Comments on: Links About The Jena Six http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/ Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about. Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:55:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: safdsadfs http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-306876 safdsadfs Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:51:45 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-306876 We may never learn all the reasons why because most of this will stay sealed in his juvenile record. Juvie trials are very much held in the equivalent of secret courts. We may never learn all the reasons why because most of this will stay sealed in his juvenile record. Juvie trials are very much held in the equivalent of secret courts.

]]> By: joe http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-306848 joe Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:04:22 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-306848 Bell is back in jail for different issue. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5207752.html i wish the article had more detail about why. Bell is back in jail for different issue.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5207752.html
i wish the article had more detail about why.

]]> By: joseph young http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-301342 joseph young Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:11:57 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-301342 An Open Letter To The Jena Six By Joseph Young 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 An Open Letter To The Jena Six
By Joseph Young
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

]]> By: Update: The Jena Six Need Your Voice! at Trying to follow http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-299239 Update: The Jena Six Need Your Voice! at Trying to follow Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:28:24 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-299239 [...] in what’s going on, and I felt the need to update you, by way mostly of quotes from other blogs and news outlets. First, if you know nothing about the Jena Six, this short news clip should catch [...] [...] in what’s going on, and I felt the need to update you, by way mostly of quotes from other blogs and news outlets. First, if you know nothing about the Jena Six, this short news clip should catch [...]

]]> By: Nick http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298637 Nick Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:49:29 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298637 Laura at <a href="http://www.pursuingholiness.com/category/jena-6/" rel="nofollow">Pursuing holiness</a> as a great blog on this also. Laura at Pursuing holiness as a great blog on this also.

]]> By: Ampersand http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298609 Ampersand Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:58:46 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298609 Wow, that's an embarrassing mistake. Thank you for the correction. Wow, that’s an embarrassing mistake. Thank you for the correction.

]]> By: Nan http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298608 Nan Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:48:55 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298608 A minor quibble: Jena is in Louisiana, not Alabama. A minor quibble: Jena is in Louisiana, not Alabama.

]]> By: Disgusted Beyond Belief http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298606 Disgusted Beyond Belief Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:40:00 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298606 Prosecutors have too much power and that power is basically unchecked. And court appointed defense attorneys are ridiculously underfunded, though no amount of public funding matters much where prosecutors hold all of the cards. If you really want to effect change in this area, you need to deal with those two factors. The first thing that can be done locally in the area where this happened is to have the local prosecutor voted out of office and replaced with someone who is more ethical in charging (though this is difficult since most people only care about "get tough on crime" prosecutors). But even the best intentions there can be warped by the absolute power given to prosecutors, so legislative reform limiting prosecutorial power is the next step, along with full funding for defending poor defendants. Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold my breath for any of that to actually happen. But it is worth a shot. Prosecutors have too much power and that power is basically unchecked. And court appointed defense attorneys are ridiculously underfunded, though no amount of public funding matters much where prosecutors hold all of the cards.

If you really want to effect change in this area, you need to deal with those two factors. The first thing that can be done locally in the area where this happened is to have the local prosecutor voted out of office and replaced with someone who is more ethical in charging (though this is difficult since most people only care about “get tough on crime” prosecutors). But even the best intentions there can be warped by the absolute power given to prosecutors, so legislative reform limiting prosecutorial power is the next step, along with full funding for defending poor defendants.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any of that to actually happen. But it is worth a shot.

]]> By: Cruella http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298552 Cruella Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:22:55 +0000 http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/07/09/links-about-the-jena-six/#comment-298552 Man, that's terrible. Seems like these days the courts do more harm than good. <a href="http://cruellablog.blogspot.com/2007/07/twelve-year-old-was-asking-for-it.html" rel="nofollow">In the UK the latest news is that the courts have decided having sex with ten and twelve-year-olds isn't really a crime...</a> Man, that’s terrible. Seems like these days the courts do more harm than good.

In the UK the latest news is that the courts have decided having sex with ten and twelve-year-olds isn’t really a crime…

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