Alan Bean Could?

Posted on Sat, Sep. 29, 2007

Jena 6 case caught up in whirlwind of distortion, opportunism

By JASON WHITLOCK

JENA, La. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and talk-show hosts certainly feasted on the racial unrest in this tiny central Louisiana town.

But it would be unfair to claim they threw the match that ignited the Jena Six case into a global blaze of hostility and misinformation.

That distinction belongs to Alan Bean, a 54-year-old white, self-proclaimed Baptist minister from Tulia, Texas.

“Do I know him?” was LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters’ sarcastic and dismissive response when I asked about Bean during a 45-minute interview.

“People are reluctant to say it,” said Craig Franklin, editor of the Jena Times, “but there is no doubt that Alan Bean created all of this.”

This is different things to different people. To some, this is a long overdue civil-rights reawakening, which points out pervasive racism in the South and in our justice system. To others, this is a horrific public-relations crime against the white people of Jena and irreparable damage to race relations in the poor oil town. And to some dispassionate observers, this is an unfortunate situation being exploited by white and black racial extremists.

On Sept. 20, when Jackson, Sharpton and Jena Six family members led competing rallies in support of six black youths accused of brutally attacking a white classmate, this — more than 20,000 marchers — was something no one in Jena could ever imagine.

But Alan Bean could.

Bean — the creator of Friends of Justice, an organization primarily dedicated to helping poor minorities victimized by our justice system — had warned prominent members of the Jena community as early as January that the town would be painted as racist by the national media if Walters didn’t back down.

“I told them I was going to bring media attention to this situation, and it was likely the same thing would happen to them that happened to my little hometown,” Bean said by phone on Friday. “Tulia got a bad rap, a rap it probably didn’t deserve. But the media doesn’t do its job. It’s in the entertainment business.”

“Tulia” refers to the case that made Bean and Friends of Justice a player in the world of American criminal justice. In the late 1990s, Bean exposed a corrupt cop in his hometown. More than a dozen drug convictions against minorities were overturned because of Bean’s work. Tulia was labeled as racist, and Bean became the person to call if you thought the police and/or a prosecutor were exploiting you.

A lawyer in New Orleans put Bean and parents of the Jena Six in contact with each other in December. Within three months, Bean had researched Jena and the events surrounding the assault, and published a 5,400-word narrative titled “The Making of a Myth in Jena, Louisiana” and a 2,400-word, media-friendly narrative titled “Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana.”

These two pro-defense narratives form the outline for most of the world’s understanding of the case. Bean connected the December assault on Justin Barker to the September noose hangings, to Reed Walters’ infamous “I can ruin your life with the stroke of a pen” statement at a hastily called school assembly, and to separate off-campus confrontations between Robert Bailey and white men on the Friday and Saturday before the attack on Barker.

Walters said Wednesday he’d never heard that the attack on Barker had anything to do with the noose hangings until the defense filed motions in the spring to recuse him from the case.

Bean said he first spoon-fed his narratives to Tom Mangold of the BBC because Mangold had worked with Bean on the Tulia drug cases. The BBC filmed a documentary on the Jena Six titled “Race Hate in Louisiana.” Bean said he then gave the Jena Six story to newspaper reporter Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune, which published a similar story on May 20.


“I put it in the hands of people I knew would do a good job with the story,” Bean said.

Bean also gave his story to a blogger, Jordan Flaherty, and a law professor, Bill Quigley. From all of these sources the story mushroomed and became fact.

The Jena Six beat up Justin Barker because they were still angry about the lack of sufficient punishment given to white kids who hung nooses on a whites-only shade tree, and the six were railroaded by an overzealous district attorney who failed to properly prosecute white men who viciously assaulted Robert Bailey and later pulled a shotgun on Bailey and two others at a convenience store.

Walters, police investigators, school officials and some Jena residents say Bean’s story is hogwash. There is at least some legitimacy to those claims. Bean’s story and subsequent posts on his Web site contain factual errors.

The three kids responsible for hanging the nooses were given more punishment than just a “few days of in-school suspension.” They went to an alternative school for nine days and received two weeks of in-school suspension, LaSalle Parish school superintendent Roy Breithaupt said.

But more than the factual errors, Bean’s story is framed — by his own admission — as an indictment of the criminal justice system and the people in power in Jena and, therefore, the story is unfairly biased. Bean never examined the other forces at work that contributed to the Jena Six assault and Walters’ heavy-handed approach to justice as it relates to the alleged perpetrators.

“I didn’t know,” Bean said when asked whether he knew of defendant Mychal Bell’s violent juvenile history when he was crafting his narratives. “I never talked to Mychal’s family, and I never talked to Mychal. He was in jail. I knew he had a history for getting into trouble. I knew he was a kid at a crossroads.”

Bean also didn’t know that in fall 2006, Bell, who 16 at the time, was living with his then-18-year-old best friend John McPherson and McPherson’s then-16-year-old wife, Ashley, in a three-bedroom trailer. The McPhersons are white. Bell is the godfather to their 18-month-old daughter.

Bean has a very idealistic view of the Jena defendants.

“These are fun-loving, impetuous, athletically gifted black males that don’t drink and don’t smoke, and they go to church as well,” he told me.

The church-going contention flies in the face of what Rev. Jimmy Ray Young, pastor at L&A Baptist Church, said Wednesday.

“None of these boys have been in church except when Al Sharpton was in town,” Young complained. “I’ve told the ministers we need to get these boys back in church.”

Walters claims that Bean and the media have distorted other key elements in the case.

Bean reported that Walters directed his “stroke of the pen” remark at black students when the school called an assembly to quell protests of the noose hangings. Some pro-Jena Six chain e-mails create the impression that Walters met privately with black students and threatened them. Not true, Walters and police say.

Paul Smith, Jena’s chief of police, says he and sheriff’s investigator Jimmy Arbogast called Walters to the school after a student took a swing at Smith when he was breaking up a fight between students.

“Tensions were high. Everybody was upset,” Arbogast said. “We wanted Reed to explain to them that, ‘Hey, look, you have to think for a minute. Look what age you are. Y’all are in high school.’ ”

Flanked by Arbogast and Smith, Walters addressed the entire student body. He said he began by telling the students about an aggravated rape case (possible death penalty) that he was considering.

Walters recalls saying: "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make life miserable on you or ruin your life. So I want you to call me before you do something stupid.’ That last part doesn’t get reported. It doesn’t make good press.”

Bean also wrote that three days before the Jena Six assault a white man, Matt Windham, pulled a shotgun on Bailey and two others. He wrote that they wrestled the gun away from the man and ran off, and that Walters charged them with a crime rather than the white man.

The police contend that Windham — not the boys — called the police, claimed the boys threatened him, chased him back to his vehicle and wrestled his gun away. The police also say that two uninvolved female witnesses backed Windham, and that’s why the boys were charged.

Bean also mischaracterized the simple battery that Bailey suffered at the Fair Barn party four days before the attack on Barker, according to Walters, police, several witnesses and Bailey’s statements to police.

“Robert Bailey Jr. was attacked by a savage white mob at a local dance,” Bean wrote. “True, he wasn’t knocked unconscious — but that is just a matter of aim and good fortune. He was punched, he was kicked, and he was smacked over the head with a beer bottle (and he’s got the scars to prove it).”

Walters, who prosecuted Bailey’s lone attacker (Justin Sloan), said there was no mob attack. It was simply a dispute at the door of a mixed-race, invitation-only party that Bailey was denied access to.

“It wasn’t a fight,” Walters said. “Robert Bailey didn’t swing. He didn’t do anything. The kid hit him, knocked him down. No beer bottle, no anything. There was no statement of the victim at that time indicating any weapon was used. … The defendant (Sloan) was arrested on a simple battery. He was prosecuted on a simple battery. He pled guilty to a simple battery.

“It was only after the fact that I learned that a beer bottle was involved, that stitches were involved,” Walters continued. “And I checked after the fact with my local hospital: Did this happen? The information (about a beer bottle) came up in a motion to recuse me from the current charges. That’s the first time I’d heard about that.”

Ironically, Bean is now growing frustrated with the way the case has turned, particularly since Jackson and Sharpton got involved. He said they wouldn’t return his calls. He indicated there was a riff between the Bailey (Bean camp) and Bell (Sharpton camp) families.

People in Jena say the feud is over money. The families are handling the donations to the Jena Six defense fund. Robert Bailey recently posted and took down MySpace photos of himself and another Jena Six defendant with wads of $100 bills stuffed in their mouths and splashed across their bodies.

“I can tell you there is no misappropriation of the funds,” said Bean, adding he was not being paid for his services. “I’ve been there and seen them handling the checks. Where Robert got his hands on that money, I don’t know. He’s a kid. It was a stupid thing to do.”

As for Bean’s thoughts on Jackson and Sharpton?

“I’m not at all comfortable with the way this has been handled by the Jackson and Sharpton folks,” Bean said. “What’s wrong is that Jesse and Al have tried to turn this into an old civil-rights story in which Mychal Bell emerges like Rosa Parks, and that’s not right. These guys (Jackson and Sharpton) have lost their gravitas, lost their credibility. People are really tired of the same old 1960s shtick.”

Based on the crowds in Jena on Sept. 20, I’m not so sure.

To reach Jason Whitlock, call 816-234-4869 or send e-mail to jwhitlock@kcstar.com.

© 2007 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com/

By permission of Jason Whitlock

Race, Justice and Jena - Lacks Any Credibility

The Ecoonmist.com
Black Leadership in America

Race, Justice and Jena
September 27th 2007 Jena Louisiana
From the Economist print edition

A sign outside Jena describes it as “a nice place to call home”. But this town in Louisiana is small, poor and, for many, a new symbol of the old-style American racism. On September 20th some 20,000 people rallied in the heat to protest against racial discrimination in the justice system. (Perhaps this should read in Jena’s justice system; there actually may be a difference.) They (meaning black people do you suppose) swamped the local population of 3,000 (white and black residents of Jena perhaps, or just the white one). Dressed in black, they marched peacefully. Some exuberantly likened their protest to the civil-rights marches of the 1960s (where black marches were chewed up by police dogs and their bodies were broken by water cannon). But the campaign to free a group of black students who beat a white classmate (He was no classmate and the writer knows this to be false) somehow lacks the moral clarity of the old crusades against legal segregation and whites-only elections (you mean this has changed). Am I making my point?

Does this paragraph mean that there would have to be the lynching of a black person, man, woman, or child, before there would be moral clarity requiring something to be done by the grand white folk?

I say this because if you read the balance of the article called “Leaders divided” the only leaders divided are black including Mr. Obama, who has the good sense to stay out of it. However the same is not true of “Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson”, who I believe are Christian Ministers. They “are the men every news show calls on to speak for black America. But their credentials for doing so are increasingly disputed.

Now, the Econimist.com writes American style (probably because it is American) and goes about character assassinations like Americans because it is no longer popular after the assassination of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King and the Honorable Malcolm X to make martyrs of black men.

What about the only leaders that count, those who make the laws in Jena and who tried a young offender as an adult and as it turns out should not have does so? Where is the divided white leadership dissected for detailed explanation before the white and black worlds to see, as if there were significant truths about the explanation?

The Ecominist.com lacks any credibility in my mind. I once thought that this British news publication was impeccable, but I now see it for what it is. I am disappointed but I should not be because it too is merely part of the age of the internet chatter and talk radio.

Link: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9867677#top

Shocking Case, say National and International Sources, Another Bad Day for America

LaSalle district attorney Reed Walters

September 27. 2007 6:44PM

Congressional Black Caucus asks Justice Department to investigate 'Jena 6' case

By SAM HANANEL

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON The Congressional Black Caucus is asking the Justice Department to investigate possible civil rights violations in the "Jena 6" case that sparked a massive protest in Louisiana last week."

This shocking case has focused national and international attention on what appears to be an unbelievable example of the separate and unequal justice that was once commonplace in the Deep South," the group of 43 lawmakers said in a letter to Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department has been closely monitoring the case of six black high school teens arrested for beating a white classmate in Jena, La. He said the department also is investigating allegations of threats against the students and their families.

"Since these investigations are ongoing, the department cannot comment any further," Roehrkasse said.

Top Justice officials were set to discuss the case on Friday with civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and National Urban League President Marc Morial.

The caucus also sent a separate letter asking Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to pardon 17-year-old Mychal Bell, the black teen convicted in adult court of aggravated second-degree battery after the charge was reduced from attempted murder.

Bell was one of six Jena High School students arrested after a December attack on a white student, Justin Barker, and the only one to be tried. He was tried as an adult and convicted of aggravated second-degree battery after the charge was reduced from attempted murder. A state appeals court recently threw out his conviction, saying he could not be tried as an adult.

District Attorney Reed Walters said Thursday that he would not appeal that decision and would let a juvenile court deal with the case.

Late Thursday, Bell was released on $45,000 bail.

The black lawmakers call the decision to charge Bell and his classmates as adults "an abuse of prosecutorial discretion" and claim no action was taken in a recent similar case involving a white defendant and a black victim.

More than 20,000 people converged on the small town last week to protest the case, accusing local officials of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites.

The case dates to August 2006, when a black Jena High School student asked the principal whether blacks could sit under a shade tree that was a frequent gathering place for whites. He was told yes, but nooses appeared in the tree the next day.

Jena 6 defendant released on bail

Above: Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, center listens to Rev. Al Sharpton and Bishop T. D. Jakes talk at his father's home in Jena, La., Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007.

Mychal Bell Released on Bail

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer 54 minutes ago

A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate prompted a massive civil rights protest here walked out of a courthouse Thursday after a judge ordered him freed.

Mychal Bell's release on $45,000 bail came hours after a prosecutor confirmed he will no longer seek an adult trial for the 17-year-old. Bell, one of the teenagers known as the Jena Six, still faces trial as a juvenile in the December beating in this small central Louisiana town.

"We still have mountains to climb, but at least this is closer to an even playing field," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize last week's protest.
"He goes home because a lot of people left their home and stood up for him," Sharpton said.

District Attorney Reed Walters' decision to abandon adult charges means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, instead could be held only until he turns 21 if he is found guilty in juvenile court.

The conviction in adult court was thrown out this month by the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, which said Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that particular charge.

Walters had said he would appeal that decision. On Thursday, he said he still believes there was legal merit to trying Bell as an adult but decided it was in the best interest of the victim, Justin Barker, and his family to let the juvenile court handle the case.

"They are on board with what I decided," Walters said at a news conference.
Walters said Bell faces juvenile court charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime.

Bell is among six black Jena High School students arrested in December after a beating that left Barker unconscious and bloody, though the victim was able to attend a school function later the same day. Four of the defendants were 17 at the time, and legally adults under Louisiana law.

Those four and Bell, who was 16, all were initially charged with attempted murder. Walters has said he sought to have Bell tried as an adult because he already had a criminal record, and because he believed Bell instigated the attack.

The charges have been dropped to aggravated second-degree battery in four of the cases. One defendant has yet to be arraigned. The sixth defendant's case is sealed in juvenile court.

Critics accuse Walters, who is white, of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites. They note that he filed no charges against three white teens suspended from the high school for allegedly hanging nooses in a tree on campus not long before fights between blacks and whites, including the attack on Barker.

An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 protesters marched in Jena last week in a scene that evoked the early years of the civil-rights movement.

Walters said the demonstration had no influence on the decision he announced Thursday, and ended his news conference by saying that only God kept the protest peaceful.

"The only way — let me stress that — the only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community," Walters said.

"I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened. You can quote me on that."

When the Rev. Donald Sibley, a black Jena pastor, called it a "shame" that Walters credited divine intervention for the protesters acting responsibly, the Rev. Sibley paused and waited for an answer.

The prosecutor said: "What I'm saying is, the Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly."

After the news conference, Sibley told CNN that Walters had insulted the protesters by making a false separation between "his Christ and our Christ."

"I can't diminish Christ at all. But for him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order — that's not the truth," Sibley said.

Walters has said repeatedly that Barker's suffering has been lost in the furor that erupted over the case, and that what happened to the teen was much more severe than a schoolyard fight.

Walters also has defended his decision not to seek charges in the hanging of the nooses, which he said was "abhorrent and stupid" but not a crime.

Just receivced at 9:05 pm September 27, 2007.

F. Stanley Boyd

A Matter of Civil Rights

Legend Dr. John Carlos Marches at Jena, Speaks Out on The Jena 6

When thousands -- many young, many poor, overwhelmingly African-American -- marched in Jena, La., last Thursday, the political impact was felt around the country. Marching on behalf of six young men known as the Jena 6, who faced prison time for a schoolyard fight, the case held an echo of past civil rights movements. At the center of it all is Dr. John Carlos.

A legend in Track and Field -- he's a former world record holder in the 100-yard dash and a member of the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame -- Dr. Carlos made history with his black-gloved fist salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics alongside Tommie Smith. As a teenager in Harlem, he used his world-class speed to bring messages to Malcolm X. As part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, he spoke with Dr. Martin Luther King weeks before his assassination. Today Carlos, a guidance counselor in Palm Springs, Calif., looks around, and the man who has seen everything cannot believe his eyes.

"It's the old demons," he told SI.com. "The old demons of race relations that perpetuate. It appears to me that not only did they not die, but that they have resurrected themselves throughout the United States."

Carlos feels a sense of frustration with "ministers" and "so-called leaders of the black community," as he puts it, who show up for the big protests in places like Jena, but aren't there when the cameras are off. "These leaders today," he said, "they remind me of tow truck drivers. A tow truck driver is the first one to show up on the scene when there is an accident sometimes. It's true they have [radios] and sometimes show up at the scene before even the police. But can They actually fix the cars? Do They have grease under the fingernails? Will they be there to help the families once the car is towed away?"

Dr. Carlos said he felt the need to speak after the marches in Jena. He feels a certain joy in seeing people respond to injustice with action, not apathy.

I understand why we marched in Jena," he said. "Because the six are so young, because it is such a terrible double standard. The world is seeing it: When white jump on black, they didn't face attempted murder charges. When black jump on white, the world falls upon them. I was glad to see them come together. These young people, they are a new breed. A lot of people thought these young people wouldn't march like we did. But since 2005, with Katrina, there is a feeling of enough is enough."

And yet Dr. Carlos feels a sense of melancholy that there even needs to be a Civil Rights movement in the 21st century. "I can't believe we still have to be marching," he said. "I can't believe how injustice has taken root and has become normal.

It appears that there is a message being sent that we can't go anywhere, aren't worth anything. And that's not just black people. It's brown people. It's poor white people. It's the millions of our kids who go to school every day in the wealthiest country in the world and don't even have books.

We are raising a generation with no knowledge, no chance. If people are products of their environment, we are in a great deal of trouble. We see no money for books but they keep building these prisons."

He also worries about the limits of protest to ensure lasting change.

"Now [thousands] marched and that young man [Mychal Bell] is still in jail, we need to have our eyes on the prize. We need our young people also hitting them where it hurts. Not just marching, but figuring out ways to do the unexpected.

In 1968, that's what we did. You have to do what's contrary to the norm to give them something to think about. We have to give them something to think about because we had the audacity to act.

I want to see people marching on the courthouse. I want them using their minds to do the unexpected, to make people in power think long and hard about the weight we are carrying."

What makes Dr. John Carlos formidable is that he refused to live his life as an icon, a museum piece to be dusted off when Olympics or anniversaries roll around. He wants to be a voice for change in the here and now. He wants to use his reputation to be heard. It's an example and a lesson for today's athletes to note. "We're not on earth to be robots; whether people like it or not."

Caption to photo above (from Sports Illusration)
U.S. athletes Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) extend
gloved hands skyward in racial protest at the 1968 Olympics.

Dr. John Carlos speaks out bravely and it is something from which we can all learn. Thanks Dr. John Carlos for the lesson in humanity.

F. Stanley Boyd

Jena 6 Canada and America

Something about the case of the "Jena 6" in Louisiana has sparked a rumbling within the black and white communities of Canada and the United States What is there about Jena 6 that is different from everyday life in either country.

All of the elements that we have become accustomed to in racial strife in everyday life in Canada and America characterize the case. The eyes of our white and black citizens’ roll and on those faces are etched a common sentiment: “Here we go again.”

Why have protests taken so long? What has driven thousands of black and white civil rights marchers to protest in Jena? Why have black and white Canadians shown a willingness to sign petitions of protest against this injustice? Why does this racial injustice tug so at our heart strings? Some suggest that it is perhaps because it is less about what happened and more about the fact that it happened to our children, both black and white.




The story of the Jena 6 is a long, unreported one, a year in the making story, and full of stunning details. The basic points are these: In the predominantly white town of Jena, La., black students asked the vice principle of Jena High School if they could sit under the “white tree” where predominantly white students only assembled. Following this, last September, after black students sat under the schoolyard tree, white students hung three nooses in it. These students, despite the seriousness of their actions, were suspended for just three days.

After black students protested peacefully, the La Salle Parish district attorney threatened them during a meeting, saying, "I can make your life go away with a stroke of a pen."

Imagine if you can, this being said to black gangs in the hang-gun culture of Toronto, Ontario Canada, or in the projects of southern LA in California. Would it have happened at all, or would it not have gone unnoticed? Who needs a judgment check?

As if things were not out of control enough at this point, there were two beatings of black students by white students. Later a fight ensued and a white student, using racial provocation, was beaten by a black student. The white student was treated in hospital; he had a slight concussion and multiple bruises. In spite of his injuries that same white student was well enough to attend a school function later that same night. Six black teenagers between 15 and 17 were arrested. Five black students were charged as adults with attempted murder and conspiracy. The sixth student was charged as a juvenile.
Up to this point there is very little difference between the Jena High School racial discord and those that have occurred in Cole Harbor High School in Nova Scotia Canada’s Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).

Frankly, many in mainstream black Canada and America think that white Canadians and Americans are anxious to use disproportionate influence and power to bring groundless and excessive charges against defenseless and often innocent blacks to assure that the accused is put away for a very long time. This activity is referred to as the “New Jim Crow Laws,” at work commonly in Canada and America.

Some in mainstream white Canada and America seem to think that charges of racism vindicated and satisfy blacks since white Canadians and Americans live in denial about racism and racial inequality before the law and in society. Now, how narcissistic can black people allow white Canadians and Americans to get before they are forced to acknowledge the realities of interdependent life?

I cannot be convinced that black Canadians and Americans wish only to dominate the moral high ground by these accusations of racism. Enjoyment of moral certitude founded on proven cases of racism and racial inequality must never preclude black Canadians and Americans from challenging and preventing the exercise of legal power which enables white Canada and America to trash the life chances of thousands of our young, black students in Canada and America.


White Americans, trying to adapt the so-called “New Jim Crow Law, appear to be willing to go that far. Are white Canadians prepared to do what their American cousins seem poised or prepared to do?

The trash and burn approach, the use of old fashioned terror to get their own way when all else fails and the abuse of our laws without the presumption of innocence seem all to be failing as new federal pressures are being brought on local justice in Jena by a proposed House Judiciary Committee’s investigation.

That said where do we stand in Canada’s HRM? How do we deal this problem where the justice system appears to be high jacked and run as the domain of the privileged whites who assume that they provide mechanisms that achieve racial justice for all?

Caption photo above:

Gov. Kathleen Blanco leaves a news conference Wednesday with the Rev. Al Sharpton, center, and Martin Luther King III, right. Blanco announced that the LaSalle Parish district attorney will not appeal a decision to try Jena 6 defendant Mychal Bell as a juvenile.

Also see www.earlofarihutchinson.blogspot.com The Hutchinson Political Report for more information on Jena 6, "The Juvenile Court is No Bargain for Mychal Bell"

F. Stanley Boyd
Freelance journalist
http://www.swog.blogspot.com/.

A Mother's Anguish -- Melissa Bell

Melissa Bell,right, leaves after a hearing for her son Mychal Bell at LaSalle Parish Courthouse in Jena, La., Friday, Sept. 21, 2007. The hearing was the day after a rally and march in support of the Jena Six. A relative of one of the Jena Six says a judge has denied bail for Mychal Bell, the only one of the teens who is jailed in the beating of a white classmate.

Yesterday Reverend Al Sharpton spoke about a meeting with House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to ask for formal hearings about into the justice system in Jena, Louisiana and the case of the Jena 6 defendants, on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 25, 2007. Mychal's mother above attended the meeting and says that Mychal knows that she is doing everything she can.

The Jena 6

In September 2006 after asking permission from the vice principal several black students at Jena High School sit under an Oak tree where white students typically gathered to get out of the sun and to socialize. A day later students arrived at the school to find nooses hanging from the tree branches.

The school principal recommended expulsion for those responsible for the nooses but the school district committee overruled the recommendation and, instead, suspended the three white students.

On November 30, 2006 Jenna High School main academic building was torched. The crime remains unresolved, although some suspect the arson was linked to the increasing racial tension at the high school.

In December 2006 racial tensions continue to build at Jena High School. At a private party in Jena, a 22-year-old white man, Justin Sloan, attacks a 17-year-old Robert Bailey, a black student and one of the Jena 6, with a bottle. Sloan is charged with simple battery and his subsequent punishment is probation.

In another incident a white high school student pulled a gun on blacks students in a convenience store parking lot. Three black students wrestle the gun away from him. Tensions were very high and more was to happen.

On December 4 2006 several black students jump Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School. He is knocked unconscious, kicked and stomped. the parent of the Jena 6 say that Barker provoked his attack. At the hospital, Barker is treated for injuries to his eyes, and ears and released that day.

Later in December 2006 six black students are arrested and charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Three of the six have their charges reduced to aggravated battery. Many say that these charges are excessive and signal the “New Jim Crow Laws” aimed at jailing black men, reducing them to the status of a felony that has no rights either to vote, find work or to take his rightful place in American society. Statistically, these numbers are growing and the “New Jim Crow Law” is taking a serious toll on the black American community.

Arrested in December, 2006 the first conviction in the case was handed down to Mychal Bell and he is charged with aggravated battery. The 16-year-old teenager at the time is now 17 and he remains in jail, facing 22 years in prison. Imagine, if Mychal were your son and how you would feel.

On September 14, 2007 A judge vacates the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court. Bell 16 at the time of the incident, has been in prison since December 2006, unable to afford his $90,000.00 bond.
Bell’s sentencing for his previous convictions of conspiracy to commit second degree-degree murder and second-degree battery had been scheduled for September 20, 2007.

On September 18, 2007 a three-judge panel said it was “premature” to consider releasing Mychal Bell. The defence attorney said that the district attorney will have to determine whether to re-file the charges in juvenile court.

It was widely reported that Bell (photographed above), now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property.

On September 19, 2007 the US Attorney, Donald Washington, said there was no connection between the nooses hung by white Jena High student, three months earlier, and the beating of the white student by black students about three months later. The LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters also rejects the idea that the two events are related. One wonders what judges do n this legal system when the lawyers determine matters of law and decide apparently that events in a case are unrelated.

On September 20, 2007 a civil rights gathering convened in Jena and about 15,000 to 20,000 protesters descended on Jena to demonstrate against what they called the unjust treatment of the accused black teenagers

Jena Louisiana Much Like Halifax Nova Scotia

Jena is pronounced (JEE-nuh) and it is a throwback to another time. Jena’s 2,971 population is 225 miles away from New Orleans, the state’s multi-racial centre. Locals dispute the growing story of Jena, but here is how they describe it in their own words.

“Here, one refers to elders as "Sir," and "Ma'am." Children still pull
catfish from creeks; couples court at Jena Giants football games; families
rope goats and calves at weekend rodeos.

In a place where per capita income is $13,761, there aren't any swank,
French restaurants, but rather, family eateries such as the Burger Barn,
Ginny's and Maw & Paw's. Most of Jena's 14-odd churches stage Easter egg
hunts. On summer afternoons, sweet tea and lemonade on a neighbor's front porch is obligatory.

And there are endearing figures, like the designated town sweeper who
mountain bikes around town with a wagon full of rakes, brooms, dustpans
and cleaning fluids, stopping only to sweep shop owners' parking lots or to
distribute complimentary bubble gum to grade schoolers.

Not all vestiges of the past are beloved, or quaint, of course.

There are no black lawyers, no black doctors and one black employee in the
town's half-dozen banks. (The employee is male, an accountant who works
out of public view.)

Economics play a role in this; with the closure of the sawmills in the
'50s, the town now relies heavily on the exploitation of oil and natural
gas, offshore. There are relatively few good-paying jobs in what is
gradually becoming a retirement community, and some point out that African Americans with higher educations tend to leave the parish.

"To a certain extent, that's true," says Anthony Jackson, one of Jena
High's two black teachers. "But I know some people who tried to stay here
and couldn't get good jobs. There was, for instance, a gentleman who
graduated as a certified biology teacher, but he left because he didn't
want to deal with what's going on here."

Cleveland Riser, 75, who began working in Jena as a teacher and then rose
to become an assistant superintendent of schools in LaSalle Parish, says
blacks have long had trouble getting ahead in Jena.

"In my experience, the opportunity for advancing in my profession was
denied, in my opinion, because I was black—not because I was unprepared
professionally, or because of my performance."

Here and across the "crossroads" of Louisiana, there are Klan supporters,
to be sure; David Duke, the former KKK Grand Wizard, carried LaSalle
Parish in his 1991 run for state governor. And Jacqueline Hatcher, a
59-year-old African American, remembers when, as a ninth grader in 1962,
she saw a large cross burning out front of the all-black Good Pine High School.

"We heard the Klan was meeting in the woods because there was going to be desegregation in the schools and they didn't want that," says Hatcher.
Still, no one recalls seeing any public lynchings or whites in robes and
masks for a half century.

"If I could take you back to 60 years ago, and then fast forward to today,
you'd have to say we've come a long way," says Billy Wayne Fowler, a white
school-board member who is one of the few leaders with the school
administration or local law enforcement who still talks to reporters.
Most townsfolk, he says, interpreted the events of last year pretty much
the same way—that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren't always on the mark.

The boys who hung the nooses "probably should have been expelled," Fowler
says, and the murder charges brought against the black teenagers were "too
harsh, too severe."

Tommy Farris, 27, an oil driller, and his wife, Nikki, 29, a registered
nurse, concur—to a point. "Those boys should have expelled," says Nikki,
who is white. "It was no innocent prank. I think those boys knew what they
were starting by hanging those nooses from a tree."

Tommy, who is black, agrees. But free the Jena Six?

"That's not going to happen," he says, adding that he thinks the black
teenagers are being given a fair chance to defend themselves against the
charges.”

There is one truly noticeable difference now of days from what things used to be and that is more and more young Nova Scotians are using hand guns to settle differences, and young Nova Scotians are afraid of nothing. Unlike preceding generations, the brave new one will not be naively denied their fair share of the Canadian dream.

Jena welcomes the visitor and it is “A Nice Place to Call Home.”

Please answer the above poll question: Should Mychal Bell of Jena 6 be released?

Little Rock Fifty Years Ago

School Desegregation and the Struggle Goes On

Fifty years ago after federal troops escorted Terrance Roberts and eight fellow black students into the all white high school in Little Rock, he says the struggle over race and segregation is till unresolved. It was fifty years ago today, September 25, 1957

For three weeks in September 1957, Little Rock was the focus of a showdown over integration as Gov. Orval Faubus blocked nine black and frightened students from enrolling at a high school with 2,000 white students.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court had declared segregated classrooms unconstitutional in 1954 — and the Little Rock School Board had voted to integrate — Faubus said he feared violence if the races mixed in a public school.

The showdown soon became a test for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who sent members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division in to control the angry crowds. It was the first time in 80 years that federal troops had been sent to a former state of the Confederacy.

In 1957, Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Melba Patillo Beals, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Jefferson Thomas, Minnijean Brown Trickey, and Thelma Mothershed Wair were determined to get a good education.

"I really didn't understand at 14 we were helping change the educational
landscape here in America," LaNier recalls. "All we wanted to do is go to
school." Every child should have the right to go to school.

When Faubus pulled Arkansas National Guard members from blocking nine students from entering the school, an inflamed crowd gathered to keep the black students out.

Relman Morin, at the time, an Associated Press reporter standing outside the school, described the chaos and confrontation as a "human explosion."

Though some students and teachers did make efforts to reach out to them, even with the 101st Army Airborne escorts; however, the harassment continued, LaNier said. A chemistry teacher flat out told her classmates he didn't want black students in his class. The school later dismissed the teacher.

The ride to school often served as a group refuge, Beals recalled Sunday. Sometimes, the students would just sit in silence, whether in a family member's car or an Army jeep, waiting for the torment and for their classmates to turn their backs on them.

Why does fear motivate, otherwise normal people, to be so cruel and why do they think they should be allowed to get away with it?

The following school year, Faubus closed the schools in Little Rock and he, the next month, was re-elected governor.

During the "lost year" of the closed schools, some students studied at home, while others for a time took classes by television. Schools surrounding Pulaski County were jammed with transfer students from Little Rock. That fall 1958 the Memphis Tennessee school board announced that it couldn't take any more transfers from Little Rock.

In 1959 the schools reopened partly because of the efforts by white businessmen, who realized that the crisis was hurting their community and the economy.

The business men wanted two things to get Little Rock off the front pages of the national newspapers and they wanted to salvage the state’s image.

“They weren't interested in justice or racial change," said Elizabeth Jacoway, author of "Turn Away Thy Son," a history of Central's desegregation.

What has really changed?

Trickey and the other nine said they're frustrated with the national school system, not just in Arkansas, that they see it as still widely segregated.

"We're still living segregated lives based on culture, color and language," said
Trickey, a gender and social justice advocate. "Here we are in 2007 and we're still playing the same game."