A few months ago, I read a story on one of the liberal blogs about the Jena Six. Today, I read this piece by Bill Quigley and Audrey Stewart on the passionate site Truthout.com, and in light of the fast and loose handling of sentencing guidelines by BushCheney, it stings even more today. I can’t comment about the facts of the case as I was not involved, but from what I have read it seems there was a gross miscarriage of Justice in this case.
While I cling to the hope of the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream (however unlikely in my lifetime), that doesn’t stop me from wanting it to come to pass anyway. Ignorance can only be eliminated through persistence, and only if the ignorant have an interest in shedding ignorance.
Follow the links at the end of the Truthout story if you have an interest in making a donation to the defense fund. The Friends of Justice is also linked.
Stories such as what happened in Jena still bother me, and that’s a good thing. This story is causing quite a stir in other countries. The BBC aired a documentary on the subject. While I think that foreign press like to play up the failings of America the Great, they are also right to do so. I wish The Press in this country gave time to stories like that of the Jena Six, but if they can’t be bothered to cover the authoritarian take-over of the US Government by a group of criminals the Bush Administration, why should I expect decent coverage of injustice in Jena, Louisiana.
Just for the record: I searched CNN.com and there is not one story about the Jena Six, Jena, LA, or Mychal Bell. Go try yourself (select CNN NEWS in the search options). Shameful. [See update below]
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UPDATE: I went back to CNN.com and searched in the video section of the site and came across this video posted by CNN. While this does contradict my general assertion, there are still no articles on the CNN site, and my specific complaint still stands. Interestingly enough, the video that followed the Jena video featured Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the hot dog eating champ (if you call that eating). When you search for Joey Chestnut in the CNN NEWS section, you come up with multiple articles about his exploits.
7 Comments
CNN has no coverage? Well then, let’s write and call CNN until they do. The same for any other media outlets that may not have covered it, or covered it insufficiently.
Tell them that this story is important and why it deserves more coverage.
CNN Headline News - news tips - http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form11b.html?2
General Comments (CNN.com) -
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?18
Anderson Cooper - http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form5.html?10
Thanks for the constructive advice, MOZCRAM. I hope others follow it. TC
Hello,
I am in Washington DC, a Communications Intern for Advancement Project.
This case is simply appalling.
I wrote a blog on the Jena 6 yesterday which should be up on the Advancement Project website later on today.
I walked away from work yesterday feeling sick. Researching the history of race tensions in Jena Louisiana I sorted through so many photos of lynching and burnings. They were horrific.
And still today I cant shake off a feeling of disgust and sickness to what is unfolding in Jena today.
I feel like I have stepped back in time.
The events blew me away. I am also suprised by the lack of domestic media coverage on this story.
WHERE IS OUR MEDIA?
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE???
Although the BBC did a expose, where is the outcry on US media outlets? I am proud to be a blogger right now- it seems much of the media hits for Jena 6 are from people taking this into their own hands and spreading the word.
I am still trying to find the best way to get involved. I have called NBC and the ACLU and emailed The Jena 6 Defense Committee. I want to be as active as I can in this critical moment in Civil Rights and American history. If anyone klnows of any good organizations that are taking volunteers, let us know. I am going to take this as far as I can. I am planning on flying to Jena for the trial. I feel too sickened by these injustices to let this play out. The LAACLU does not have a link on their splash page to the Jena 6 case the last time I checked. I have emailed them and am awaiting response.
From my research I found some helpful links:
Get Involved:
An Excellent Timeline of Events for Reference:
http://friendsofjustice.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/responding_to_the_crisis_in_jena1.doc
Sign this Online Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/aZ51CqmR/petition.html
The Jena 6 Defense Committee
PO Box 2798, Jena, LA 71342
jena6defense@gmail.com
Friends of Justice
507 North Donley Avenue
Tulia, TX 79088
www.fojtulia.org
ACLU of Louisiana
PO Box 56157
New Orleans, LA 70156
www.laaclu.org
417.350.0536.
BBC Article
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/6685441.stm
Keep Spreading the Word!
Our Struggle for Civil Rights is not Over Yet!
-Clare Bakota
Advancement Project
I also did a search today on CNN (July 18, 2007) and found nothing regarding this story. Before coming upon this blog’s suggestion to email various media sources, I took it upon myself to do so and sent emails to Anderson Cooper’s site, Oprah’s site, and I am not finished.
I too was doing a search on CNN news for the Jena 6, and found NOTHING! Well, I did find this website, so I did find something. :) I sent the story to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and hope he will run with it. I’ll also try sending it to CNN and ask why they are ignoring it. I also found Gov. Blanco’s website and wrote to her, and looked up contact info for District Attorney Walters and contacted him. But the main thing is to get it to the mainstream media and let them know we don’t live in 1955 anymore, this is 2007 and these young men deserve to be treated fairly. Hate crimes should not be tolerated!
Carolyn, Monique, Claire, and Mozcram,
Thank you for your comments and for fighting the good fight. It’s disappointing that a news organization that originates in Atlanta should feel NO obligation to investigate the story of the Jena Six. Sure, they have all the time in the world to do battle with Michael Moore, but when it comes to a compelling story such as what happened in Jena, LA, all we get is nothing.
Thanks again for your words.
Best,
Tim
An Open Letter To The Jena Six
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
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