Black Bloggers Raised Awareness of Jena 6 that MSM Ignored
By Nicole Belle Thursday Sep 20, 2007 9:14pm
There is no single leader. There is no agreed schedule. Organizers aren't even certain where everyone is supposed to gather, let alone use the restroom. The only thing that is known for sure is that thousands of protesters are boarding buses at churches, colleges and community centers across the country this week, headed for this tiny dot on the map of central Louisiana.[..]
Yet this will be a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the ether of cyberspace, of a type that has never happened before in America-a collective national mass action grown from a grassroots word-of-mouth movement spread via Internet blogs, e-mails, message boards and talk radio.
Jackson, Sharpton and other big-name civil rights figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch up. So, too, has the national media, which has only recently noticed a story that has been agitating many black Americans for months.
As formidable as it is amorphous, this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of the thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 220,000 petition signatures-and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees-in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony battery charges for beating a white student.
Color of Change is certainly one of the blogs leading the protests. They have a petition you can sign to support the Jena6
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This is the type of thing the left blogs should do to protest everything that is happening because of the Bush admin and the Dems that let it happen.
black bloggers?????
ummm....one of the best blogs ever was run by an african american, and hardly anyone knew he was african american
steve gilliard was so ahead of his time
my prob with this story is that it didnt gain traction until the black youths fought back
where were these guys at the start when the whites in the school got away with haning nooses off the white tree?
I'm with uncle joe.......on this....as for the Internet and blogs.......thanks John.....you are really serving you country doing this .....thank you very much for the opportunity
Well thats definitely it.
Once the black blogging community starts to successfully raise awareness of racism in America,AT&T has no choice but to move in and swallow the internet whole.
uncle joe mccarthy @ 2:
The newspapers didn't publish the story about the nooses! The story didn't get out there until the families reached out for help. Get it?
Democracy Now! has been been providing great coverage of this story, with regard to the Jena 6.
On the subject of so-called 'Black Bloggers', I am a little disappointed by the terminology. I mean, what does that make the rest of the bloggers!?! Why can't they be 'bloggers' that have been effective in mobilizing the community? How do you know WHAT race a blogger is? How is their blogosphere any different from yours or mine?
I thought on the internet, nobody was supposed to know you're a dog...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpsF_0-ta_A
Ah how quickly they have forgotten the Immigration protests...
uncle joe mccarthy @ 2:
Ya know what's sad...it's 2007 and I shouldn't have to care that Steve was black. I'm sorry but black sounds so much cooler than African American. Oh and Mos Def should've taken the gum out of his mouth today. His mom, I'm damned sure, was pissed.
Interesting. It has been over 3 hours since this article was blogged here. Yet no comment made yet!
That's were this country is really getting most of it's news from bloggers and the internet. The MSM has forgotten their purpose.
And if the younger people in this country were so darn dumb that they perfer American "Idiot" to real news that's what they are going to get. I hate like hell to see what this country will be when this bunch of stupid young people become the leaders of this country.
And to hell with "frist"
Some provocative ideas Udon.
I must apologized to the commentors before me. When I first went to comments prior to writing my own which took only 30 seconds...there were none present. Again my apologies
Soulster @ 10:
this thread just opened up a few minutes ago here...
No Problem Soulster.......this is a very disturbing topic...and should be brought to the forefront of the nation...but since the Liburul Media won't do it you find it here and this is not the first time this has been a topic here....so have at it.
I've noticed how the Corporate Media have been slowly but surely leaving out the basics of this story and how it came about. It's now just a story about black youths beating up a white youth with no context of the preceding events leading to this incident and local racial tensions or how the white youth provoked the fight. To anyone who is fully informed about the case, they can only conclude that there has been a disparity in the way that white local authorities, from the principle school board and prosecutor to judge and jury, have treated blacks and white youth. While white youth's attempts to incite and provoke have been overlooked and unpunished, the prosecution of black youths have been disproportionate and unfair and the response to the black community's concerns dismissive. There's a pattern in Jena and it doesn't paint a pretty portrait of Red State America.
personally I think those kids got railroaded.....the protesters should stay or be there everyay that the trial goes on.....there shouldn't even be a trial......except for the hate crime those twits did by hanging the ropes.
I don't get it? So in response to hate speech and hate demonstrations several youths allowed themselves to escalate it to violence. No matter how wrong the first party is the second party is also wrong for escalating to violence. Why should their violence be excused and not be held up to blind justice? I agree the original prosecution was far too harsh and needed to be corrected but excused completely really?
I hope LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters is brought up on charges and disbarred for his "pen statement" and subsequent escalation of charges to attempted murder. Clearly he meant to make good on his words. What a total slimeball!!
http://colorofchange.org/jena/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six
I had never heard of this at all until Mos Def and Cornel West brought it up on Bill Maher's show.
I wonder how many others first heard of it then?
Udon Nomee @ 6:
We know each other because bloggers of African descent have webrings linking one blog to the next as a way to generate traffic and share information. After all, many of the things we may be interested in don't go over well on liberal blogs like this one. And, very few people are interested in the type of deconstructive dialogue and commentary that happens on when topics like the one about some quote attributed to Jesse Jackson.
The GOP hates blacks.
And why am I supposed to get all excited about defending 6 kids who ganged up on another? I'm not losing any sleep over this. Focus on the white kids that may have deserved a harsher sentence.
Yes, it is wrong that the black youth reacted with violence, but it was not without first being incrementally and repeatedly provoked by local white youth and authorities. The incident that preceded this one was a case where a white youth drew a shotgun and was disarmed by a black youth. Rather than prosecute the white for threatening someone else with a gun, the local police charged the black youth with theft of the gun. To deny that this is the result of racial prejudice is a stretch of the imagination.
evolution @ 23:
How do you know that happened when they pled not guilty? Why the assumption of guilt when one kid wasn't there and has witnesses to prove it? Why not focus on the issue at hand, instead of assuming the worst and dismissing the concerns about unequal justice outright? I know why, but I just thought I'd ask.
Comments like these are why African Americans who blog have webrings linking one to another and don't think of linking to alleged liberal/progressive websites on a regular basis.
Snowball @ 17:
Indeed! There is a bunch of stuff that doesn't appear to have been reported in the MSM. Yesterday in the New York Times, it looked as though they were comparing the act of hanging an noose from a tree to the act of beating the crap out of someone, making it look somewhat uneven since the article left out a whole series of ugly overlooked acts and attacks in between. Even this article printed at Crooks and Liars lacks clarity. The whole thing pisses me off. Oh, as does the statement attributed to Jesse Jackson regarding Obama. He can't remember if he said it or not (clue, if it is something that you might have said and you are not sure that you said it or not, you probably said it, and HOW DARE YOU).
Louisiana has some serious race probs. It reminds me of the after Katrina when they wouldn't let anyone walk out of the city. Gretna police dept set up on the bridge and wouldn't let anyone out. No food for 4-5 days had arrived yet and they still wouldn't even let them walk across the bridge because they didn't want all those black people in their city.
NPR:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1097
organmeat @ 19:
Yes, we all get that - the point is that similar acts by white kids were not treated the same as the acts by the black kids. Get it now?
Isome @ 25:
You mean separatists? Any group that classifies themselves as white or black is a separatists. How about we focus on the individuals and their crimes.
justabill @ 27:
On that point, C&L put up a great vid by, of all people, Geraldo and Shep Smith who reported the same thing.
Amy Goodman was all over this story months before this mass movement and civil rights march in Jena was covered, barely, by the MSM. Props to Democracy Now
Kudos to Color Of Change for speaking truth to power
Don't expect Lieberman's pal, Mary L. to do anything this case. She passed on the Katrina investigations with Holy Joe.
Isome @ 21:
No, I get that part. I was referring more to the way the story was presented. Describing "bloggers" as black, instead of describing the themes of the actual blogs as addressing primarily black issues. I think that it was an unnecessary and regressive way to tell the story. In reality, aren't they just "bloggers, who happen to be black"?
Why is it that the "Black Blogosphere" has emerged? Why isn't it that "The Blogosphere" has simply expanded and evolved, become more diversified and more inclusive as more and more people of all backgrounds have the advantage of internet access, allowing them to participate?
This should be a milestone for The Blogosphere, that has once again succeeded in informing, inspiring, and mobilizing The People, who in this instance may (or may not) happen to be black. People who, if they had to rely on the MSM, would have been shit outta luck AGAIN, disenfranchised even further AGAIN, and never even know it.
The way the story is written, it sounds like I might need to call my ISP and found out how to sign up for access to this "Black Blogosphere", and whether I need a new "Black Blogosphere" network card or something...
feetfeet @ 29:
No, in the case of bloggers of African descent, it would be pragmatists. More often than not there is nothing in the name of the blog that would indicate ethnicity. The content, on the other hand, is usually not of interest to non-blacks and the information or dialogue sought is not going to come from non-blacks, though they certainly are not excluded from commenting or perusing the site. Having to say that is yet another example of why linking (via webring) to alleged liberal/progressive blogs like this one is just not useful.
feetfeet @ 29:
You really don't get it. Separatism in this case was forced on the black community because of people like you who are NOT focusing on individuals and their crimes. In this case, the focus has only been on black individuals and their crimes. Why not recognize the racism behind that fact and work to improve it instead of blaming it on the bloggers?
Just want to point out that there is nothing keeping liberal blogs like this one from linking to blogs that are usually only of interest to black people. I think that we should all be glad that this issue has gone beyond the "black" blogs and is finally getting some attention, even if the information is incomplete.
i heard about the story when it first broke regarding the nooses...and it was on the blogs, and on progressive radio
i just dont like the labeling of bloggers by race
nor do i like the idea that only african americans would blog about this issue
im not really clear on the story....i do know that this is one of the most racist areas in the country
my god...a tree only for whites? a fucking tree?
This is nothing like the civil rights movement of the 50's-60's; what Rosa Parks did was heroic, what these 6 kids did was plain old hooliganism. They deserve to do some jail time (or at least, if they were to be treated in a color blind manner, they would still do jail time.... don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of sending teens to jail).
Like some of the other comments have said; the injustices here are the various instances where authorities looked the other way in the face of crimes carried out by white youths. These protesters need to switch their slogan from "Free the Jena 6" to "Also charge the white hooligans of Jena"... It's less catchy, but more right.
Also, in my eyes Sharpton really has lost whatever moral authority he might have once had... why is this guy still on tv?!?
I am not black and i blogged about this in July. I think this story hit a nerve with a lot of people.
DiggyG @ 39:
You need to get a grip. White America's "solution" to what they percieve to be "the Black problem" is to incarcerate one point four million people. Some are guilty of commiting crimes, some are not. Almost all are disproprtionally sentenced to longer and harder time. Time they serve earning slave wages making corporations involved in the Prison Indusrial Complex rich. Slavery has taken on a new face and you have bought it hook, line and sinker.
How can we waste valuable MSM air time when we can cover OJ?
From the GOP side, Jena6 will get some coverage by Rush Limpdick with another snazzy racist parody song.
And right now, I'm sure BillO is dreaming up something he can get his white anger on against the supporters. So there's your rightwing media coverage.
xoites defends Constitution @ 41:
You Americans always see everything through a race prism... People in other countries commit crimes and serve excessive jail times, but no one is going to claim that those unjustices are due to racism, let alone slavery. I mean, come on... "slavery"? For starters, slaves used to be put to work, and then the fruits of their laboour were stolen from them. Nowadays people just rot in jail. I'm not disagreeing with you that this is immoral. But I am going to deny that it is "slavery" or that it is even mostly due to racism.
DiggyG @ 43:
Then you just do not understand what has been going on in our country. I can't help that. You need to expand your data base before spewing false output.
People don't just rot in jail in America. They get paid 8 cents an hour to make telemarketing calls or make blue jeans and myriad other tasks. If they don't work they spend most of their day alone in their cell. And when i say "most" i mean 23 1/2 hours a day.
It's great to see the "progressive" blogosphere get behind a violent, racially-motivated attack like this.
Meanwhile
There was no “schoolyard fight” as a result of nooses being hung on a whites-only tree... Justin Barker, the white victim, was cold-cocked from behind, knocked unconscious and stomped by six black athletes. Barker, luckily, sustained no life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital three hours after the attack... A black U.S. attorney, Don Washington, investigated the “Jena Six” case and concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing to do with the noose-hanging incident three months before... ...It is rarely mentioned that no black people responded to the jury summonses and that Bell’s public defender was black...
Enlighten me then, what has been going on in your country (which I have lived in for about 5 or 6 years now), that I have managed to miss? What has been going on that would show that the entire justice system is designed with one goal in mind: enslaving black people?
You do realize that a disproportionate number of crime victims are black? Is this also the result of racism?
Are both excessive policing, and ineffective police protection the result of racism?
The MSM ignored it?
Huh. I seem to recall seeing several long segments on the "Jena 6" on CNN over the last several weeks. I guess I must have been imagining things.
I call BS.
Thank you TLB... I was just googling around for that link.
If you haven't heard the full Jena story, here is one account (with references)
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/message.html
Basically it comes down to an extreme double standard of the application of law.
DiggyG @ 39:
How authoritarian. If the "black youths" had not resorted to "hooliganism" and let the "white tree" remain white, none of this would have happened. If that horrible delinquent hadn't taken the gun from the white young man who pulled it on him, he wouldn't have been charged with theft of a fire-arm.
Why couldn't they just play the White rules of the South? It's Their own fault. (looking for a sarcasm emoticon and can't find one). These kids were in exactly a 40's-50's-60's racist environment (alone, with the authorities against them). How dare they fight back?
Bigotry is hardly confined to the South, and its outlets often betray themselves as "law and order" types. Careful, the lawless people of colour might come to your neighborhood next. But that wouldn't be "more right." Maybe a youthful prank with a couple of nooses would do the trick. Can you get any "more right?"
xoites defends Constitution @ 45:
The new corporate slavery
We now have privately owned prisons in America. If they have prisoners, they have a labor force. If you get in trouble in prison your sentence is extended. Often times the guards see to it that racial tensions are hightened to promote gang fights that, in turn, extend prisoners' sentences. The prison gets paid a sum for every prisoner it houses, it makes money of of the prisoner's labor and the longer they have been incarcerated the more experience they have.
On top of that the people who provide food to prisons have a vested interest in seeing them continue, as do the people who make the prisoners' uniforms, the construction companies that build them and the towns they occupy.
District Attorneys build political careers incarcerationg people. They can send twenty to thirty people to jail a day for "street crimes" but can spend a career on on white collar crime, so they stick with the easy prosecutions and Haliburton and Enron can get away with paying no taxes and fleecing tax payers and shareholders.
Yet some people want to relieve their frustration on cornered and often impoverished people. The polititions love them for that, they are the ones who put them back in office year after year and we all pretend we have a "Justice System."
We don't.
fiver @ 51:
I don't appreciate your insinuation of racism. C'mon man, don't be a prick; I am a person of colour, but that doesn't mean I'm going to condone criminal activity, no matter what the cause.
As these blog stories have demonstrated, nothing is local anymore. They had other options for "fighting back" that did not involve taking part in a Heroic (insert sarcasm emoticon here) 6 on 1 beating.
Jason Whitlock is misinformed.
TLB @ 46:
I'd say the price already paid, to say nothing of not being able to make bail over a year after the incident, far exceeds any of the more sinister overtones of your posts, to say nothing of the fact that, after being initially reported 'unconscious' (likely a bullshit accusation to begin with) this same victim in this crime was seen out that same evening at some school function. So it kind of reduces this 'attempted murder' charge faced by many of these kids an absurd charge.
The entrenched thinking, wild claims and exaggerated statements by the prosecutor only further expose the racial hysteria the law is hiding behind in Jim Crow Jena.
I'm glad to see so many march, human rights are owed to all, and these kids, these six kids, did nothing deserving these charges. A school yard fight, that is all.
I truly hope this is the spark that puts us back on track. We have to work together!
Politicians in America do not seem to realize that Black America is a force to be reckoned with. Let get out there and get the bad guys people! Make the mainstream media get off their ass!
Mike
The so-called "progressive" blogs didn't press this issue. It was pushed by the Black blogosphere, evidence once again that white liberals, along with the Democratic party, are part and parcel of the problem. They are complicit in their silence, complacent in ignorance, and collusional in their discrimination. Although race relations in America (particularly in the Deep South) have never been flowery beds of ease, now they have sunk to the nadir of criminalizing every African-American male that dares step outside his house. Black unemployment rates have skyrocketed; Black patients are treated poorly (a recent study showed even medical students react negatively toward African-American patients!); enrollment in Historically Black Colleges is declining; Black ballots are consistently discarded, discounted, and nullified; and despite the fact that juvenile white males commit more crimes that juvenile Black males, they receive more lenient treatment, more times than not, receive no jail time and their records are expunged, wiped as clean as a whistle! When African-Americans speak the truth about drugs, guns, prostitution, and other illegal activity, especially when they tell who is "Mr. Big", they are jeered for being conspiracy crazies. If they persist, they soon are deprived of every economic support or "accidents" begin to happen. The Jena 6 has happened time and time again, over and over, usually one at a time, which doesn't attract the spotlight. The march happened, but the movement must continue. C&L deserves applause for at least mentioning it and providing some background. As for the white children in Jena who've gotten away scot-clear, the DA is careful to state that there's no state law against hanging a noose from a tree. Yet, there are laws against pulling a gun on others and physically assaulting someone else. Those acts remain unprosecuted. No one has to wonder why.
DiggyG @ 54:
My understanding of this encounter was that the white student involved deliberately taunted them with racial epithets knowing he had the white community and the local police and DA behind him. Think about that for a moment.
DiggyG @ 49:
Thanks too TLB, because when I examine racial issues in this country, I find it useful to get the opinion of a well used FOX and DisneyCorp. black man. It makes it so much easier to feel white.
xoites defends Constitution @ 53:
xoites, I agree with almost everything you're saying here. The last thing this, or any country needs is Lockheed Martin Prisons (TM). I don't however think that it is accurate to use "blue collar" and 'black' interchangeably, nor "white colar" and 'white'. There is such a thing as middle and upper class people of minority, and they are as much to blame for the sorry state of the justice system as their white neighbours. Again, prisoners get a raw deal, but it is not always due to racism.
xoites defends Constitution @ 59:
That's still a crime.
fiver @ 60:
LOL, I clicked the TLB link and was immediately underwhelmed by the obvious hackery :P
From the color of change website:
The noose-hanging incident and the DA's visit to the school set the stage for everything that followed. Racial tension escalated over the next couple of months, and on November 30, the main academic building of Jena High School was burned down in an unsolved fire. Later the same weekend, a black student was beaten up by white students at a party. The next day, black students at a convenience store were threatened by a young white man with a shotgun. They wrestled the gun from him and ran away. While no charges were filed against the white man, the students were arrested for the theft of the gun.
That Monday at school, a white student, who had been a vocal supporter of the students who hung the nooses, taunted the black student who was beaten up at the off-campus party and allegedly called several black students "n***er." After lunch, he was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. He was taken to the hospital but was released and was well enough to go to a social event that evening."
DiggyG @ 61:
I am not, nor did i nfer the use of “blue collar” and ‘black’ nor “white colar” and ‘white.’
People without means commit street crimes, disproportionately African Americans are living below the poverty level in urban America where the crimes they commit are hard to conceal. People in the suburbs have more room to work with and people in board rooms (white or black) have plenty of tools to conceal their misdeeds and block prosecution.
DiggyG @ 62:
But it is not "Conspiracy to Commit Murder!" Don't you get it? The charges against these kids was WAY out of proportion and not one white kid (and not the adult who pulled a shotgun on some of these kids) was charged with ANYTHING!!!!
DiggyG @ 62:
What planet are you on? The White kid was treated and released with a black eye. The charge is attempted murder. The sneakers on a black kid's feet were charged as "deadly weapons." Be afraid, White People; dark skinned people are coming... with sneakers...
xoites defends Constitution @ 64:
I agree 100%... the main injustice here is that a bunch of white kids belong in jail, and haven't been charged. This is what the protesters should be pushing for. As for the Jena 6, they are still largely responsible for the situation they've found themselves in. MLK said that a man should be judged not "by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Well these kids have a bad case of thuggery in their character. And some jail time is surely deserved. Unsurprisingly, MLK III, one of the more level-headed protesters made precisely this point.