Free the Jena Six

Posted on September 15, 2007
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The Jena Six are Black youths who face up to 22 years in prison because of a schoolyard fight. These youths had the audacity to shatter the Jim Crow traditions in their small town of Jena Louisiana by sitting down in front of a tree that “tradition” had declared was “whites only”. The next day, nooses hung from the tree, in a grim reminder of lynchings, and as a threat to the students and the Black population generally. A few days after the local D.A. threatened the Black students at Jena High that they had better shut up. a fist fight broke out between some Black and white students. Black students involved were arrested and face heavy jail sentences for a fight that resulted in one student going to an emergency room for less than one hour; when several white students jumped a Black youth at the school, the only punishment meted out was that one of them was briefly suspended from school.

 

Busses and caravans are leaving from throughout the South and East Coast to go to Jena on September 20, when Mychal Bell, a Black student already convicted of second degree battery is scheduled for sentencing. Other events and protests are planned in cities and towns throughout the country. The bigotry, intolerance, and ignorance promoted by the Bush Regime have fostered an atmosphere in which racist authorities are emboldened to flourish openly, and must be rejected. The Jena Six must be freed.

By Jamilah Hoffman, 9/14/07


Is it acceptable that in 2007, some 40 years after the high tide of the civil rights movement, and over 150 years after the end of official slavery, that nooses would hang  at a high school in America?  In the school colors no less. 


Is it acceptable, in 2007, for the leadership in Jena, to let simmer racial intolerance, holding no students accountable for hanging the nooses or the other racially motivated outrages that occurred, but to throw the book at each attempt by Black students to stand up and defend themselves?


This country was founded on the backs of Black people yet history has shown us that America has no shame in using Black people and them discarding them like thrash.  (Look at New Orleans)


The District Attorney, Reed Walters, has said as much when addressing students at Jena High School.  Looking directly at the Black kids seated together he told them he could “end their life with a stroke of the pen.”


Even though the 1960s are gone and the systematic erasure of its impact has been mostly effective, today, in 2007, we can not allow the hanging of a noose, a symbol of hate, terror and death to be answered with the response of imprisonment for the six students who said No More!


The Jena Six must be supported because we cannot live in an environment where the hanging of nooses is considered a practical joke.  I’m not laughing.  The Call of the World Can’t Wait speaks clearly that your government is enforcing a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.  We cannot ignore this.  This injustice cannot be swept under the rug of “that’s just the South” and “This isn’t my battle to fight.”  If it’s true that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, then our minds, voices and bodies need to be focused on Jena, Louisiana on September 20th.  Free the Jena Six! And let this never happen again.*


*Just last week, at the University of Maryland, a noose was found hanging near that campus” Black cultural center.


More information on this important fight can be found by following the links below. 

 

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