Why I'm Proud To Defend the Jena Six, Model Citizens or Not

Concerning Bryant Purvis' recent arrest in Texas and the debate about defending those who are not model citizens, some valid points have been pointed out

In a list serve discussion another blogger states in part that "the way this issue was framed actually made it about individuals - You can't go back now and say well that really didn't matter."

She goes on to state

"Nothing wrong with standing up for people, but how you frame the issue is important. When you are dealing with cirminal defendants, you are almost always dealing with someone who exercised poor judgement at the very least and engaged in criminal behavior at the very worse. I mean as far back as two months ago, the CBC was attempting to get a FULL pardon for the six teens from Blanco.

It is almost as if people don't know how to disengage and will ride
this bad boy into the ground. You saved their youth. What other role
do you have to play now?"

Here's what I think in regards to these points.

Sure, we have to be careful about how a protest is framed, but some of how anything is framed is out of our hands, as the run-away media will say what it wants to it's echo chamber of whites (including liberals) who minimalism racism.

It was always a lie that Jena 6 supporters thought that the young men should receive no punishment; yet, that's the lie that was spread by mainstream media and white "progressive" blogs alike, from day one.

Calls for pardon were after they had all already spent months in prison, and the DA was digging his heels in on going forward on trumped up charges and illegal prosecutions and tactics. It was a response to the failure of the legal system to provide equal protection under the law, so at that point a pardon was right. They
had already been punished, and the legal system was showing itself ineffectual in responding to a malicious prosecution.

When we get down to deciding who's rights should be defended and who's shouldn't based on who they are, then we get to a point where it's going to be:

They came for the Jena 6, but I said nothing because I was a well behaved Negro, and not a criminal like they
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.*

That may seem dramatic, but it's really not. If they can trample criminals rights, then they can trample yours too; especially when they do so based on the criminal being Black, as this article shows that in Louisiana Black youth are sentenced 6 times more harshly than white criminals who commit the same crimes:
http://www.blackperspective.net/index.php/black-teens-six-times-more-likely-to-be-sentenced-to-jail-than-white-teens/

And when they get through with the Black "criminals", taking away their rights; you want to know who they're coming after next to feed the prison industrial complex; The rabble rousers, the protesters, the intellectuals; just as tyrannies always do.

So yeah, I've seen where some people have run out in defense of somebody Black who got tazered, and it turns out his black ass was in the wrong, and deserved to be tased; so we do have to be careful - get our facts first, and make our arguments based on good knowledge.

But at the same time we can't let the "good test case"/model citizen ideal be the determining factor in whether we defend against injustice being committed against someone. The "good test case" thing really only applies to challenging unjust laws, not in challenging unjust prosecutions, when the law itself isn't at question.

*This section of my exegesis is an allusion to a poem entitled First They Came

Jena 6 Defendant Bryant Purvis Arrested In Texas

Slaps hand against forehead - you just can't help some people.

I'll get to the particulars of the arrest in a moment, but some folks, Jena 6 supporters, on a list serve I frequented are talking about that's why they used upstanding citizens for test cases back in the day to build the movement around and that's why they used the Rosa Park incident to launch the bus boycott verses other similar incidents.

That's good, well and understood; but here's my response to that:

People's lives are not test cases or a movement.

The boys deserved justice. If justice was 1 years in jail they deserved that, if it was no jail they deserved that, if it was a few months, they deseved that; but I know they didn't deserve 80 to 100 years (what the DA first tried to charge them with).They didn't deserve 20 years in jail (the amount of time charges would have carried once he was forced to drop the murder conspiracy).

Everyone's life and right to justice is worth defending. It's not acceptable to me to stand by and watch people have their lives taken away if there's something I can do about it, just because they're not saints. Non-saints deserve equal protection under the law too.

End of story for me.


Jena 6 defendant charged in Texas assault
By Howard Witt | Tribune correspondent
4:24 PM CST, February 7, 2008

Bryant Purvis, 19, was arrested Wednesday in Carrollton, Texas, and charged with misdemeanor assault after an incident with another student at Hebron High School, Carrollton police said. Purvis was released in lieu of $1,000 bond on Thursday and suspended for three days from the school, where he enrolled as a senior after moving to the area to live with a relative.

Purvis' attorney, Darrell Hickman, characterized the assault as a "minor shoving incident" and said it involved a student whom Purvis believed had vandalized his car a few days before. A police affidavit accompanying an arrest warrant alleged that Purvis choked the student and pushed his head into a bench, injuring the victim's eye.

Read the rest of the story here.

Jena 6 March Noose Perpitrator Charged

I was there live in the flesh when this incident took place. It happened to the group that I helped to organize to go to Jena, as we waited for our buses to come back to Nashville that night after the March. I wrote about it here, this blog did not exist yet.

Feds indict teen for 'threatening' noose


ALEXANDRIA, LA -- It was one of the few blights reported by the organizers of a 20,000-person civil rights demonstration held last year in a Louisiana town at the center of a national race debate.

As a group of marchers waited for a bus to transport them from Alexandria, La., to Tennessee, a pickup truck allegedly cruised slowly by, a pair of nooses hanging from the back of the truck. Local police officers took notice and arrested the teen driver and his passenger.

Four months later, federal prosecutors have announced the indictment of Jeremiah Munsen, 18, on a federal hate crime, and civil rights conspiracy charges, for "his role in threatening and intimidating marchers" as they attempted to cross a state line.

Munsen and his 16-year-old passenger, who has not been identified by authorities, allegedly fashioned a pair of extension cords into nooses and discussed the Ku Klux Klan as they drove repeatedly past a group of marchers gathered at a bus stop, while they waited for Tennessee-bound transportation.

The rest of the story: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/national_world&id=5911694

White Racist Protest In Jena Is A Complete Dud

You can watch a video report from an area television station here: http://www.kalb.com/index.php/news/article/mlk-march-in-jena/2804/

They've been promoting this for months and all they could come up with is 30 to 50 people. That's it? There were more counter protesters there.

White separatists march in town of Jena 6By Mary Foster | Associated Press
5:23 PM CST, January 21, 2008

JENA, La. (AP) — About 50 white separatists protested the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday in this tiny town, which was thrust into the spotlight months ago by 20,000 demonstrators who claimed prosecutors discriminated against blacks.

Police separated participants in the "pro-majority" rally organized by the Learned, Miss.-based Nationalist Movement from a racially mixed group of about 100 counter-demonstrators outside the LaSalle Parish Courthouse. There was no violence and one arrest, a counter-demonstrator.

Chants of "No KKK" from the mostly college-age counter-demonstrators were met with a chant from the separatists that contained a racial epithet.

At one point, dozens of state police forced back about 10 people, dressed in New Black Panther uniforms, who had gathered around a podium where the separatist group's leader Richard Barrett was to speak.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-jena-ap-webjan22,1,5770931.story?track=rss

This was us on September 20th


Versus

Them today


AHHH, ha ha ha ha ha!

ROFLMAO!!!!

When The Hell Did Mychael Bell Get Out?

Jena 6 Teen Now In Foster Home
Posted: Jan 2, 2008 11:11 AM CST
Updated: Jan 2, 2008 11:11 AM CST

Mychal Bell, the primary face of the Jena 6 is no longer in Alexandria.
The 18-year-old teen has been moved to Monroe to stay with a foster parent.

The teen pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery in return for the deal which gave him credit for the 10 months he had already served.

The charges against Bell and five classmates, now known as the Jena 6, led to a huge civil-rights demonstration in Jena in September.

Well thanks to this elaborate report from my home town station, KSLA TV 12 in Shreveport, now I know all the details(rolls eyes @ lazy media).

My understanding was that he wouldn't getting out until around June, as I reported at the time

I guess I'll have to do some calling around to some insiders on this one. I'll get back.

Counter March To White Racist Supremist in Jena

Thanks to AJ at the OverAnalyzeIt who brought this to my attention.

KKKluckers with NOOSES marching on MLK Day in Jena, unopposed? NO WAY!
by Revolution ( revolution.sfbureau [at] gmail.com )
Monday Jan 14th, 2008 12:19 PM

A white supremacist group that calls itself the “Nationalist Movement” plans to march in Jena on January 21. They’re telling people to bring signs calling for jailing the Jena 6, abolishing the Martin Luther King holiday, and “down with communism.” They’re openly encouraging people to DISPLAY NOOSES!! Around the country, when people heard about this, a lot of them said, “it’s time to go back to Jena.” And in Jena, many said, “it’s time for people to come back to Jena.”

The January 21st Committee has issued a Call to people of all nationalities to come to Jena on Monday, January 21 to say: Oppose the Lynch Mob Racists! No to Nooses! Free the Jena Six! We Want a Better World! (see Call in article below))

This Call already has a number of prominent and significant signatories including Black and white residents of Jena, some parents of the Jena 6, 60 people from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, Cornel West, Herb Boyd, Cindy Sheehan, and Medea Benjamin. Endorsers are still being gathered. And this is shaping up to be very significant.

We encourage people to spread this Call far and wide, sign it, and get others to sign it. The Call puts out an important challenge to people of all nationalities to organize to be in Jena on January 21 to DROWN OUT these KKKluckers, whose message is about actually carrying out terror and murder against Black people.

Read the rest of the article here

White Nationalist Group Wins Right to March In Jena

National Movement vs. Town of Jena-Update
By Farrah Reyna - Anchor 6 & 10
January 11 2008

There are new developments in the lawsuit filed by the Nationalist Movement against the town of Jena.

Federal Judge Dee Drell ruled on Friday that Jena’s requirement for an insurance policy is unconstitutional and a violation of the group’s first amendment rights.
The Nationalist Movement was suing the town because the organization did not want to pay an insurance charge for its planned rally on Martin Luther King Day.

With Friday’s ruling, the party will go forward with its plans for the march on MLK day on Monday the 21st. A hearing scheduled for Monday was cancelled.
Link to story