Let me first say, I know that this is a long post. I just hope that some will read it entirely.
America is working to build a wall at the border of Mexico, to keep illegal immigrants out. My question to the wall being built is this. Just who will build the wall?
We hire Mexicans to build our homes, upkeep our lawns, work in our Agriculture fields, clean our homes and even baby sit our children.
Maybe with the health care proposal Hillary Clinton has on the table, if she is elected President. Maybe some want mind so much about Mexicans being in America.
Thanks to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, California and Texas that once belong to Mexico, was signed over to America, including New Mexico.
I said this to point out how America is supposed to be a country of immigrants. My Great Grandmother was a Creek Indian. I am not going to lecture the fact that America belongs to the Indians and the fact that they are not complaining about Mexicans or anyone else being in this country.
How is it that our ancestors came here from all parts of the world, yet some Americans feel that any other race that is here, are here to serve them and is less of a person because of their skin color?
Which brings me to Jena 6. I know most, if not all America has heard about the problems in that small community. If not, the below video will inform the reader about what happen in Jena, Louisiana.
The trouble started under “the white tree” in front of Jena High School. The “white tree” is where the white students, 80 percent of the student body, would always sit during school breaks.
In September 2006, a Black student at Jena High School asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.” School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did.
The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the “white tree.” The message was clear. “Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant ‘ … we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die,’” Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer.
The Jena High School principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools overruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
Black students decided to resist and organized a sit-in under the “white tree” at the school to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging white students.
The white district attorney then came to Jena High with law enforcement officers to address a school assembly. According to testimony in a later motion in court, the DA reportedly threatened the Black protesting students saying that if they didn’t stop making a fuss about this “innocent prank… I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” The school was put on lockdown for the rest of the week.
On the night of Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, a still unsolved fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School.
On Friday night, Dec. 1, a Black student who showed up at a white party was beaten by whites. On Saturday, Dec. 2, a young white man pulled out a shotgun in a confrontation with young Black men at the Gotta Go convenience store outside Jena before the men wrestled it away from him. The Black men who took the shotgun away were later arrested. No charges were filed against the white man.
On Monday, Dec. 4, at Jena High, a white student — who allegedly had been making racial taunts, including calling African American students “n———” while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the Black student at the off-campus party — was knocked down, punched and kicked by Black students. The white victim was taken to the hospital treated and released. He attended a social function that evening.
Six Black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were expelled from school.
The six charged were: 17-year-old Robert Bailey Jr., whose bail was set at $138,000; 17-year-old Theo Shaw — bail $130,000; 18-year-old Carwin Jones — bail $100,000; 17-year-old Bryant Purvis — bail $70,000; Mychal Bell, a sophomore in high school who was charged as an adult and for whom bail was set at $90,000; and a still unidentified minor.
Many of the young men, who came to be known as the Jena 6, stayed in jail for months. Few families could afford bond or private attorneys.
Mychal Bell remained in jail from December 2006 until his trial because his family was unable to post the $90,000 bond. Theo Shaw has also remained in jail. Several of the other defendants remained in jail for months until their families could raise sufficient money to put up bonds.
On the morning of the trial, the DA reduced the charges from attempted second-degree murder to second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy. Aggravated battery in Louisiana law demands the attack be with a dangerous weapon. The dangerous weapon? The prosecutor was allowed to argue to the jury that the tennis shoes worn by Bell could be considered a dangerous weapon used by “the gang of Black boys” who beat the white victim.
Most shocking of all, when the pool of potential jurors was summoned, 50 people appeared — every single one of them white.
The LaSalle Parish clerk defended the all-white group to the Alexandria Louisiana Town Talk newspaper, saying that the jury pool was selected by computer. “The venire [panel of prospective jurors] is color blind. The idea is for the list to truly reflect the racial makeup of the community, but the system does not take race into factor.” Officials said they had summoned 150 people, but these were the only people who showed up.
The all-white jury which was finally chosen included two people friendly with the district attorney, a relative of one of the witnesses and several others who were friends of prosecution witnesses.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours and found Mychal Bell guilty on the maximum possible charges of aggravated second- degree battery and conspiracy. He faces up to a maximum of 22 years in prison.
What happened to the white guys? The white victim of the beating was later arrested for bringing a hunting rifle loaded with 13 bullets onto the high school campus and released on $5,000 bond. The white man who beat up the Black youth at the off-campus party was arrested and charged with simple battery. The white students who hung up the nooses in the “white tree” were never charged.
This all brought a march in Jena, Louisiana last week with patisipants from all around the country. The video below details what happen after the march.
A teenager was arrested Thursday when police allegedly found hangman's nooses dangling from the rear of his pickup truck after he drove past a crowd of people who had attended a civil rights march earlier in the day.
The incident in Alexandria, La., took place only hours after tens of thousands of civil rights marchers demonstrated in nearby Jena on behalf of six teens charged with beating a white schoolmate at Jena High School.
Jeremiah Munsen, 18, of Colfax, La., and a 16-year-old passenger in his truck were arrested Thursday night near a bus station where a group of people who had marched in Jena were waiting for buses to take them home.
One of the Grant Parish teenagers arrested Thursday night in connection with a red pickup truck driving through downtown Alexandria with nooses tied to it was released on bond from the Rapides Parish jail Friday morning.
Jeremiah Munsen, 18 of Colfax, had his bond set at $1,670 after being charged with driving while intoxicated, inciting to riot and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, according to an Alexandria Police Department report.
The 16-year-old, who was being held in a juvenile detention facility Friday, told police he had a "KKK" tattoo on his chest and said some of his relatives were involved in the Ku Klux Klan, according to a police report.
Officers found an unloaded .22-caliber rifle and a set of brass knuckles in Munsen's truck, police said.
Nooses figured into the controversy that drew tens of thousands of people to Jena, a small town about 40 miles northeast of Alexandria.
On Friday a request that Mychal Bell the black teenager arrested in the beating of a white youth be released from jail was denied.
The only one of the six yet to stand trial. Mr. Bell was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery this summer, but the conviction was thrown out last week by a Louisiana appeals court, which ruled that he had been mistakenly tried as an adult.
America cannot continue to allow such behavior by its Justice System, to deny equal justice and protection for all its people. It cannot continue to allow racism, as shown in Jena, to occur over and over, then claim this is just one instance. It's one instance too many and it must stop.
We cant continue to call America, the Land of the free, when we want walls built to keep out the people that produce the very food we eat. We cannot continue to call America, the Land of the free, when we attack and abuse a race of people with racism, simply because of their skin color. Right is right and wrong is wrong and America has been wrong for a long time now.
Another great site with information on Jena 6 is I Wish I Was In Paris.
This next video is a summary of Jena 6, from Mary Ellen, The Devine Democrat.
What say you?
America is working to build a wall at the border of Mexico, to keep illegal immigrants out. My question to the wall being built is this. Just who will build the wall?
We hire Mexicans to build our homes, upkeep our lawns, work in our Agriculture fields, clean our homes and even baby sit our children.
Maybe with the health care proposal Hillary Clinton has on the table, if she is elected President. Maybe some want mind so much about Mexicans being in America.
Thanks to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, California and Texas that once belong to Mexico, was signed over to America, including New Mexico.
I said this to point out how America is supposed to be a country of immigrants. My Great Grandmother was a Creek Indian. I am not going to lecture the fact that America belongs to the Indians and the fact that they are not complaining about Mexicans or anyone else being in this country.
How is it that our ancestors came here from all parts of the world, yet some Americans feel that any other race that is here, are here to serve them and is less of a person because of their skin color?
Which brings me to Jena 6. I know most, if not all America has heard about the problems in that small community. If not, the below video will inform the reader about what happen in Jena, Louisiana.
The trouble started under “the white tree” in front of Jena High School. The “white tree” is where the white students, 80 percent of the student body, would always sit during school breaks.
In September 2006, a Black student at Jena High School asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.” School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did.
The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the “white tree.” The message was clear. “Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant ‘ … we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die,’” Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer.
The Jena High School principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools overruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
Black students decided to resist and organized a sit-in under the “white tree” at the school to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging white students.
The white district attorney then came to Jena High with law enforcement officers to address a school assembly. According to testimony in a later motion in court, the DA reportedly threatened the Black protesting students saying that if they didn’t stop making a fuss about this “innocent prank… I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” The school was put on lockdown for the rest of the week.
On the night of Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, a still unsolved fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School.
On Friday night, Dec. 1, a Black student who showed up at a white party was beaten by whites. On Saturday, Dec. 2, a young white man pulled out a shotgun in a confrontation with young Black men at the Gotta Go convenience store outside Jena before the men wrestled it away from him. The Black men who took the shotgun away were later arrested. No charges were filed against the white man.
On Monday, Dec. 4, at Jena High, a white student — who allegedly had been making racial taunts, including calling African American students “n———” while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the Black student at the off-campus party — was knocked down, punched and kicked by Black students. The white victim was taken to the hospital treated and released. He attended a social function that evening.
Six Black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were expelled from school.
The six charged were: 17-year-old Robert Bailey Jr., whose bail was set at $138,000; 17-year-old Theo Shaw — bail $130,000; 18-year-old Carwin Jones — bail $100,000; 17-year-old Bryant Purvis — bail $70,000; Mychal Bell, a sophomore in high school who was charged as an adult and for whom bail was set at $90,000; and a still unidentified minor.
Many of the young men, who came to be known as the Jena 6, stayed in jail for months. Few families could afford bond or private attorneys.
Mychal Bell remained in jail from December 2006 until his trial because his family was unable to post the $90,000 bond. Theo Shaw has also remained in jail. Several of the other defendants remained in jail for months until their families could raise sufficient money to put up bonds.
On the morning of the trial, the DA reduced the charges from attempted second-degree murder to second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy. Aggravated battery in Louisiana law demands the attack be with a dangerous weapon. The dangerous weapon? The prosecutor was allowed to argue to the jury that the tennis shoes worn by Bell could be considered a dangerous weapon used by “the gang of Black boys” who beat the white victim.
Most shocking of all, when the pool of potential jurors was summoned, 50 people appeared — every single one of them white.
The LaSalle Parish clerk defended the all-white group to the Alexandria Louisiana Town Talk newspaper, saying that the jury pool was selected by computer. “The venire [panel of prospective jurors] is color blind. The idea is for the list to truly reflect the racial makeup of the community, but the system does not take race into factor.” Officials said they had summoned 150 people, but these were the only people who showed up.
The all-white jury which was finally chosen included two people friendly with the district attorney, a relative of one of the witnesses and several others who were friends of prosecution witnesses.
The jury deliberated for less than three hours and found Mychal Bell guilty on the maximum possible charges of aggravated second- degree battery and conspiracy. He faces up to a maximum of 22 years in prison.
What happened to the white guys? The white victim of the beating was later arrested for bringing a hunting rifle loaded with 13 bullets onto the high school campus and released on $5,000 bond. The white man who beat up the Black youth at the off-campus party was arrested and charged with simple battery. The white students who hung up the nooses in the “white tree” were never charged.
This all brought a march in Jena, Louisiana last week with patisipants from all around the country. The video below details what happen after the march.
A teenager was arrested Thursday when police allegedly found hangman's nooses dangling from the rear of his pickup truck after he drove past a crowd of people who had attended a civil rights march earlier in the day.
The incident in Alexandria, La., took place only hours after tens of thousands of civil rights marchers demonstrated in nearby Jena on behalf of six teens charged with beating a white schoolmate at Jena High School.
Jeremiah Munsen, 18, of Colfax, La., and a 16-year-old passenger in his truck were arrested Thursday night near a bus station where a group of people who had marched in Jena were waiting for buses to take them home.
One of the Grant Parish teenagers arrested Thursday night in connection with a red pickup truck driving through downtown Alexandria with nooses tied to it was released on bond from the Rapides Parish jail Friday morning.
Jeremiah Munsen, 18 of Colfax, had his bond set at $1,670 after being charged with driving while intoxicated, inciting to riot and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, according to an Alexandria Police Department report.
The 16-year-old, who was being held in a juvenile detention facility Friday, told police he had a "KKK" tattoo on his chest and said some of his relatives were involved in the Ku Klux Klan, according to a police report.
Officers found an unloaded .22-caliber rifle and a set of brass knuckles in Munsen's truck, police said.
Nooses figured into the controversy that drew tens of thousands of people to Jena, a small town about 40 miles northeast of Alexandria.
On Friday a request that Mychal Bell the black teenager arrested in the beating of a white youth be released from jail was denied.
The only one of the six yet to stand trial. Mr. Bell was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery this summer, but the conviction was thrown out last week by a Louisiana appeals court, which ruled that he had been mistakenly tried as an adult.
America cannot continue to allow such behavior by its Justice System, to deny equal justice and protection for all its people. It cannot continue to allow racism, as shown in Jena, to occur over and over, then claim this is just one instance. It's one instance too many and it must stop.
We cant continue to call America, the Land of the free, when we want walls built to keep out the people that produce the very food we eat. We cannot continue to call America, the Land of the free, when we attack and abuse a race of people with racism, simply because of their skin color. Right is right and wrong is wrong and America has been wrong for a long time now.
Another great site with information on Jena 6 is I Wish I Was In Paris.
This next video is a summary of Jena 6, from Mary Ellen, The Devine Democrat.
What say you?
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