday alone. I guess Kassey Kasem would tell us that this is not a Top 40 issue to white liberal America (get it? Kassey Kasem, top 40?).

Though, white writer Heather Wood has a decent piece on 10 Mistakes White People Make When Talking About Race After reading the comments on the White Bloggosphere being MIA on Jena 6, I’m thinking a lot of y’all could really stand to read this.

Pam noted in the MIA post that ThinProgresscould only muster two sentences last time. Well not to be outdone by their blanketing September 20th coverage, they come back with two more sentences buried in their “ThinkFast” daily roundup type post.

So even after the historic march, and even when the issue is in congress, so-called “progressive” netroots “reporters” don’t find the issue very news worthy. Maybe they’re taking the lead from progressive television favorite Keith Olberman who had no real time for the story either. I guess with doing two segments on Ellen DeGeneres’ dog on back-to-back days, and devoting his number 1 story the day of the hearing to Britney gossip, news that matters to a major part of his viewing constituency just didn’t matter to him.

But then again, when white women cry and when precious blond girls are having a tough time being rich, who in the news business has time for things like, oh I don’t know, say…the news?

Bottom line is white “Progressives” continue to ignore something that’s of great importance to a major part of their constituency. What’s more striking though than them not responding to what we care about is that fact that they don’t care about it in and of themselves.

Maybe we need to look more deeply at this liberal exploitation; where we’re used for our votes because they couldn’t win the house, the senate, or the presidency without us, but when we want something, it’s like, get loss.

I guess racial injustice; equal protection under the law; and fairness and equality in prosecution, enforcement of the law, and sentencing; aren’t things a “progressive” movement should be concerned about.

Maybe if we had more sympathetic defendants then there’d be a little interest from the white progressive world.

Maybe if it was this Louisianan under the gun, then they’d take notice:

There is nothing remarkable about the sentiments expressed in Frank Conaway’s op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.  It’s a restatement of the standard civil rights generation assertion that the hip hop generation has strayed from the ancient virtues of pre-civil rights black America. 

Conaway isn’t angry.  His tone is gentle.  And, unlike white conservatives who spin Cosbyesque arguments to their own purposes, the Baltimore court clerk isn’t appalled by black America’s show of support for the Jena 6.  In fact, he is inspired by the solidarity and wants to see more of it.

White conservatives (and black opportunists like Jason Whitlock who distort the Jena story because it ensures appreciative reviews from white conservatives) are rending their garments in horror over the enthusiastic support African Americans have demonstrated for the six black football players accused of assaulting Justin Barker.

“They are talking up these boys like they was Rosa Parks,” the narrative goes, “and they’re just a bunch of thugs!”

Invariably, “thugs” is the term of choice.  It reduces normal, small town boys to a cold, malevolent inner city caricature.  It associates the Jena 6 with the more unsavory elements of the old “gangsta” rap scene (thereby hooking the outrage of civil rights blacks and moderate-to-conservative whites).  

In America, a “thug” is a throwaway person, a member of the dangerous classes, a person in relation to whom concepts like the presumption of innocence, due process and reasonable doubt can have no meaning.  When a sure-fire thug stands before the bar of justice there can be only two questions–what is the maximum charge, and what is the maximum sentence.   A thug is guilty by virtue of who he is.

When Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis were introduced to the audience at the BET hip hop awards ceremony in Atlanta, the announcer assured the audience that no one associated with the production condoned violence.  Nonetheless, when Carwin and Bryant strolled onto the stage, they received an ecstatic ovation.

Why?  Were the folks in Atlanta under the false impression that Carwin and Bryant were fighting sister Rosa’s good fight? 

Not at all.  The audience applauded because they identify.  As Sammie Barrow, the brother and uncle of four of the young men railroaded in Tulia, Texas on the word of a white cop, once told me, “These kids don’t rate as no thugs”. 

Every member of the audience in Atlanta has a close relative or a personal friend who has run afoul of the criminal justice system.  There wasn’t enough money to hire a lawyer so the kid was assigned an overworked and jaded public defender or court appointed attorney who drifted through the motions as if in a daze.  Maybe the young defendant took a plea bargain because a conviction would have put him away for decades; maybe he went to trial and got hammered by a white judge and jury.  Maybe he was guilty; maybe not.  It didn’t matter.  Conviction followed on the heels of arrest with soul-destroying inevitability.

The facts in these cases are often muddy.  Neither the state nor the defense takes the time to ask too many questions before entering the courtroom.  Dockets are clogged and time is at a premium.  So the prosecutor tells the jury the defendant is a dangerous thug and the defense attorney mumbles a few words about insufficient evidence.  The jury doesn’t care about legal technicalities–if the defendant is a thug, he belongs in prison.  It isn’t a matter of what he has or hasn’t done; it’s about who he is.

When I showed up in Jena in January of this year, the Jena 6 were being portrayed as pathological predators from the darkest sanctums of Ninth Ward New Orleans.   But when I visited with members of the black community I got an entirely different story.  “I’ve grown up across the street from these kids,” the sole black member of the school board told me.  “I’ve watched them grow up.  They’re just ordinary boys–good boys.”

In other words, “These kids don’t rate as no thugs.”

Then how do normal school boys get sucked into a vortex of violence?  What motivated the white kids who jumped Robert Bailey at the Fair Barn on Friday night?  Whence the rage?  Why did Justin Barker get jumped at the high school?  Whence the rage? 

One thing was clear to me as I sifted through the facts before me; Robert Bailey and Justin Barker had run afoul of the same smoldering animus.  None of these kids were thugs–black or white–just kids tangled up in forces they dimly understood and over which they had little control.

It is commonly supposed that the rage in Jena originated with nooses hanging from an all-white tree.  Not so.  The black kids took offense to the hateful symbol, but they didn’t know enough about the racial history of America to appreciate the full significance of a noose dangling from a tree. 

Their parents had longer memories.  They remembered Jena’s segregated school yard from their own school years back in the 70s and 80s.  Everyone had learned to live with it.  Yet they were proud of Kenneth Purvis for challenging the status quo–something they never dreamed of doing.  And they were clear on one point–the nooses had been hung in direct response to Kenneth’s challenging question about where he could and couldn’t sit.

These parents were willing to wait for school officials to respond to the issue.  Everything hung in the balance, and parents on both sides of the color line knew it.  A strong disciplinary response to the nooses (the kind recommended by the principal) would have signalled that the de facto segregation at the high school was a thing of the past.  A weak response would suggest that nothing had changed.

And that’s why my narrative focused on the gross misconduct of Superintendent Roy Breithaupt (who called the noose incident a childish prank), an arrogant and unresponsive school board (who wouldn’t even allow black parents to voice their concerns), and a bizarre prosecutor named Reed Walters (who threatened to punish any student bold enough to protest the status quo). 

The rage in Jena was kindled by these brazen acts.  Some white students (those emotionally invested in the maintenance of the color line at the high school) responded with glee to these not-so-subtle hints of official validation.  But the white boys found themselves locked into an adversarial relationship with the black students who inspired Mr. Walters’ “stroke of my pen” threat. 

Throughout the football season, the hostility was driven underground, erupting off campus in a series of inconsequential dust-ups that disintegrated when somebody called the police.  Then fire was seen billowing from the windows at the schoolhouse and all bets were off.

The next day, Robert Bailey, a black football player at the center of the September tree protest, requested admittance to a private dance on the white side of town.  The furies were released. 

The folks at the BET awards ceremony understand this story.  They have seen it happen before.  The Jena 6 aren’t Rosa Parks.  Rosa Parks was the face of the Old Jim Crow.  The Jena 6 symbolize the New Jim Crow that has been gradually taking control of the American criminal justice system for over a quarter century now. 

The New Jim Crow is why America imprisons five to eight times as many citizens per 100,000 as other Western democracies.  White America, tragically, is as oblivious to these sinister developments as I once was.

Frank Conaway understands the Jena 6, but he still wants to talk to the kids.  And, precisely because he “gets” Jena, the Baltimore court clerk deserves a receptive audience. 

African-Americans must rise to the example of our forefathers

By Frank M. Conaway

October 21, 2007

I once knew a proud man. He was called “black” or “Negro” – or worse. This man worked long hours to provide for his wife and five children. Rain or shine, he rose early and went to his job at the docks. It was a tough job, a thankless job. He didn’t mind because he knew he had to provide for his family.

He didn’t graduate from elementary school. However, he made his children stay in school because he knew an education would open doors for them that had been closed to him. He made sure he instilled in his kids a sense of values and good moral judgment. And, yes, he voted in every election.

When hard times came, he did not complain. This man was not angry, because he knew anger destroys the soul. Before civil rights became a reality, he dreamed of a better day. He dreamed that his children would become productive citizens.

Our forefathers, like the man I speak of, suffered, fought and died to make our lives better. As they look down on us, they must be so disappointed in what little we have done with our lives. They struggled to make black people equal, to get us the right to vote. What have we done with those hard-won rights? Many of us do not exercise our right to vote, much less become politically active. It is easier to sit back and complain about how unfair life is to African-Americans.

True, sometimes we are stirred to action. It was heartening to see how the African-American community bonded during the recent “Jena 6” ordeal. Black people from all walks of life went to Louisiana, or met at colleges and churches across the United States, to show their solidarity for the six African-American students who were unfairly charged in a racially motivated incident.

But such cases are rare. I have not seen this type of coming together of African-Americans for a long, long time – not since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. We, as a people, need to keep this momentum going. It is fine to support the Jena 6, but will we change how we run our own lives?

To quote Gandhi, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” We need to cure ourselves of our apathy. We need to rid ourselves of the collective chip on our shoulders and stop asking what’s going to be done for us. If our noise-making isn’t followed by action, it serves no purpose other than to grab headlines.

Many immigrants, legal and illegal, have arrived in the United States with little money in their pockets, not speaking English and with no transferable education. Yet they are industrious and find ways to make a living. Often, they work long hours in what others would call disagreeable jobs. However, within a generation, many become productive citizens who give back to the community. Many immigrants struggle to send their children to college. In turn, many of the second generation become professionals. Once immigrant families are established as citizens, they become politically active so their voices can be heard.

Many African-American dreamers have also turned their dreams into reality: people such as Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. These men and women and countless others paved the road for us with their blood, struggles and suffering. We need to get back on this road and travel together to keep their dreams alive.

The African-American community needs to wake from its collective sleep and begin to live its dreams. We began to wake up with the Jena 6. Now, we need to take a cue from the examples set by immigrants. If this is too uncomfortable, we should look back to our forefathers, who fought for our equality.

It will take hard work. Blacks are a strong force, one to be reckoned with – if we would only get our acts firmly together and stop lamenting what could or should be. African-Americans need to finally begin to be accountable for their lives and take action to improve their lot in life – like that man with the five children and almost no education, who yet managed to achieve a better life for his family.

He was my father.

The fact is that too often, we are our own oppressors. A strong dose of self-respect is greatly needed to cure the many social ills that plague the black community. We need to stop making excuses for our misfortunes and get on with it. These are tough words, I know. But sometimes the truth hurts.

Frank M. Conaway is clerk of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

A while back, I suggested that you won’t find nooses hanging from trees in New York City because, “that’s a Southern thing”.

We can’t always get it right.

The New York Times coverage of the Jena incident has been raising eyebrows coast to coast.  “What’s with the Times?” people ask me. 

Now that the noose craze has become too prominent and disturbing to ignore, the Times has published a well-written story by Paul Vitello focusing on noose hangings in the New York region.  There have been several, and they just keep coming. 

Mr. Vitello’s grasp of the situation in Jena is as weak as a dead fish hand shake.  The Jena 6, Vitello tells us, are “accused of beating a white youth who they thought was involved in hanging nooses from a tree at Jena High School.”

Did they now?  Vitello, like everyone else associated with The Grey Lady, has never taken the time to follow the flow of events in Jena.  They asked the guy to write a story on nooses and he obliged.  Ten minutes of research on Jena and Vitello comes up with a motivation no one remotely associated with the story has ever suggested.

There are three Jena stories.  In Jena’s white community, it’s all about six black thugs beating an innocent white boy within an inch of his life.  In the mainstream media we often get a story that jumps from nasty white kids hanging nooses to nasty black kids attacking a white boy (given this framing, Vitello’s thesis is understandable).

The real Jena story chronicles a slow, spiraling descent into chaos sparked by the refusal of public officials to validate legitimate protest from Jena’s black community.  If these cases ever make it back into the courtroom, this is the story America will hear.

All of that said, Paul Vitello treats the recent rash of noose incidents in Gotham with insight and sensitivity.  We learn, for instance, that ” The black population [of Long Island] is about 12 percent of the total, but is highly concentrated in a half-dozen communities that are 95 percent minority. In 2004, in Suffolk County, it was still possible for an interracial couple to wake up in the night to find a cross burning on their lawn — it happened in a hamlet called Lake Grove.”

Who knew?  A story about nooses, faithfully pursued, can turn up all sorts of useful information.

Everyone wants to talk about the series of copycat noose hangings across the country.  Notice, the noose hangers are almost never apprehended.  The three boys responsible for hanging the nooses in Jena stepped forward and acknowledged their culpability.  Why?  One can only speculate.  But I suspect it was because they were assured that people in high places would pass the incident off as an innocent prank.

That’s what angered Jena’s black community.  Black people and white people looked at the same nooses hanging from the same tree and reacted in two distinct ways.  Black parents were horrified; white parents shrugged and moved on.

Like I say, everyone wants to talk about nooses.  Darryl Fears of the Washington Post (the first flagship newspaper in America to cover Jena) returns with a he-said-she-said story about how folks across the country are responding to the noose issue. 

Even the sophisticates have an opinion.  Robin Givhan uses the disturbing silhouette art of Kara Walker (currently on display at New York’s Whitney museum) as a backdrop for her comments.  According to Givhan, Walker’s disturbing, often obscene evocations of America’s slave days, suggest that “Everyone — black and white — has suffered because of slavery’s legacy. Everyone has baggage — huge steamer trunks filled with issues of self-esteem, entitlement and disenfranchisement. But while making allowances for that, she also argues that the fallout from slavery is a tangled web of grotesquerie, violence and absurdity. And everyone — white and black — has some culpability.”

An impressive introduction, you must admit.  Unfortunately, Givhan’s essay will be seen by most readers as yet another endorsement of Bill Cosby’s “blame the poor” rant. 

I think there is a deeper message.  A lot of grotesque behavior and over-the-top rhetoric has been generated by the Jena story.  My wife, Nancy, sees the media’s fixation with Jena as an illustration of the opening words of John’s Gospel: “the light shineth in the darkness.”  Unfortunately, the divine illumination has become stage lighting for an odd assortment of self aggrandizing minstrels, jugglers and high wire artists.  If that’s Givhan’s point–fair enough.

Douglas Lyons of the Florida Sun-Sentinel checks in today with a piece about nooses and all white juries.  “In an era of Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods,” Lyons writes, “two throwbacks from a dark period of America’s past continue to show surprising resilience. Makes you wonder how far we’ve come.”

It is frequently pointed out that, given the demographics of LaSalle Parish, an all-white jury was virtually inevitable. But the concept of a “jury of ones peers” suggests that at least one-quarter of the composition of any jury should be of the same race as the defendant whenever possible.  White people don’t feel this problem because it isn’t something we need to worry about.

The light shines in the darkness, in Jena and across America, and a great profusion of strange, exotic, and deeply disturbing facts, fancies and fanatics are being revealed.  In the midst of all the hype, the prevarication, the jeremiads, the cavalier dismissals and the honest inquiry we are growing and maturing as a people.   The conversation ain’t always pretty–but is necessary and long overdue. 

You know things are changing when Will Harrell, one of the most prominent criticis of the Texas criminal justice system, is named ombudsman for the Texas Youth Commission.  Back in 2000, Will was the first civil rights advocate in Texas to rally around the Friends of Justice in out Tulia fight, and he has been a close friend of our organization ever since.   This article in the Houston Chronicle is based on Mr. Harrell’s testimony before the Texas House Corrections Committee during which he recommended the closing of the TYC facility at Vernon.

My guess is that the juvenile prison where Mychal Bell is currently being sequestered is at least as bad as the facility in Vernon, Texas. 

Many of you have heard that the prison outside Jena has been shut down on two separate occassions: once, in 2000, when it was a juvenile lockup, and again post-Katrina, when it re-opened as an emergency warehouse for inmates transplanted from New Orleans.  On both occasions, allegations of racism and abuse spurred investigations.

The prison outside Jena is now being expanded by GEO Corps, the same outfit in charge of the infamous Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in West Texas that was recently closed after a rash of complaints reached the right ears.  It should be noted that what Texans now call “The TYC scandal” was sparked by the investigative reporting of Nate Blakeslee, the young man Friends of Justice alerted to the Tulia story seven years ago.

It should also be remembered that charges of graft and political corruption accompanied the construction the prison west of Tulia, Texas and the repeatedly-closed facility outside Jena, Louisiana.  The infamous Graham brothers from Houston were involved in the machinations surrounding the construction of both facilities.  One of the Grahams exposed Edwin Edwards to an investigation that eventually placed the former Louisiana governor in federal prison for ten years.  In an attempt to limit his own criminal liability for prison-related misdeeds in Texas, Patrick Graham told the feds that Edwards had received generous kick-backs in exchange for greenlighting the prison project in Jena. 

After going down the river, Graham implored authorities to let him out of the Texas Gulag because prison was “a cramped, lonesome place.”  That’s called irony.

In other words, investigate issues like juvenile justice and prison contracts in Texas and Louisiana and you find yourself knee-deep in scandal.  Fortunately for mass incarceration buffs, nobody ever pays much attention.

The new Jena prison will hold illegal aliens.  A picture in a recent issue of the Jena Times featured a dozen shovel-wielding local white business and political leaders eager to cash in on the jobs and economic activity prisons initially bring to isolated communities.  How long will it be before yet another cycle of scandal engulfs Jena’s oft-requited love affair with the criminal justice business?

TYC ombudsman urges closure of second youth prison

© 2007 The Associated Press

AUSTIN — An ombudsman for the Texas Youth Commission recommended closing a North Texas youth prison because of conditions including dangerous buildings, meager programming and understaffing.

Will Harrell’s report described the Victory Field Correctional Academy in Vernon as the “the least adequate” of any he’d visited since he took the job in May.

“If I were king, I’d shut it down today,” Harrell said after testifying in front of the House Corrections Committee on Wednesday. “It’s an incredibly violent campus. … There’s just this sense of fear and intimidation.”

Harrell told committee members that the Vernon facility was the TYC prison most similar to the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in West Texas. The agency closed that lockup this month and fired its private operator after Harrell reported terrible conditions there.

The Victory Field report was part of a daylong hearing covering reforms and continuing problems at the Youth Commission, which was placed in state conservatorship this spring after a sex abuse scandal and subsequent cover-up.

Harrell’s report said buildings at the state-run Vernon facility are “structurally suffering, dangerous and unclean, staff morale is low, youth are idle and agitated, programming is meager … and there is a serious understaffing and training issue.”

Dimitria Pope, the Youth Commission’s acting executive director, said she had not seen a copy of Harrell’s report, which was distributed to committee members before Wednesday’s meeting. But she said she wasn’t in total agreement with Harrell’s assessment of Victory Field.

“I personally have gone to Victory Field myself and had some concerns about the physical structure,” Pope said. “I’m not saying it’s an ideal place … but there’s not feces, there’s not problems with plumbing that I saw (at Coke County).”

Pope said any problems will be addressed after the facility is inspected next week.

Harrell’s report described “huge blind spots” in the security camera system, including an area that inmates said they had used for sexual acts, fights and tattooing.

Other problems were a lack of access from the facility’s phones to the TYC hot line for students to report abuse, and youth complaints of staff retaliation when they file grievances.

State Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican who represents Coke County, said the problems at Victory Field look similar to those at the facility that was recently closed.

“If those conditions exist, this facility certainly needs to be looked at and held to the same standards that they used in Coke County,” he said.

Pope said there could be more problems uncovered at the Youth Commission as officials work to overhaul the agency.

“I can’t say we’ve reached the core of all the issues,” she said.