Friday, September 28, 2007

Some Good Jena Six Video From the day of The March For Justice

White High School Girl Representin for Jena 6 In Smyrna TN
This is right out side of Nashville where I live - From the local news. Maybe the white "progressive" bloggers who "couldn't find information" on the Jena Six can ask this girl where she got hers from to be able to know about it and take a stand.



Let my people go – let’s go get’em
As I wrote about in this post this was easily one of my favorite parts of the whole day. At this juncture they singing "Free Mychael Bell" then "the let's go get'em" chant and then "Oooooooh, let my people, let me people go". Then they later (not in the video) they chant "let’s go get’em" to just the drums while the other musicians hold the instruments up in the air. Loved IT!
Waring: it's loud!

This video doesn't do the music, atmosphere, or the feeling of it, justice.

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Justin Barker, The True Victim in the Jena 6 Case

More on Jena 6 @ BlackPerspective.net

This is the line we keep getting from the ‘status quo of racism’ defenders.

Sure, he’s the purist, most innocent kid that ever lived. He’s such a good kid he got expelled from school 5 months after the fight for brining a gun to school. Now he’s a high school dropout as I understand it.

Their should be some recompense for the butt kicking that was delivered to Mr. Barker, but some recompense does not = anything goes. The charges are way overblown! This is the issue here. The fact that the Jena 6 had to be disciplined is hardly in dispute by anyone. That doesn’t mean any discipline is okay. If somebody steals a piece of candy from the store, that doesn’t make chopping off their hand justified. If someone steals a car, they should be prosecuted, but it doesn’t mean they deserve 50 years in prison. The time should fit the crime. It is also a crime to try to kill an ant with a sledgehammer, metaphorically speaking.

Further, ignoring all the context of the incident, and accepting one sided stories that don’t make sense and don’t fit the facts, is egregious. Reed Walters has presented to date, NO evidence of a conspiracy versus a spontaneous reaction to a verbal racial assault; that was in continuation of at least months of racial intimidation. Such context changes everything. If he has no evidence of conspiracy, why did he charge it in the first place; save he was out to get those kids to put the blacks in their place?

Justin Barker is a punk, a thug, and a race baiter. He instigated and attempted to racially intimidate, and then wants to act as if he had no role in anything.

How can one accept the notion, that Justin Barker neither said nor did a thing to provoke the attack; particularly in contradiction to the black students who say he was with at least one of the noose hangers at the time, taunting with racial slurs the black student who had been beaten by whites at a party.



WHICH MAKES MORE SENSE? Only one story makes ANY sense. If you believe Justin Barker, and the noose hanger that was with him and testified as a witness in court; then Black savages, for no reason whatsoever, plotted to randomly pick a white guy to beat down just for the hell of it; and Justin Barker was these savages unfortunate, innocent target.

First, if you believe they just randomly picked him to beat for no reason; then you believe in the long embedded racist stereotype of small brained marauding black Negroes, who only have the mental capacity for sex and violence.

There is more contexts that shapes this whole issue, and that shows Reed Walters had it out to get somebody Black, particularly the ones at the school interrupting the racial status quo.

When the principal of the school (the only person in Jen who’s done anything right in this situation) recommended the noose hangers be expelled, and the superintendent overruled him and slapped them on the wrist with a measly 3 days IN-SCHOOL suspension; the Black kids protested. Not an organized, formal protest mind you, but simply raised their voices in dismay that the noose hangers where getting off so light for such a deep insult and threat of bodily harm. Because of this, Reed Walters came up to the school, held an assembly, and told the Black kids if they didn’t stop their protest and basically get back in their place, “that he would end their lives with the stroke of a pen”. This shows a clear predisposition on his part – stay in your place nigger or I’m gonna get’ch ya – that was the clear message.

Then, in order to make his aggravated battery charge, once the fight did happen, he had to have aggravating circumstances; such as a deadly weapon. He calls a tennis shoe a deadly weapon. If a tennis shoe is a deadly weapon, then a stack of typing paper is a deadly weapon. This is absurd. It’s clearly and extreme overreach. I submit that it is an ‘I’m going get you anyway I can and make an example out of you’ reach.

This is against the backdrop of an ongoing history and tradition in this country of over charging and overly aggressively prosecuting black people when a white person is the victim (or in many times supposed victim) in racially charged settings.

This situation does not simply exist in a vacuumed.

A suspension and maybe a misdemeanor assault charge may have been appropriate; but 80 to 100 years for teens in a school fight who were provoked by constant racial intimidation, death threats, and beatings they took themselves? Even 15 to 22 years, as if there’s no culpability on the other side? For teenagers? Can YOU imagine living under a constant barrage of threats, abuse, and intimidation? Is it not human nature to react when the final straw hits. When the authorities (here, both school, police, and prosecutors) have shown they will not only not protect you, but that they are satisfied to maintain that status quo. When a white teen threatened black students with a shot gun, and they wrestled it away from him, the black students got charged with theft of a firearm, and the white teen didn’t get prosecuted. Is this not a clear message from the white authorities that we not only don’t care what happens to you; but if you sass a white person we’re going to get you?

People get beat up at school all the time for way less provocation (or just for bullying purposes) than what these kids endured. I’ve seen black students stomped before, and no one went to prison. People get beat up at school all the time for way less provocation (or just for bullying purposes) than what these kids endured. I’ve seen black students stomped before, and no one went to prison. It’s a lie that Barker was beat so bad that he almost died. People who almost die don’t go to social events the same night of such a severe beating; they’re too busy, in the hospital, trying not to die!

Where was the zeal and resilience that Reed Walters exhibits in going after the Jena 6, for prosecuting white kids during months of threats, intimidation, physical violence, and abuse? He scarcely went after anybody white for their barrage upon the black kids (one probation for a similar beating administered to a black kid, where a real weapon, a beer bottle across the head was used). He let an environment of intimidation and ridicules fester, and then went full throttle when the recipients of the hostility finally boiled over and exploded.

This is why there is a battered wife’s syndrome recognized in the courts, because it’s understandably human nature that if someone constantly abuses and berates you, that you can have a breaking point. This is why so many school systems in recent years have adopted no tolerance for bullying policies. But some people want to act like these factors don’t exist in this case. In their eyes, the case is as simple as six Black savages, for no reason whatsoever, out of the thin blue sky, beat a pure, innocent, all American white boy.

Oh by the way, some of the Jena 6 claim they weren’t even the ones in the fight (such as Bryant Purvis), and where not arrested on the spot; they weren’t arrested until the next day. I’ve not seen to date, any evidence from DA Walters proving Purvis, for one, was actually even involved. Forget all the above, it’s possible that some may be out right innocent. But you know something; Purvis was involved in leading the protest, though. You know, the protesting that lead to Reed Walters threat to end their lives with the stroke of his pen. Hmmm, how curious.



Read how Reed Walters felt that the noose hanging was insignificant and was frustrated that black people dare be upset by it, and how he was determined to put a stop to black folks making an issue of it: http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2007/09/08/the-wall-of-shame/

Time line of Jena 6 events: http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=103414

Good Article framing the issue, with a Reed Walter quote of the nooses being an “innocent prank”: http://www.newuniversity.org/showArticle.php?id=6027

Most Whites, Including "Progressive" Bloggers, Don’t Think Jena Six Charges Are Wrong

More on Jena 6 @ BlackPerspective.net
Support is coming in from all over for the Jena 6, except from white, so-called “progressive” bloggers.

They just make excuse after excuse (read comments to both post), and even claim the charges against the Jena 6 are valid. They even have the gall to say they didn’t blog on it because they couldn’t find information about it. That’s so fucking funny. I guess us Black folks have a special internet connection that leads us to different web pages than white bloggers have access to. That damn digital divide! We need more funding to support white blogger net accessibility.

I know for a fact that they are a lie, and you do too. If they wanted to find information, it was in the exact same places you and I found it. As a matter of fact I posted white reporter Amy Goodman’s article on my blog, over and over again; and my blog continually comes up at the top of net searches for "Michael Bell" and "The Jena 6" - I have the blog stats to prove it. I also then started posting Mary Mitchell’s stuff at the Chicago Sun Times, and she blogged on it regularly. Further, I posted many other resources over and over again, such as the Free The Jena 6 page. I was far from the only one.

This goes back to the point that I keep telling Black people. White folks are not going to love you no matter how much you beg them. In one comment, a white person said it was our job to make them relate, and to convince them they should be outraged. Do you here that? It’s not outrageous to them to see Black people treated poorly. They're" easily outraged over dogs, but apparently we don't qualify. We are not people for who injustisce against should upset them.
Same commenter notifies us that we dare not “lecture”; clearly, we are to beg them to think that human beings with darker skin should be treated like human beings. They don’t already think that on their own, and it’s up to us to be Magical Negroes that can take them to that special place where they will, by their grace, impart upon us sympathy and compassion that we don’t deserve.

Your liberal white friends in the bloggosphere think those niggers should go to jail too - for a school yard fight that happens every day, and was provoked. Not suspended as is what happened when I witness a group of black kids stomp another black kid when I was in high school over something that's way less a provocation than racial taunting and intimidation; but that their black asses should be locked down. Not even for misdemeanor assault, but for years! They only have problems with it when it was going to be 80 to 100 years, then it’s excessive; but 15 years, ahh, that’s just fine.

Whites willing to call out injustice

No doubt there are some white persons out here willing to call out injustice. A few rode down to Jena with the group of 500 that we took from Nashville, and donated some money. Also, the Cambridge Massachusetts City Council, who though I didn’t look, feel safe in assuming is by far white, passed a resolution in support of the young men. And for one, blogger Cooper, has posted about it regularly for at least the last month. For another, Tom at automatic preferences helped put together the first Jena 6 petition, and is even challenging other whites to look at the situation from a standpoint of if they were in black folks shoes. Somehow these white folks found some facts.

Yet, even with these few; if liberals are so unconcerned about racial injustice, dismissive of Black people’s perspective, and have such white privilege blinders on, and most white people are conservative; how do you figure we are into anything less than a fight for our lives in this country, across the board of various issues? The umbrella issues being simply equality and equal protection under the law.

Know what you’re up against Black folks. Stop walking around in your rose-colored eyeglass delusion.