Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: rockyfortune on September 04, 2007, 08:35:25 AM
-
Mychal Bell was like a lot of boys his age, his mother says.
Mychal Bell, 17, faces up to 22 years in prison after his aggravated battery conviction.
1 of 3 The always-smiling 16-year-old often spent weekends on the couch, munching Little Debbie snack cakes, watching football and dreaming of a day he might join his heroes in the NFL.
That was before police arrested the star running back and five other teens -- dubbed the "Jena 6" -- on attempted murder and conspiracy charges after a December 4, 2006, fight at the local high school.
Bell, now 17, sits in a cell in Jena, Louisiana, waiting to learn later this month if he will spend the next two decades in prison.
"He's not the same. He's grown up a lot since he's been in there. He's not the same ol' smiling Mychal he used to be," his mother, Melissa Bell, says. "I pray that the judge will go easy on him."
Mychal Bell wasn't convicted for attempted murder. The charges were diluted to aggravated battery and conspiracy, but undiluted is the outrage over the fates of Bell and the rest of the Jena 6. Watch how the case has divided the town »
Many in this sleepy town of 3,000 are calling Bell's July conviction a case of Jim Crow justice.
They question why Bell's public defender never called a witness in the trial. They question the all-white jury that took three hours to convict him. They question charges they say are wildly overblown. They question why the teen was tried as an adult.
And they say the fight never would have happened if not for the nooses.
A threat or a prank?
In September 2006, as the school year kicked off, a black Jena High School student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where the white students typically congregated.
Out in the Open
A high school fight. A black teen convicted by an all-white jury. Soaring racial tensions.
Tonight 8 p.m. ET
see full schedule »
Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals plopped down under the sprawling branches of a shade tree in the campus courtyard.
The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches.
"I seen them hanging. I'm thinking the KKK, you know, were hanging nooses. They want to hang somebody. Real nooses, the ones you see on TV, are the kind of nooses they were," Robert Bailey, 17, one of the Jena 6, told the syndicated radio show "Democracy Now!"
According to The Town Talk in nearby Alexandria, the school's principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses. Instead, the newspaper reported, a school district committee overruled the recommendation and suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, a gesture written off as a "prank."
"Toilet paper, that's a prank, you know what I'm saying?" Bailey told the radio show. "Nooses hanging there -- nooses ain't no prank."
A series of scuffles ensued over the next three months as racial tension at the school became palpable.
The district attorney was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. Bailey said he had a beer bottle broken over his head in one incident, a shotgun pulled on him in another.
On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it's linked to the discord strangling Jena High
-
Can we merge this thread with the "Butchering of the English language" one?
-
Many in this sleepy town of 3,000 are calling Bell's July conviction a case of Jim Crow justice.
They question why Bell's public defender never called a witness in the trial. They question the all-white jury that took three hours to convict him. They question charges they say are wildly overblown. They question why the teen was tried as an adult.
Don't know anything about this case, but I question the failure to call witnesses too. The potential punishment does seem excessive.
-
Don't know anything about this case, but I question the failure to call witnesses too. The potential punishment does seem excessive.
Everything about this trial has seemed fucked up.
I think I'm probably developing a reputation on this board as a guy who goes around looking for any excuse to scream "racism", but I rarely (more accurately:never) get bent out of shape about trivial things I perceive as racist IRL.
I always try to look at outlandish cases like this objectively, to see if there's something I'm missing, but everything I've read about this says something sort of sinister is going on here.
Everyone agrees that the nooses triggered the tensions at the school and everyone also agrees that the white kid who was beaten had been taunting the black kids. There's some dispute over whether the kid was ever unconscious, but almost everything I've read says he went partying the night of the fight.
The attempted murder charges were bullshit, and the prosecutor is claiming that one of the kid's shoes counts as a deadly weapon, which is the only way he can get away with aggravated battery charges.
-
Everything about this trial has seemed fucked up.
I think I'm probably developing a reputation on this board as a guy who goes around looking for any excuse to scream "racism", but I rarely (more accurately:never) get bent out of shape about trivial things I perceive as racist IRL.
I always try to look at outlandish cases like this objectively, to see if there's something I'm missing, but everything I've read about this says something sort of sinister is going on here.
Everyone agrees that the nooses triggered the tensions at the school and everyone also agrees that the white kid who was beaten had been taunting the black kids. There's some dispute over whether the kid was ever unconscious, but almost everything I've read says he went partying the night of the fight.
The attempted murder charges were bullshit, and the prosecutor is claiming that one of the kid's shoes counts as a deadly weapon, which is the only way he can get away with aggravated battery charges.
Unless he was wearing steel toe construction boots, I'm not sure how they classify shoes as a deadly weapon.
-
Everything about this trial has seemed fucked up.
I think I'm probably developing a reputation on this board as a guy who goes around looking for any excuse to scream "racism", but I rarely (more accurately:never) get bent out of shape about trivial things I perceive as racist IRL.
I always try to look at outlandish cases like this objectively, to see if there's something I'm missing, but everything I've read about this says something sort of sinister is going on here.
Everyone agrees that the nooses triggered the tensions at the school and everyone also agrees that the white kid who was beaten had been taunting the black kids. There's some dispute over whether the kid was ever unconscious, but almost everything I've read says he went partying the night of the fight.
The attempted murder charges were bullshit, and the prosecutor is claiming that one of the kid's shoes counts as a deadly weapon, which is the only way he can get away with aggravated battery charges.
Racism? Never heard of it. If the black race was not as inferior as it is, maybe this would not be a cause for concern.
He would have ended up in jail sooner or later
-
Racism? Never heard of it. If the black race was not as inferior as it is, maybe this would not be a cause for concern.
He would have ended up in jail sooner or later
Little Hitler strikes again. ::)
-
Racism? Never heard of it. If the black race was not as inferior as it is, maybe this would not be a cause for concern.
He would have ended up in jail sooner or later
What can I say? Our intrinsic "foleys" are our undoing.
Maybe I can read about it in your next moetivashinal theery papur. ::)
-
What can I say? Our intrinsic "foleys" are our undoing.
Maybe I can read about it in your next moetivashinal theery papur. ::)
Oh how you jest Al Doggity at least it's good your kinfolk taught you how to read, damn Frederick Douglass.
-
Has anyone on this board heard of the situation in Louisiana?
What is your opinion?
Sandra
By Alice Woodward
On a late summer day in 2006, in Jena, Louisiana, a Black high school student asked permission to sit beneath the “white tree” in front of the town’s high school. It was unspoken law that this shady area was for whites only during school breaks. But a student asked, and the vice principal said nothing was stopping them. So Black students sat underneath the tree, challenging the established authority of segregation and racism. The next day, hanging from the tree, were three ropes, in school colors, each tied to make a noose.
The events set in motion by those nooses led to a schoolyard fight. And that fight led to the conviction, on June 28, 2007, of a Black student at Jena High School for charges that can bring up to 22 years in prison. Mychal Bell, a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, was convicted by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf. And five more Black students in Jena still face serious charges stemming from the fight.
* * *
Caseptla Bailey, a Black community leader and mother of one of the Black students, told the London Observer, “To us those nooses meant the KKK, they meant, ‘blacks, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die.’" The attack was brushed off as a “youthful stunt.” The three white students responsible, given only three days of in-school suspension.
In response to the incident, several Black students, among them star players on the football team, staged a sit-in under the tree. The principal reacted by bringing in the white district attorney, Reed Walters, and 10 local police officers to an all-school assembly. Marcus Jones, Mychal Bell’s father, described the assembly to Revolution:
"Now remember, with everything that goes on at Jena High School, everybody's separated. The only time when Black and white kids are together is in the classroom and when they playing sports together. During lunch time, Blacks sit on one side, whites sit on the other side of the cafeteria. During canteen time, Blacks sit on one side of the campus, whites sit on the other side of the campus.
“At any activity done in the auditorium—anything—Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he's looking directly at the Black students—remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side—he's looking directly at the Black students. He told them to keep their mouths shut about the boys hanging their nooses up. If he hears anything else about it, he can make their lives go away with the stroke of his pen."
DA Walters concluded that the students should “work it out on their own.” Police officers roamed the halls of the school that week, and tensions simmered throughout the fall semester.
In November, as football season came to a close, the main school building was mysteriously burned to the ground. This traumatic event seemed to bring to the surface the boiling racial tensions in Jena.
On a Friday night, Robert Bailey, a 17-year-old Black student and football player, was invited to a dance at a hall considered to be “white.” When he walked in, without warning he was punched in the face, knocked on the ground and attacked by a group of white youth. Only one of the white youth was arrested—he was ultimately given probation and asked to apologize.
The night after that, a 22-year-old white man, along with two friends, pulled a gun on Bailey and two of his friends at a local gas station. The Black youths wrestled the gun from him to prevent him from using it. They were arrested and charged with theft, and the white man went free.
The following Monday students returned to school. In the midst of a confrontation between a white student, Justin Barker, and a Black student, Robert Bailey—where Bailey was taunted for having been beaten up that weekend—a chaotic fray ensued. Barker was allegedly knocked down, punched, and kicked by a number of Black students. He was taken to the hospital for a few hours and was seen out socializing later that evening.
Six Black students—Robert Bailey Junior, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Mychal Bell, and a still unidentified minor, allegedly the attackers of Justin Barker—were arrested, charged with attempted second degree manslaughter, and expelled from school.
White Supremacy Then and Now
This did not all happen in the “Red Summer” of 1919 when Jim Crow segregation thrived, and Blacks in major cities faced race riots that raged throughout the country. This did not occur in the 1950s after Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954 and young children faced angry white mobs to make history in desegregating public schools. This did not happen in the summer of 1955 when, in Money, Mississippi, a vibrant Black youth by the name of Emmett Till was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman. This did not occur in 1960, when on February 1 four Black college students sat in at a “white only” lunch counter, demanding service and launching the civil rights movement to another level. This did not happen during the period 1865 to 1965 during which 3,446 Black people were lynched in the United States.
This is now. When three white students in Jena committed this hate crime, hanging three nooses from the “white tree,” they evoked the ugly history of slavery, segregation, lynching, and police brutality to threaten the lives of Black students at their school. The “white tree” stands in Jena, Louisiana. The Jena 6, as the Black students have come to be called, are in prison and on trial for defending themselves against white supremacist attacks.
The Jena 6 were arrested in December 2006. The outrageously high bail ranged from $70,000-$138,000, leaving most of them stuck in jail for months.
The first student to go to trial this June was Mychal Bell, who waited behind bars, unable to post bail. Like a scene from the Jim Crow South, he was judged by an all-white jury, in a courtroom run by a white judge. Whites sat with Justin Barker and his white lawyer on one side. Blacks sat with defendant Mychal Bell, who was represented by a court-appointed attorney.
The prosecutor called 16 witnesses, mostly white students. The court-appointed defense attorney called none. Accounts of the incident, who was involved, and who did what, vary highly, including whether Mychal Bell was the one who first punched Justin Barker. Barker’s attorney argued that Bell’s tennis shoes on his feet were a “dangerous weapon.” The trial was so outrageous that when a Louisiana TV station polled viewers, 62% said that Mychal Bell was not getting a fair trial.
Mychal Bell was convicted of two felonies: aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery. He faces up to 22 years in prison. The remaining five defendants await their trials.
Standing Up to Racism
Few people in the United States have heard of the case of the Jena 6. But the trial was covered by the French newspaper Le Monde, and the BBC aired a documentary on the case. The London Observer reported on the Jena 6 story.
Family, friends, and supporters of the young men are protesting and struggling to free the Jena 6. The Black community in Jena and people from across Louisiana and Texas have come together to support the Jena 6 and fight the injustice of their trials. People have put their lives on hold, and churches have opened their doors. The Jena 6 and their supporters are defiant and continue to be under attack. Marcus Jones told Revolution about the most recent event: "Thursday night we had an NAACP meeting here at the church. The next day, in the morning, the pastor goes to his church and somebody just clean ran through his church yard, knocked his sign down, ran over back and forth on it with they truck, and just took off, you know. People report it to the police (laughs). What good they gonna do here, I don't know."
The majority of Jena’s estimated 385 Black people live in an area of town known as Ward 10. Many homes there are trailers or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. Only two Black families live in the all white middle class suburban area of Jena. An article in the Observer recounts how one of them bought a house: “A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy his way in. But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him a ‘white’ property even though several were advertised in the local paper (‘they're all under contract,’ the agents lied). The teacher eventually went to see one white owner and offered him cash. ‘The guy preferred green [dollars] to Black, so I got the property,’ laughed the teacher, ‘but since we moved in three years ago we haven't been invited by a single neighbor.’”
The “white tree” stands in Jena, Louisiana today while entire neighborhoods and precious lives in the 9th ward of New Orleans are left wasting away, even as the more profitable and less Black areas of the city are rebuilt. It stands while a father, a mother, a fiancée, a child, and many friends are still feeling the devastating loss of Sean Bell who was murdered by the NYPD. It stands while the Rutgers University basketball team gets subjected to racist and sexist verbal assault from a national talk show host. While the N word is spouted with rage by a comedian.
In a world such as this, there's nothing left to do but pull this tree up by its roots and get rid of it for good.
For more on the Jena 6 visit Friends of Justice at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/
On youtube.com, search for “Jena Six, A photo story.”
Send us your comments.
Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA
Current Issue
Previous Issues
Bob Avakian
RCP
Topics
About
Contact
Three Main Points
What do we in the Revolutionary Communist Party want people to learn from all that is exposed and revealed in this newspaper?
Read On…
Our Ideology is Marxism-Leninism- Maoism
Our Vanguard is the Revolutionary Communist Party
Our Leader is Chairman Avakian
Español
Free email subscription:
Become a Sustainer
Send us your Comments
Send To A Friend
Volunteer
Subscribe
The Bob Avakian
Toolkit
(1 meg - printable)
"What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both."
Bob Avakian,
Chairman of the RCP,USA
From the talk, “Why We’re in the Situation We’re in Today… And What to Do About It: A Thoroughly Rotten System and the Need for Revolution”
"In a world marked by profound class divisions and social inequality, to talk about “democracy”— without talking about the class nature of that democracy and which class it serves—is meaningless, and worse. So long as society is divided into classes, there can be no “democracy for all”: one class or another will rule, and it will uphold and promote that kind of democracy which serves its interests and goals. The question is: which class will rule and whether its rule, and its system of democracy, will serve the continuation, or the eventual abolition, of class divisions and the corresponding relations of exploitation, oppression and inequality."
Bob Avakian
Order now
This article is posted in English and Spanish at http://revcom.us
Current Issue | Bob Avakian | Previous Issues | About | Topics | Contact
RCP Publications • Box 3486 Merchandise Mart • Chicago, IL 60654-3486
There are many websites that link to this site. Such links do not imply endorsement by Revolution newspaper of the content of these other websites (nor are those websites responsible for the content of revcom.us).
-
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=166420.0
-
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=166420.0
Thanks, just saw the link.
Unfortunately the media has done very little coverage of it.
Sandra
-
Louisiana judge tosses conviction against teen tried as adult
(CNN) -- A Louisiana appeals court Friday vacated the remaining conviction of a teenager accused in a violent, racially charged incident in Jena, Louisiana, his attorney said.
Mychal Bell's defense team will be filing a motion to get him out of prison.
1 of 3 Bob Noel said the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Lake Charles threw out the conviction for second degree battery against Mychal Bell, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court.
The future of the case against Bell is up to the district attorney, who must decide whether to refile the charges in juvenile court, Noel said.
Bell, who is now 17, was 16 at the time of the fight in December 2006.
Earlier this month, a district court judge vacated a conviction for conspiracy to commit second degree battery, saying that charge should have been brought in juvenile court.
He left standing the second degree battery conviction, however.
Bell's defense team would be filing a motion to get him out of prison, where he has been since his arrest in December, Noel said.
A sentencing hearing that had been scheduled for September 20 is now off, he said.
The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had been planning to join a rally in support of Bell on that date, The Associated Press reported.
Bell and five other members of what has become known as the "Jena 6" were initially charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit attempted murder in connection with the December 4 beating of a white student.
Don't Miss
Residents: Nooses spark school violence, divide town
Charges against Bell were reduced, as were charges against Carwin Jones and Theodore Shaw, who have not yet come to trial.
Robert Bailey, Bryant Purvis and an unidentified juvenile remain charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Racial tensions had simmered at Jena High School and in the small town for the first three months of the 2006 school year after a black student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where white students typically congregated.
Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals plopped down under the sprawling branches of the shade tree in the campus courtyard.
The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches.
"I seen them hanging. I'm thinking the KKK, you know, were hanging nooses. They want to hang somebody. Real nooses, the ones you see on TV, are the kind of nooses they were," Bailey, 17, one of the Jena 6, told the syndicated radio show "Democracy Now!" in July.
The school's principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses, according to The Town Talk newspaper in nearby Alexandria. Instead, a school district committee suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, the newspaper reported, a gesture written off as a "prank."
"Toilet paper, that's a prank, you know what I'm saying?" Bailey told the radio show. "Nooses hanging there -- nooses ain't no prank."
The district attorney was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it was linked to the discord.
Four days after the arson, several students jumped a white classmate, Justin Barker, knocking him unconscious while stomping and kicking him. The charges against the Jena 6 resulted from that incident.
Parents of the Jena 6 said they heard Barker was hurling racial epithets. Barker's parents said he did nothing to provoke the beating.
Barker was taken to a hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears, as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker. He was treated and released that day.
Bail for the Jena 6 was set at between $70,000 and $138,000. All but Bell posted bond. The judge had refused to lower his $90,000 bail, citing Bell's criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses -- two simple battery charges among them.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/14/jena.six/index.html
-
Thing is there is movement of "freeing the Jena 6"... The media is there and a lot buses are going there to protest...
Fvcking racist prosecutor done f up this one up, and sturred up a hornets nest...
-
They are expecting more than 50,000 people down in Jena, LA.
-
Six black students at Jena High School in Central Louisiana were arrested last December after a school fight in which a white student was beaten and suffered a concussion and multiple bruises. The six black students were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy. They face up to 100 years in prison without parole. The fight took place amid mounting racial tension after a black student sat under a tree in the schoolyard where only white students sat. The next day three nooses were hanging from the tree.
this is 2006 into 2007 in the USA, scary isn't it?
-
Are the blacks innocent and the whites guilty?
Take the law into your own hands and pay the punishment.
I agree the whole situation is ridiculous in this day and age.
-
Sentencing may be kinda harsh, but guess you did not know they all have previous records with the law ::) And this was premeditated
OMG nooses, cry me a river.
-
Six black students at Jena High School in Central Louisiana were arrested last December after a school fight in which a white student was beaten and suffered a concussion and multiple bruises. The six black students were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy. They face up to 100 years in prison without parole. The fight took place amid mounting racial tension after a black student sat under a tree in the schoolyard where only white students sat. The next day three nooses were hanging from the tree.
this is 2006 into 2007 in the USA, scary isn't it?
And you're surprised by that happening in the deep south? Half those people are still livid from slavery being abolished.
-
good maybe at least we have a few hung coons on us hands, nuttin like koon huntin when day step outta line
Let me get this straight you think, he should just be allowed to gallop on out fo jail, after assaulting someone? Excellent ::)
I guess you didn't read the story...They set the bail very high, and the fact that the kids who assaulted Bailey were not giving such a high bail is questioned.
But let me guess, if a person you had a dispute with at work hung a note on your office (nobody saw him-no figure prints), threatening you or your family. And you know dude was big into guns, and had will and means...would you be pissed
You don't what fuck is steppin out of line...because if you did, the you know that the a kid ask to sit under the tree that person was granted permission. And the next day Nooses were on the tree as threat. The kid didn't step out of line.
I love how you try to justifying killing people on the basis of their skin color race. It's ignorant cowards like you that the word n igger should be reserved for.
-
Sentencing may be kinda harsh...
The kids were originally charged with attempted murder.
How do they spell 'b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t' in that little backwards-ass town?
-
The kids were originally charged with attempted murder.
How do they spell 'b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t' in that little backwards-ass town?
with a y.
The old south shall rise again
-
I love how you try to justifying killing people on the basis of their skin color race. It's ignorant cowards like you that the word n igger should be reserved for.
But it's not, lol.
-
The kids were originally charged with attempted murder.
How do they spell 'b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t' in that little backwards-ass town?
On top of that, the assault charges are contingent on one of the kid's shoes being considered a deadly weapon.
Not to mention, one of the white kids pulled a gun on the black kids prior to the fight.
-
But it's not, lol.
Yes it is, anybody can be a n igger, you've proved already in your posts. You fit it to a "T". Matters not what your race is.
-
What I don't understand is why their attorneys thought it would be a good idea to go with a jury trial.
I know that jury pools can be and are rigged, but how do they end up with 12 White jurors? Does not compute.
-
Parker is spot-on, as usual.
-
youandme
america is a free country, do you have the guts to say the things you say online in public?
if you do then and only then will i respect your comments because you are entitled to them. if not you fulfill the typical online tough guy which tends not to go a long way with anyone.
-
Parker is spot-on, as usual.
Thanks, dude is too ignorant to know what he is talking about...and same type of folk tend to not have the balls to back any claims...they're just mad at the world because deep down, they feel inferior, it's actually quite pitiful.
-
Parker is a filthy racist!
-
the news is filled with this thing. and i dont think i really get it.
from what i understand(and i may have it wrong) a year or so ago some black kids were joking with some white kids at school and asked if they could sit under some tree where the white kids usually sit. the next day some nooses were hanging from the tree. the kids responsible were suspended but aparently some people were mad cause they felt the kids should have been charged with a hate crime....but werent.
now i guess just recently(not sure exactly when) 6 black kids beat up 1 white kid and were originally charged with attempted murder but now the charges have been reduced. and now thousands of people are protesting aparently beacuse they feel the charges are racially motivated.
am i missing something? i dont get why this is such a big story and why all the protests. like i said i may have the facts wrong or not know all of them but doesnt 6 kids beating up 1 kid call for charges being laid?
anyone?? :-\
-
I couldn't have said it better than the author of this article:
White supremacists in the mainstream media
Earlier this year, I wrote a column titled (Murder in Black and White_http://patriotpost.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=531 (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/edition.asp?id=531)), which detailed the torture, gang-rape and murder of a young couple, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Their five attackers—four men and a woman—dumped his battered body by a train track and threw her charred remains in a trash bin.
The point of that grim essay was to highlight the mainstream media’s disparate treatment of interracial crimes.
Indeed, there are some 17,000 murders committed in the U.S. each year, but this double murder was clearly far more barbaric, far more monstrous than most. Yet it never made a headline more than 20 miles from the crime scene—not on NPR, not on CNN or the networks, not in The Washington Post, not in The New York Times.
Was the MSM’s lack of interest in this case race related, given that the two victims were white and the five defendants are black?
Yes.
How do I know?
Consider this case in point: Last week, six white West Virginia lowlifes were charged with the kidnapping, torture and sexual assault of a 20-year-old black woman, Megan Williams. This was a brutal crime, to be sure, but Megan Williams is alive today, having been rescued by local sheriff’s deputies. Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, as we know, were not nearly so fortunate.
Within 24 hours of the arrests in the West Virginia case, stories were headlined on CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times—even the BBC—and numerous reports have been filed subsequently.
Was the MSM’s acute interest in this case race related?
Yes.
In fact, no sooner had Williams’s attackers been arrested than the FBI and federal prosecutors joined the investigation to determine if the victim’s civil rights were violated, or if her assault qualified as a “hate crime.”
To this day, however, searches of the massive news archives of CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times for the names “Channon Christian” and “Christopher Newsome” render exactly zero references to their names in any news story—that’s nil, naught, zip and zilch.
There is nothing unusual about the racial component of the Christian and Newsom murders. Indeed, while blacks represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, black perpetrators are convicted by their peers in more than half of all murder and manslaughter cases. In other words, per capita, black-on-white crime is far more prevalent than the inverse.
However, the contrast in how the MSM reported these two cases betrays a prevalent white-supremacist mindset among liberal journalistic scribes.
By discounting the newsworthiness of black-on-white crime such as the murders of Christian and Newsom, and at the same time trumpeting the newsworthiness of white-on-black crime such as the assault on Williams, the MSM is, in effect, insisting that white people should be held to a higher standard than black people. In doing so, the MSM is essentially saying, “It isn’t news when blacks prey on whites, because we expect them to behave like vicious animals, but it is headline news when whites prey on blacks, because we expect whites to be more civilized.”
Additional evidence of this underlying media hypocrisy is substantiated through the MSM’s coverage of race-baiting opportunists who inject themselves into racially charged criminal cases.
For example, if a racially motivated hate group like the KKK showed up to protest on behalf of white defendants in a white-on-black crime, they would rightfully be skewered by the media. However, when racially motivated haters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson show up to protest on behalf of defendants in a black-on-white crime, they are canonized as civil rights saviors.
In fact, this week Sharpton and Jackson, with more than ten thousand of their ilk in tow, swamped the small town of Jena, Louisiana, to protest charges against six black youths (the so-called “Jena Six”) for brutally beating and stomping a white classmate—charges that were reduced from attempted murder to aggravated battery.
“You cannot have justice meted out based on who you are rather than what you did,” Sharpton argues, implying that because the defendants in Jena are black, and there was racial tension among the youths, the charges are unjust. “This is the most blatant example of disparity in the justice system that we’ve seen. You can’t have two standards of justice.” (Unless, of course, you consider Sharpton’s fabrication of the Tawana Brawley rape hoax a “blatant example of disparity in the justice system.”)
According to Jackson, “Across this country, there are two justice systems—one for blacks and one for whites. Black young men are not more likely to commit crimes than whites, but they are more likely to be stopped by police, more likely to be arrested if stopped, more likely to be charged if arrested, more likely to be jailed if convicted, more likely to be charged with felonies and more likely to be tried and imprisoned as adults.”
Actually, black youth are far more likely to commit crimes than white youth, and for that reason they are more likely to be stopped by police (including black police officers), more likely to be arrested and, if charged, convicted (often by black-majority juries).
District Attorney Reed Walters refuted the claims of Sharpton and Jackson, saying, “This case has been portrayed by the news media (emphasis added) as being about race and the fact that it takes place in a small Southern town lends itself to that portrayal, but it is not and never has been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.”
It is worth noting that neither Jackson nor Sharpton offered a word of sympathy for the actual assault victim.
Remarkably, Jackson complains, “This isn’t just a Southern problem. A study of five states in the Northwest and Midwest showed that blacks are incarcerated at ten times the rate of whites.”
Indeed, this is not “just a Southern problem,” but, in fact, a cultural problem. Too many black men do not take responsibility for themselves or their families, in part because racists like Jackson and Sharpton have inculcated black folks with the notion that they are “victims” of white folks.
Of course, since Jackson fathered a child out of wedlock with an aide (and then paid her $40,000 from his “nonprofit” Rainbow/PUSH Coalition for “moving expenses”), he is not really in a position to advocate for responsible fatherhood.
Hoping that the Louisiana “injustice” will jumpstart racial strife across the nation, Jackson insists, “In Jena, the protest will begin, but it won’t end there. This situation is explosive—not only in Jena but across the country.”
Meanwhile, back in West Virginia, the NAACP has arrived on the scene to “monitor” justice in the Williams case, and no doubt Sharpton and Jackson will follow.
However, still no word on when “journalists” at NPR, CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times will headline the torture, gang-rape and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.
-
I hate the media.
Bigots abound:
Two arrested in noose incident near Jena, Louisiana
ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Authorities in Alexandria, Louisiana, arrested two people after nooses were seen hanging from the back of a red pickup Thursday night, the city's mayor told CNN.
Alexandria is less than an hour away from Jena, Louisiana, and was a staging area Thursday for protesters who went to the smaller town to demonstrate against the treatment of six black teens known as the "Jena 6" in racially charged incidents.
Police say the 18-year-old driver of the truck was charged with driving while intoxicated and inciting to riot and also may be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor -- the 16-year-old passenger.
As police were questioning the driver, he said he had an unloaded rifle in the back, which police found. They also found a set of brass knuckles in the cup holder on the dashboard, according to the police report.
The passenger told police he and his family are in the Ku Klux Klan, the police report said. He also said he had tied the nooses and that the brass knuckles belonged to him, the report said. Watch what police found on the truck »
At least one of the nooses was made out of an extension cord, according to the police report.
Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy said those arrested were "from around Jena" and not in the same parish as his city.
The police report says a crowd of about 200 people, mostly African-Americans, watched the arrest take place.
Roy said the incident is "not indicative" of Alexandria and that local authorities will look into the matter "completely, thoroughly and transparently."
A photograph of the truck was sent to CNN by Casanova Love, 26, who said he's in the U.S. Navy. He's visiting his family in Louisiana.
Love said he was standing outside a club with some friends Thursday night when he saw the red pickup drive by slowly with two nooses hanging from it.
He said the truck continued up the street and passed by a large group of Jena 6 protesters standing outside a bus stop. Police then pulled over the vehicle.
Love explained why he sent the photo to CNN: "People need to see this. It's 2007, and we still have fools acting like it's 1960."
State police estimated at least 15,000 people gathered in Jena on Thursday to protest what they consider unequal punishments meted out in recent racially charged cases.
One involved the hanging of nooses from a tree a day after black students sat under what had been an informal gathering place for white students. The students involved were suspended from school for a brief time.
Another was the beating of a white student that resulted in six black teens facing charges that include aggravated second-degree battery.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/21/car.nooses/index.html
-
I couldn't have said it better than the author of this article:
You should read that article with a more analytical eye.
There are many cases involving both blacks and whites that don't make national news.
Do you really think the same press that indulges in stories about baby Madeline, Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy, etc. would not take the first opportunity to focus on a new SWF crime victim?
And as much as some may dislike Sharpton and Jackosn, the comparison to the KKK is just wrong. A more apt comparison would be someone like Bill Donohue or Pat Roberts. Both these guys look at the world through the victimhood prism, only they use the religion angle.
-
the news is filled with this thing. and i dont think i really get it.
from what i understand(and i may have it wrong) a year or so ago some black kids were joking with some white kids at school and asked if they could sit under some tree where the white kids usually sit. the next day some nooses were hanging from the tree. the kids responsible were suspended but aparently some people were mad cause they felt the kids should have been charged with a hate crime....but werent.
now i guess just recently(not sure exactly when) 6 black kids beat up 1 white kid and were originally charged with attempted murder but now the charges have been reduced. and now thousands of people are protesting aparently beacuse they feel the charges are racially motivated.
am i missing something? i dont get why this is such a big story and why all the protests. like i said i may have the facts wrong or not know all of them but doesnt 6 kids beating up 1 kid call for charges being laid?
anyone?? :-\
It's a bit more complicated than that. Here is a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six
-
"U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, who is himself black, has stated there is no evidence of unfair prosecution or sentencing."
-
But it's not, lol.
Actually the definition is "Something that ruins good thing". In that sense, it could fit you to a T.
-
What I don't understand is how a shoe (on a person's foot) can be considered a deadly weapon,
...while a gun is not. Can someone please explain that to me, ...'cause I don't get it. :(
-
What I don't understand is how a shoe (on a person's foot) can be considered a deadly weapon,
...while a gun is not. Can someone please explain that to me, ...'cause I don't get it. :(
I can't understand that... Unless it was like an old steel spiked Golf shoe?
-
I can't understand that... Unless it was like an old steel spiked Golf shoe?
It was a running shoe. It's good to know how things work in Louisiana. ::)
I can pull a gun on you, and pistol whip you, ...and that's ok.
But God forbid you kick me in retaliation for the beat down, 'cause that's assault with a deadly weapon
(your running show still on your foot) ...not to mention an attempted murder charge. ::)
-
youandme
america is a free country, do you have the guts to say the things you say online in public?
if you do then and only then will i respect your comments because you are entitled to them. if not you fulfill the typical online tough guy which tends not to go a long way with anyone.
Bigbrolic, I say these things to people all the time, I don't say the N word, that is used jokingly. I discuss the topic of anomie among social classes related to both white, black, and hispanic, I don't touch native americans (mental health problems for the majority).
It's no secret, it's the way things are you can either say something and drive a change, or you can shut your mouth and let this crap fuc the country up. Two things can either happen in Jena 1) The racial tension will divide the town even further 2) It will ease tensions by clearing the air, and showing the actual color divide.
I've been to both Jena, Alexandria, Ball, and Pineville...I used to pity the situation until I got more involved and saw how the only race group that was not helpiing themselves was in fact African Americans. Hispanics work their ass off, and would not let us mend them a handout if they did not work for it. Native Americans are very business savy and utilize what the government gives them in terms of block grants, and also live off the land even when they are well off (several plant garden, functional ones in their back yards) Japanese are isolated, won't ever ask for help. African Americans "shopped the welfare market"....
-
"U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, who is himself black, has stated there is no evidence of unfair prosecution or sentencing."
Regarding the nooses:
According to U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, the FBI agents who investigated the incident, as well as federal officials who examined it, found that it "had all the markings of a hate crime." However, it wasn't prosecuted because it failed to meet federal standards required for the teens to be certified as adults.
-
Oct 6, 1:55 AM EDT
Jena mayor calls song inflammatory
JENA, La. (AP) -- A video in which rapper-actor Mos Def asked students around the country to walk out Oct. 1 to support the "Jena Six" escaped comment by this town's mayor. But when John Mellencamp sang, "Jena, take your nooses down," he took issue.
"The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied," Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed on Friday to The Associated Press.
He said he had previously stayed quiet, hoping that the town's courtesy to people who have visited over the past year would speak for itself. "However, the Mellencamp video is so inflammatory, so defamatory, that a line has been crossed and enough is enough."
Mellencamp could not comment immediately because he was on a plane from California to Indiana and had not heard about McMillin's comments, publicist Bob Merlis said late Friday.
A brief note from Mellencamp posted Thursday on his Web site says he is telling a story, not reporting. "The song is not written as an indictment of the people of Jena but, rather, as a condemnation of racism," it says.
Nooses hung briefly from a big oak tree outside Jena High School a year ago, after a black freshman asked whether black students could sit under it. A white student was beaten unconscious three months later, in December.
Six black students, four of them 17 years old and legally adults, were arrested. Five were initially charged with attempted murder, although that charge has been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery as four of the older youths have been arraigned. The only youth tried so far was convicted, but that conviction was overturned on appeal and the case was sent to juvenile court.
Mellencamp's song opens, "An all-white jury hides the executioner's face; See how we are, me and you?" As he sings, images of Jena, the high school and the tree are followed by video from the 1960s, including civil rights marchers, police beatings, and President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King speaking. Still images include one of a protest sign reading, "God demands segregation," a stylized drawing of people in Ku Klux Klan robes and an older image of a black man in shackles, begging.
"I do not want to diminish the impression that the hanging of the nooses has had on good people," McMillin wrote. "I do recognized that what happened is insulting and hurtful."
But, he said, "To put the incident in Jena in the same league as those who were murdered in the 1960s cheapens their sacrifice and insults their memory."
At McMillin's request, the Jena Town Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to create an interracial committee to study racial relations and suggest solutions to any problems.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JENA_SIX_MELLENCAMP?SITE=HIHAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
-
haha Mellencamp what a loser
-
Charges against Jena 6 defendant reduced
JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Charges against Bryant Purvis, one of the six black students accused of being involved in beating a white student, were reduced to second degree aggravated battery during his arraignment Wednesday morning.
Bryant Purvis says he is focusing on his studies and practicing basketball.
Purvis, who was facing charges of second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy, entered a not guilty plea to the reduced charges in the LaSalle Parish Courthouse in Jena.
Charges have now been reduced against at least five of the students in the racially charged "Jena 6" case. Charges against Jesse Ray Beard, who was 14 at the time of the alleged crime, are unavailable because he's a juvenile.
Civil rights leaders Martin Luther King III and Al Sharpton led more than 15,000 marchers to Jena -- a town of about 3,000 -- in September to protest how authorities handled the cases against Purvis and five other teens accused of the December 2006 beating of fellow student Justin Barker.
After the arraignment, Purvis said he has moved to another town to complete high school. He said he is focusing on his studies and practicing basketball, which he hopes to play in college.
Mychal Bell, 17, is the only one of the "Jena 6" teens still in jail. Although he was released in September after his adult criminal conviction for the beating was overturned, he was ordered two weeks later to spend 18 months in a juvenile facility for a probation violation relating to an earlier juvenile conviction.
A district judge tossed out Bell's conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, saying the matter should have been handled in juvenile court. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal in Lake Charles, Louisiana, did the same with Bell's battery conviction in mid-September.
Prosecutors originally charged all six black students accused of being involved in beating Barker with second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/11/07/jena.six.charges/index.html