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.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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
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
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
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Jena Six Resistance: An Example How Determined Activism Can Make A Real Difference
If the Jena 6 prosecution had not been resisted by the pressure brought to bare by the outcry of millions against this injustice, and the physical demonstration of tens of thousands in Jena on September 20th and in demonstration across the country; Reed Walters would have railroad 6 Black boys into prison for decades.
Whites jump one of the Jena 6 and beat him with a beer bottle and only one gets prosecuted with probation. Blacks jump a white, and the same prosecutor goes for 100 years against them. And the worst part is that this is typical as this study I posted about, which comes from the Louisiana legislature, demonstrates that Black teens are punished 6 times more harshly than whites for the same crimes.
The folks at Friends of Justice, who have been on the ground in Jena since the spring of '07, have a post about how relentless activism brought this case to the fore.
Relentless Activist Digs into Racial Controversies
January 6, 2008
Many thanks to Wade Goodwyn of National Public Radio (and Craig Franklin of the Jena Times) for making this Weekend Edition piece sizzle. Franklin insists that no one was paying attention to the Jena story, nor would anyone ever have paid any attention, had Alan Bean stayed in Texas.
Midway through the almost ten-minute report Mr. Goodwyn filed this morning, Franklin quotes from a document from February of last year in which I predicted that the trophy for the “most racist town in America” would soon be transfered from Tulia, Texas to Jena, Louisiana. “The awards ceremony,” I said, ”is tentatively scheduled for soon after The New York Times, 60 Minutes and other national media outlets wake up to the doings in Jena, Louisiana.”
Franklin conveniently ignores the next line: “Tulia never deserved the Most Racist Town award, and I doubt Jena (pronounced JEAN-ah) does either. But, like the Texas panhandle community I call home, the isolated central Louisiana town in the pines seems determined to bring home the trophy regardless off the cost.”
The good folks in little towns like Tulia and Jena are frequently their own worst enemies. I can’t help liking these folks. They take their religion very seriously and most of them are trying to be the best people they can possibly be (something I can’t say for the city slicker cynics who routinely put them down). These aren’t snarling Southern bigots straight off the set of Mississippi Burning–for the most part, they’re kind, polite and gentle.
Unfortunately, they are also blind to their own blindness. A lot of people took DA Reed Walters for just another zealous prosecutor until he announced on CNN that the 20,000 black people who descended on Jena in September would have reduced his town to a smoking ruin had not the Lord Jesus Christ thwarted their evil designs. “You can quote me on that,” he announced (I have actually paraphrased–but I think I caught the spirit of his weird remark).
Reed Walters never understood that the folks who rode the buses to Jena were motivated by their devotion to the same Jesus he worships. The experiences of the last year have convinced me of the need for inter-racial dialogue, starting in the churches and moving out from there.
Craig Franklin makes it sound as if I snuck into Jena under false pretences. I attended the white First Baptist Church my first weekend in Jena and spent over an hour introducing my unorthodox ministry to pastor Dominic DiCarlo. The next day I spent a good part of the afternoon with Sammy and Craig Franklin at the Jena Times. I told them about my work in Tulia and said I intended to advocate for the Jena 6 and their families just as I had stood up for Joe Moore and his friends in Tulia. I told them that the media could not always be counted on to be fair, so it behooved them to talk Reed Walters into reducing the charges. They didn’t think that would be necessary.
Wade Goodwyn did an excellent eight-minute synopsis of the Jena story for NPR’s All Things Considered in July that became the most emailed NPR piece for several weeks running. Goodwyn’s reporting was remarkably even-handed; he just laid out the facts, featuring comments from people on both sides of the developing controversy. Black bloggers used Wade’s piece as a succinct-yet-thorough vehicle for spreading the word.
Craig Franklin is right about one thing: a lot of fluff and nonsense has been written about his home town. Wade Goodwyn is effective because he tells it straight.
Whites jump one of the Jena 6 and beat him with a beer bottle and only one gets prosecuted with probation. Blacks jump a white, and the same prosecutor goes for 100 years against them. And the worst part is that this is typical as this study I posted about, which comes from the Louisiana legislature, demonstrates that Black teens are punished 6 times more harshly than whites for the same crimes.
The folks at Friends of Justice, who have been on the ground in Jena since the spring of '07, have a post about how relentless activism brought this case to the fore.
Relentless Activist Digs into Racial Controversies
January 6, 2008
Many thanks to Wade Goodwyn of National Public Radio (and Craig Franklin of the Jena Times) for making this Weekend Edition piece sizzle. Franklin insists that no one was paying attention to the Jena story, nor would anyone ever have paid any attention, had Alan Bean stayed in Texas.
Midway through the almost ten-minute report Mr. Goodwyn filed this morning, Franklin quotes from a document from February of last year in which I predicted that the trophy for the “most racist town in America” would soon be transfered from Tulia, Texas to Jena, Louisiana. “The awards ceremony,” I said, ”is tentatively scheduled for soon after The New York Times, 60 Minutes and other national media outlets wake up to the doings in Jena, Louisiana.”
Franklin conveniently ignores the next line: “Tulia never deserved the Most Racist Town award, and I doubt Jena (pronounced JEAN-ah) does either. But, like the Texas panhandle community I call home, the isolated central Louisiana town in the pines seems determined to bring home the trophy regardless off the cost.”
The good folks in little towns like Tulia and Jena are frequently their own worst enemies. I can’t help liking these folks. They take their religion very seriously and most of them are trying to be the best people they can possibly be (something I can’t say for the city slicker cynics who routinely put them down). These aren’t snarling Southern bigots straight off the set of Mississippi Burning–for the most part, they’re kind, polite and gentle.
Unfortunately, they are also blind to their own blindness. A lot of people took DA Reed Walters for just another zealous prosecutor until he announced on CNN that the 20,000 black people who descended on Jena in September would have reduced his town to a smoking ruin had not the Lord Jesus Christ thwarted their evil designs. “You can quote me on that,” he announced (I have actually paraphrased–but I think I caught the spirit of his weird remark).
Reed Walters never understood that the folks who rode the buses to Jena were motivated by their devotion to the same Jesus he worships. The experiences of the last year have convinced me of the need for inter-racial dialogue, starting in the churches and moving out from there.
Craig Franklin makes it sound as if I snuck into Jena under false pretences. I attended the white First Baptist Church my first weekend in Jena and spent over an hour introducing my unorthodox ministry to pastor Dominic DiCarlo. The next day I spent a good part of the afternoon with Sammy and Craig Franklin at the Jena Times. I told them about my work in Tulia and said I intended to advocate for the Jena 6 and their families just as I had stood up for Joe Moore and his friends in Tulia. I told them that the media could not always be counted on to be fair, so it behooved them to talk Reed Walters into reducing the charges. They didn’t think that would be necessary.
Wade Goodwyn did an excellent eight-minute synopsis of the Jena story for NPR’s All Things Considered in July that became the most emailed NPR piece for several weeks running. Goodwyn’s reporting was remarkably even-handed; he just laid out the facts, featuring comments from people on both sides of the developing controversy. Black bloggers used Wade’s piece as a succinct-yet-thorough vehicle for spreading the word.
Craig Franklin is right about one thing: a lot of fluff and nonsense has been written about his home town. Wade Goodwyn is effective because he tells it straight.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Jena High School Fire Apparently Not Related To Racial Tensions
I never understood why my fellow Jena 6 supporters made an issue of the high school fire. I never saw how their being arson, without knowing who did it or without any threat attached to it, proved anything about the racial strife. I never understood what the logic was that would assume that racists would burn their own high school as retaliation against Black people.
That’s why in my extensive writing on the Jena 6 I’ve never mentioned it; unless it may have appeared in a larger block quote about other issues, but that is it. I just never saw what there having be an arson had to do with anything. Actually, I was afraid if anything some black students might have done it in a misguided protest against the school's defacto discrimination and light handedness in dealing with the noose hangers.
From the mug shots I’ve seen it was actually a racially cooperative effort; with both Black and White suspects. Maybe there’s hope for Jena after all. If we can commit crime together, maybe, just maybe we can learn to live together :P
AP Photo via BlackVoices.com
Arrests made in Jena High arson case
Motive was to get rid of bad grades, shut down the school
Abbey Brown
The (Alexandria) Town Talk
JENA - Eight people, including three juveniles, will be charged with arson in connection with the fire that destroyed the main building of Jena High School in November 2006, authorities said today.
The motivation for the fire wasn't racial, as many suspected, but was to get rid of bad grades and shut down the school, said LaSalle Parish Sheriff-elect Scott Franklin, who is CEO of the Sheriff's Office.
The arson is not connected to the Jena Six case, none of the six defendants in that case are suspects in the arson, and the arson was not racially motivated, Franklin said. The group of suspects in the arson case is racially diverse.
An undercover narcotics operation led to information about the suspects in the school arson, Franklin said during a 1 p.m. press conference today at the LaSalle Parish Courthouse.
All of the arson suspects are males. Three Jena men have been arrested, and two more men are being sought. The other three suspects are juveniles.
Four of the eight suspects were students at Jena High School at the time of the fire, and two are currently students at the school, Franklin said.
The three adults arrested are Marcus Lee, 20, Joshua McGee, 18, and Dakota Graham, 19, all of Jena, according to Franklin.
The names of the other two adult suspects have not been released because they have not yet been arrested. The names of the juveniles are not being released.
For more read here
That’s why in my extensive writing on the Jena 6 I’ve never mentioned it; unless it may have appeared in a larger block quote about other issues, but that is it. I just never saw what there having be an arson had to do with anything. Actually, I was afraid if anything some black students might have done it in a misguided protest against the school's defacto discrimination and light handedness in dealing with the noose hangers.
From the mug shots I’ve seen it was actually a racially cooperative effort; with both Black and White suspects. Maybe there’s hope for Jena after all. If we can commit crime together, maybe, just maybe we can learn to live together :P
AP Photo via BlackVoices.comArrests made in Jena High arson case
Motive was to get rid of bad grades, shut down the school
Abbey Brown
The (Alexandria) Town Talk
JENA - Eight people, including three juveniles, will be charged with arson in connection with the fire that destroyed the main building of Jena High School in November 2006, authorities said today.
The motivation for the fire wasn't racial, as many suspected, but was to get rid of bad grades and shut down the school, said LaSalle Parish Sheriff-elect Scott Franklin, who is CEO of the Sheriff's Office.
The arson is not connected to the Jena Six case, none of the six defendants in that case are suspects in the arson, and the arson was not racially motivated, Franklin said. The group of suspects in the arson case is racially diverse.
An undercover narcotics operation led to information about the suspects in the school arson, Franklin said during a 1 p.m. press conference today at the LaSalle Parish Courthouse.
All of the arson suspects are males. Three Jena men have been arrested, and two more men are being sought. The other three suspects are juveniles.
Four of the eight suspects were students at Jena High School at the time of the fire, and two are currently students at the school, Franklin said.
The three adults arrested are Marcus Lee, 20, Joshua McGee, 18, and Dakota Graham, 19, all of Jena, according to Franklin.
The names of the other two adult suspects have not been released because they have not yet been arrested. The names of the juveniles are not being released.
For more read here
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Congressional Black Cacus Calls For Pardon of Jena Six
15 Black Congressmen led by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston are supporting the call.
A letter to Louisiana Govorner Kathleen Blanco reads "In our view, as citizens, parents, and Members of Congress, we believe Mychal Bell and the Jena 6 have paid a sufficient debt to society for any transgressions they may have committed...
We believe that they and their families have suffered enough, as has the state of Louisiana and the town of Jena."
According to the associated press:
"Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Marie Centanni, issued a statement Friday saying the state Pardon Board would have to make a recommendation for the governor to grant a pardon or commutation. And Ms. Blanco will be leaving office three days before the Pardon Board is next scheduled to meet, Jan. 17."
Yeah, nice of Gov. Blanco to drag her feet all this time knowing this, when she could have put this issue before the board earlier. So lets not pretend she's not happy that they don't meet until after she's out of office; because she simply wasn't going to doing anything about this issue if she didn't have to, as I've reported on her obstinacy in this regard previously.
I'll give her a bit of credit with helping to get D.A. Reed Walters to back of challenging the ruling that overturned Michael Bells conviction as an adult.
Blanco, a Democrat is being replaced by Republican Govenor-elect Bobby Jindal after she chose not to run for re-election.
A letter to Louisiana Govorner Kathleen Blanco reads "In our view, as citizens, parents, and Members of Congress, we believe Mychal Bell and the Jena 6 have paid a sufficient debt to society for any transgressions they may have committed...
We believe that they and their families have suffered enough, as has the state of Louisiana and the town of Jena."
According to the associated press:
"Ms. Blanco's press secretary, Marie Centanni, issued a statement Friday saying the state Pardon Board would have to make a recommendation for the governor to grant a pardon or commutation. And Ms. Blanco will be leaving office three days before the Pardon Board is next scheduled to meet, Jan. 17."
Yeah, nice of Gov. Blanco to drag her feet all this time knowing this, when she could have put this issue before the board earlier. So lets not pretend she's not happy that they don't meet until after she's out of office; because she simply wasn't going to doing anything about this issue if she didn't have to, as I've reported on her obstinacy in this regard previously.
I'll give her a bit of credit with helping to get D.A. Reed Walters to back of challenging the ruling that overturned Michael Bells conviction as an adult.
Blanco, a Democrat is being replaced by Republican Govenor-elect Bobby Jindal after she chose not to run for re-election.
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