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All Out! Support National Days of Protest To Free the Jena Six
It is not enough for people to read about it, or for a few well-known people to “shine a light” on it. It will take a truly mass struggle by the people to FREE THE JENA 6. A struggle that is broad, diverse, and determined. And every person of conscience must ask: WHAT AM I DOING TO STOP THIS GREAT INJUSTICE?
Across the country people are beginning to organize protests demanding Free the Jena 6. We are calling for people to support these protests, including two NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION TO FREE THE JENA 6 ON SEPTEMBER 12 AND 20 —DETERMINED, DEFIANT ACTION THAT SAYS: NO TO WHITE SUPREMACY. WE DEMAND: FREE THE JENA 6. WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING UNTIL ALL THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED. THIS SYSTEM OWES THESE YOUTH AN APOLOGY!
Across the country people are beginning to organize protests demanding Free the Jena 6. We are calling for people to support these protests, including two NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION TO FREE THE JENA 6 ON SEPTEMBER 12 AND 20 —DETERMINED, DEFIANT ACTION THAT SAYS: NO TO WHITE SUPREMACY. WE DEMAND: FREE THE JENA 6. WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING UNTIL ALL THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED. THIS SYSTEM OWES THESE YOUTH AN APOLOGY!
“THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!”
“THIS IS APPALLING IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD.”
“THIS SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED…ANY LONGER!”
“THIS INJUSTICE, INEQUALITY AND RACISM INFURIATES ME.”
“THESE YOUNG MEN GOTTA BE FREED!”
“WHAT CAN I DO?”
This is what people SAY when they hear about the case of the Jena 6.
AND NOW THIS MASS SENTIMENT MUST BECOME A MATERIAL POLITICAL FORCE TO STOP A GREAT INJUSTICE.
The “Jena 6” are six Black students in Jena, Louisiana, who could go to prison for decades because they stood up against deeply entrenched racism.
This all started on September 1, 2006. Black students at Jena High sat under what had been, in 2006(!), a “WHITE ONLY TREE.”
The next day, racist students hung three NOOSES from the tree.
For all to see, a straight-up racist threat: KKK. Lynching. Black bodies at the bottom of the river.
Dozens of Black students stand together under the tree in a courageous, defiant protest. A school assembly is called where a white district attorney tells the Black students to keep their mouths shut about the nooses. Then he threatens them: “I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” When racist white students jump a Black student walking into a party in Jena, one white student gets probation. Later, when a Jena white threatens a Black student with a gun, and the Black student disarms him, it’s the African-American who is arrested. And then when a fight breaks out that sends a white student to the hospital for an hour, the law comes down on six Black students, charging them with attempted murder.
16-year-old Mychal Bell has already been convicted—by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf—of second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree battery. He faces up to 22 years in prison. And the system continues to threaten to ruin the lives of the other five youth who still face serious charges.
The railroading and persecution of these young Black men doesn’t have anything to do with who did what to whom in a schoolyard fight—they are being punished because they, and the other Black students in Jena, dared to stand up against outrageous discrimination!
Up Against A System
The case of the Jena 6 concentrates the situation that still exists throughout this country—where racism and segregation is the status quo and white supremacy is enforced in unofficial but also OFFICIAL ways this whole system operates. School officials, police, courts, authorities, and government officials have worked together to persecute the Jena 6. And this was approved from the highest authorities in the land when a representative of the US Justice Department came to Jena and said they could find no violation in the way Jena High authorities have handled things and that in fact “all of their procedures were ‘regular’ and not ‘irregular.’”
No real punishment for white students who hang lynch nooses on a schoolyard tree: REGULAR. Threatening Black students who protest this racist threat: REGULAR. Giving a slap on the hand to white students who attack Black students: REGULAR. Black students facing decades of prison time for fighting with white students: REGULAR.
This is the REGULAR workings of a white supremacist system. A system whose very foundations are deeply entwined with the outright slavery and oppression of Black people.
A system which has no future for the masses of Black youth—for millions and millions of Black youth, what they can expect is a future of low-wage jobs at best, along with incarceration, police murder, demonization, and full-out criminalization. And for those who do “make it out,” there is still the continual battle against discrimination and oppression at every turn.
Time to ACT!
It is not enough for many people to just know about the Jena 6. It is not enough for people to just be outraged about this case. It is not enough for people to read about it, or for a few well-known people to “shine a light” on it. It will take a truly mass struggle by the people to FREE THE JENA 6. A struggle that is broad, diverse, and determined. And every person of conscience must ask: WHAT AM I DOING TO STOP THIS GREAT INJUSTICE?
Across the country people are beginning to organize protests demanding Free the Jena 6. We are calling for people to support these protests, including two NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION TO FREE THE JENA 6 ON SEPTEMBER 12 AND 20 —DETERMINED, DEFIANT ACTION THAT SAYS:
NO TO WHITE SUPREMACY. WE DEMAND: FREE THE JENA 6. WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING UNTIL ALL THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED. THIS SYSTEM OWES THESE YOUTH AN APOLOGY!
SEPTEMBER 12 —Wherever people are: high schools, colleges, workplaces, in parks and on street corners, in cities and suburbs—boldly, defiantly, and creatively demand: FREE THE JENA 6!!! Organize speak-outs, demonstrations, and marches. Wear t-shirts. Pass out stickers, armbands, wristbands, bandanas. Make banners, put posters in windows. Mobilize, organize, and make plans to go to Jena on September 20. Find ways to express and manifest that: WE are NOT going to stop until all the charges are dropped.
SEPTEMBER 20 —The day Mychal Bell is scheduled to be sentenced: Join with and build the broad call that has gone out for people to COME TO JENA! PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE, OF ALL NATIONALITIES—CHARTER BUSES, CAR POOL, BUY A PLANE TICKET, AND COME TO JENA FOR A MASS PROTEST. People all over the country and the world: find ways to boldly and in a mass way manifest and stand in solidarity with the struggle in Jena.
FREE THE JENA 6!
DROP ALL THE CHARGES!
Poster: http://revcom.us/a/100/free-jena-6-en.html
PDF file of statement to distribute http://revcom.us/a/100/jena-edit-flyer-en.pdf
“THIS IS APPALLING IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD.”
“THIS SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED…ANY LONGER!”
“THIS INJUSTICE, INEQUALITY AND RACISM INFURIATES ME.”
“THESE YOUNG MEN GOTTA BE FREED!”
“WHAT CAN I DO?”
This is what people SAY when they hear about the case of the Jena 6.
AND NOW THIS MASS SENTIMENT MUST BECOME A MATERIAL POLITICAL FORCE TO STOP A GREAT INJUSTICE.
The “Jena 6” are six Black students in Jena, Louisiana, who could go to prison for decades because they stood up against deeply entrenched racism.
This all started on September 1, 2006. Black students at Jena High sat under what had been, in 2006(!), a “WHITE ONLY TREE.”
The next day, racist students hung three NOOSES from the tree.
For all to see, a straight-up racist threat: KKK. Lynching. Black bodies at the bottom of the river.
Dozens of Black students stand together under the tree in a courageous, defiant protest. A school assembly is called where a white district attorney tells the Black students to keep their mouths shut about the nooses. Then he threatens them: “I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” When racist white students jump a Black student walking into a party in Jena, one white student gets probation. Later, when a Jena white threatens a Black student with a gun, and the Black student disarms him, it’s the African-American who is arrested. And then when a fight breaks out that sends a white student to the hospital for an hour, the law comes down on six Black students, charging them with attempted murder.
16-year-old Mychal Bell has already been convicted—by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf—of second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree battery. He faces up to 22 years in prison. And the system continues to threaten to ruin the lives of the other five youth who still face serious charges.
The railroading and persecution of these young Black men doesn’t have anything to do with who did what to whom in a schoolyard fight—they are being punished because they, and the other Black students in Jena, dared to stand up against outrageous discrimination!
Up Against A System
The case of the Jena 6 concentrates the situation that still exists throughout this country—where racism and segregation is the status quo and white supremacy is enforced in unofficial but also OFFICIAL ways this whole system operates. School officials, police, courts, authorities, and government officials have worked together to persecute the Jena 6. And this was approved from the highest authorities in the land when a representative of the US Justice Department came to Jena and said they could find no violation in the way Jena High authorities have handled things and that in fact “all of their procedures were ‘regular’ and not ‘irregular.’”
No real punishment for white students who hang lynch nooses on a schoolyard tree: REGULAR. Threatening Black students who protest this racist threat: REGULAR. Giving a slap on the hand to white students who attack Black students: REGULAR. Black students facing decades of prison time for fighting with white students: REGULAR.
This is the REGULAR workings of a white supremacist system. A system whose very foundations are deeply entwined with the outright slavery and oppression of Black people.
A system which has no future for the masses of Black youth—for millions and millions of Black youth, what they can expect is a future of low-wage jobs at best, along with incarceration, police murder, demonization, and full-out criminalization. And for those who do “make it out,” there is still the continual battle against discrimination and oppression at every turn.
Time to ACT!
It is not enough for many people to just know about the Jena 6. It is not enough for people to just be outraged about this case. It is not enough for people to read about it, or for a few well-known people to “shine a light” on it. It will take a truly mass struggle by the people to FREE THE JENA 6. A struggle that is broad, diverse, and determined. And every person of conscience must ask: WHAT AM I DOING TO STOP THIS GREAT INJUSTICE?
Across the country people are beginning to organize protests demanding Free the Jena 6. We are calling for people to support these protests, including two NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION TO FREE THE JENA 6 ON SEPTEMBER 12 AND 20 —DETERMINED, DEFIANT ACTION THAT SAYS:
NO TO WHITE SUPREMACY. WE DEMAND: FREE THE JENA 6. WE WILL KEEP ON FIGHTING UNTIL ALL THE CHARGES ARE DROPPED. THIS SYSTEM OWES THESE YOUTH AN APOLOGY!
SEPTEMBER 12 —Wherever people are: high schools, colleges, workplaces, in parks and on street corners, in cities and suburbs—boldly, defiantly, and creatively demand: FREE THE JENA 6!!! Organize speak-outs, demonstrations, and marches. Wear t-shirts. Pass out stickers, armbands, wristbands, bandanas. Make banners, put posters in windows. Mobilize, organize, and make plans to go to Jena on September 20. Find ways to express and manifest that: WE are NOT going to stop until all the charges are dropped.
SEPTEMBER 20 —The day Mychal Bell is scheduled to be sentenced: Join with and build the broad call that has gone out for people to COME TO JENA! PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE, OF ALL NATIONALITIES—CHARTER BUSES, CAR POOL, BUY A PLANE TICKET, AND COME TO JENA FOR A MASS PROTEST. People all over the country and the world: find ways to boldly and in a mass way manifest and stand in solidarity with the struggle in Jena.
FREE THE JENA 6!
DROP ALL THE CHARGES!
Poster: http://revcom.us/a/100/free-jena-6-en.html
PDF file of statement to distribute http://revcom.us/a/100/jena-edit-flyer-en.pdf
For more information:
http://revcom.us
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Comments
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I AM FROM LOUISIANA, I NOW LIVE IN SEATTLE,WA. THIS IS SO BAD. I TRIED TO EXPLAIN TO PEOPLE THAT I HAVE MET HERE THAT RACISM IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL NOT ONLY IN THE SOUTHERN STATES BUT EVERYWHERE. THE DIFFERENCE IS IN THE SOUTH THEY ARE UPFRONT AND OUTRIGHT WITH THEIR HATRED AND IGNORANCE. WHEREAS IN OTHER STATES THE NORTHWEST IN PARTICULAR IT IS OR APPEARS TO BE HIDDEN. IT DOESN'T TAKE ME LOMG, BEING FORM THE SOUTH, TO RECOGNIZE IT WHEN IT IS PRESENT AND I HAVE NO PROBLEM VOICING IT. PLEASE FREE THESE YOUNG PEOPLE AND PROSECUTE THE ONES THAT PUT THEM IN THIS POSITION. GET RID OF THAT JUDGE FOR SURE THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THIS CASE AT ALL.
Indymedia often gets caught with stories they didn't bother reading about.
From http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/jena6.asp
The "Jena 6" attack took place on 4 December 2006 at the high school. During a fight that broke out in the lunchroom between a white student and a black student, the white student was hit from behind, knocked out, then set upon by other black students who proceeded to kick and stomp his "lifeless" body as he lay unconscious on the floor. The victim, Justin Barker, spent about three hours in an emergency room being treated for injuries to his head and face.
They committed assault and battery in front of many students and probably the staff. Last time I checked assault and battery was illegal and immoral. 2 wrongs do not make a right.
What you should be complaining about is the sentencing, not the charges for battery.
From http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/jena6.asp
The "Jena 6" attack took place on 4 December 2006 at the high school. During a fight that broke out in the lunchroom between a white student and a black student, the white student was hit from behind, knocked out, then set upon by other black students who proceeded to kick and stomp his "lifeless" body as he lay unconscious on the floor. The victim, Justin Barker, spent about three hours in an emergency room being treated for injuries to his head and face.
They committed assault and battery in front of many students and probably the staff. Last time I checked assault and battery was illegal and immoral. 2 wrongs do not make a right.
What you should be complaining about is the sentencing, not the charges for battery.
I pose a question to the person who wrote this article: if the situation were reversed, and it was six white kids who beat up a black kid, would you be screaming for them to go free?
If you say yes, I call you a liar.
If you say no, I call you a hypocrite.
Here's another question: is assault a crime?
While hanging nooses from a tree is a very messed up thing to do, I don't believe it is a crime.
Beating someone badly enough to send them to a hospital is.
People like you do great injustice to the work done by people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He quite often talked about how violence was not the way to resolve differences.
If you say yes, I call you a liar.
If you say no, I call you a hypocrite.
Here's another question: is assault a crime?
While hanging nooses from a tree is a very messed up thing to do, I don't believe it is a crime.
Beating someone badly enough to send them to a hospital is.
People like you do great injustice to the work done by people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
He quite often talked about how violence was not the way to resolve differences.
It really saddens me to see this still happening. Equality and Justice are both something that no matter what African Americans will never know. I have witnessed and been victimized by racism and it is exhausting to have to suck it in and just keep turning the other cheek. When you are not allowed to enjoy your God given right due to people who feel that thay are superior to you it destroys you mentally and breaks your spirit. How are our young black men to learn anything other than to become hardened by society. I never make excuses but I know as an African American in America you have to work ten times harder and prove yourself ten times over. While it may not have been right for these young men to result to fighting I know what it feels like to be constantly taunted and you don't rationalize as a teenager as if you are an adult. So while someone else asked the question would we be demanding they be set free if they were white. In all honesty if they were white young men would their lives be at stake over a fight? No, a white person would never face such ridiculous charges over a fight, of course unless it was over one of the worlds beloved political or celebrity people or one of their family members. These are young men who let their emotions take over their heads and they do not deserve such harsh penalties !
Mister,
You've got a lot of nerve bringing up Dr. King. Why is that when folks want to "flip the script" on racial violence when white kids get beat up by black kids, it's time to "remember Dr. King." I don't know if you're black or white. In fact, it really doesn't matter because calling you names gets us nowhere.
You want a history lesson, "mister?" Google Yusef Hawkins. Where was the spirit of Dr. King from the guys that murdered him for trying to answer a used car ad? Google Henry Cotton. Where was the spirit of Dr. King from the DA that threw him in jail on a bad confession and the white lady who picked him incorrectly out a line-up only to find out later that DNA cleared him? He forgave her for her life-altering screw up. THAT'S the spirit of Dr. King, but don't ask the state of North Carolina to be Christian and admit that the system failed Cotton. Google Gary Tyler. Where was the spirit of Dr. King for Abner Louima's rectum? Where was the spirit of Dr. King for Mamadou Diallo?
These things can't keep happening and you expect kids not to do the wrong thing. Should they have stomped the white kid like they did? No. Do they deserve a combined 120 years in jail (apx 20 each?) Not by a long shot. The men that murdered Yusef Hawkins didn't get a combined 120 years and that man is dead. Sorry, but we all know the "victim" that's worth 120 years worth of time isn't permanently scarred or damaged. Had the boy lost an eye or a limb or was permanently brain-damaged from his beating, I'd feel differently. But, by all accounts, the victim in this case will be alright. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. The DA's sabre-rattling was unprofessional and the state bar should yank his license. The sheriff who "investigated" numerous other crimes that he was derelict in his duty to get justice for (the white kid pulling the gun on the black kids and the white kids beating the black kid at the party) should be ousted. The individuals responsible for making hanging a noose on the tree a three-day suspension instead of an expulsion should lose their positions of authority.
The kids that beat up the white kid and the ones that beat up the black kid should ALL get the same punishment, but white folks down there don't believe in justice. That's why the white kids are on probation and the black kids are facing more jailtime than Mike Vick right now.
Since you're big on questions, smart guy, riddle me this:
If the white kids that beat up the black kid at the party were up for 22 years each, would you still be talking about Dr. King?
Crickets chirping.
I didn't think so.
You really need to look in the mirror at yourself. You're pathetic.
You've got a lot of nerve bringing up Dr. King. Why is that when folks want to "flip the script" on racial violence when white kids get beat up by black kids, it's time to "remember Dr. King." I don't know if you're black or white. In fact, it really doesn't matter because calling you names gets us nowhere.
You want a history lesson, "mister?" Google Yusef Hawkins. Where was the spirit of Dr. King from the guys that murdered him for trying to answer a used car ad? Google Henry Cotton. Where was the spirit of Dr. King from the DA that threw him in jail on a bad confession and the white lady who picked him incorrectly out a line-up only to find out later that DNA cleared him? He forgave her for her life-altering screw up. THAT'S the spirit of Dr. King, but don't ask the state of North Carolina to be Christian and admit that the system failed Cotton. Google Gary Tyler. Where was the spirit of Dr. King for Abner Louima's rectum? Where was the spirit of Dr. King for Mamadou Diallo?
These things can't keep happening and you expect kids not to do the wrong thing. Should they have stomped the white kid like they did? No. Do they deserve a combined 120 years in jail (apx 20 each?) Not by a long shot. The men that murdered Yusef Hawkins didn't get a combined 120 years and that man is dead. Sorry, but we all know the "victim" that's worth 120 years worth of time isn't permanently scarred or damaged. Had the boy lost an eye or a limb or was permanently brain-damaged from his beating, I'd feel differently. But, by all accounts, the victim in this case will be alright. The punishment doesn't fit the crime. The DA's sabre-rattling was unprofessional and the state bar should yank his license. The sheriff who "investigated" numerous other crimes that he was derelict in his duty to get justice for (the white kid pulling the gun on the black kids and the white kids beating the black kid at the party) should be ousted. The individuals responsible for making hanging a noose on the tree a three-day suspension instead of an expulsion should lose their positions of authority.
The kids that beat up the white kid and the ones that beat up the black kid should ALL get the same punishment, but white folks down there don't believe in justice. That's why the white kids are on probation and the black kids are facing more jailtime than Mike Vick right now.
Since you're big on questions, smart guy, riddle me this:
If the white kids that beat up the black kid at the party were up for 22 years each, would you still be talking about Dr. King?
Crickets chirping.
I didn't think so.
You really need to look in the mirror at yourself. You're pathetic.
By Joseph Young
Washington Informer
Dear Mychal,
I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous.
It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union.
Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America.
Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization.
Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred.
Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny.
It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children.
Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain:
“You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.”
Godspeed Mychal,
Your brother in the struggle, Joseph
everyone needs to get their stories straight on all the accedents... justin barker had nothing to do with the noose, the gun accedent at gotta go happened before the party and nothing was said about after the party dec 1st a white bot got jumped at circle k by 7 black guys and seriously hurt him and the fight at the party was not with a sudent the white had graduated a few years ago and it was only one on one :i was there. the only time other guys jumped in was to pull them apart. this is all bullshit and people need to get there stories right. the years in pision threatened is rediculouse but if it was left alone it would have went away.
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