I would like to use this opportunity to thank CNN for their bold and courageous documentary on the Noose.  It did not only show that CNN is the true news channel, but it also embodies the true American spirit in the global community in reporting almost any issue no matter how unpopular.  Unlike, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity of Fox News, CNN acknowledges the plight of the low income and minorities, and address issues in an attempt to make America fairer and more equal.

    Well, it’s another end of the year and with it comes the onslaught of year in review diaries and analysis. So, in keeping with the spirit of the times, I’d like to offer mine. Rather than review a litany of stories and issues that have developed over the past year, I thought I would do just one. I wanted to find the one story that stood out over all the others. Of course this is a formidable task considering the sheer volume of information we are bombarded with on any given day. More information does not necessarily translate into better information. As our sources of information are being reduced by mergers and media conglomerates, it is easy to get caught up in the hype of what others want us to know.

I don't have as much original content as I prefer for this diary-- I was just sort of amazed that I missed yet another Jena Six story.  Per Yahoo News:

Marchers surrounded the Justice Department headquarters on Friday to demand federal intervention in the "Jena Six" case and enforcement of hate crimes against those who hang nooses in public.

On a chilly but clear day, busloads of people packed a downtown plaza seeking a big government response to small town injustices. They were angered by charges they consider overly harsh and unfair against six black teens accused of beating a white high school student in Jena, La. Tensions between black and white students had run high for weeks in Jena, including an incident where a noose was hung from a tree at the high school. No one was charged with a crime for hanging the noose.

UPDATE: CNN now has VIDEO:

Could it be possible that the national media is lazy, incompetent and not up to professional standards? Tell me it ain't so.

The backlash against Louisiana's "Jena Six" escalated last night.

After the second day of closed-door deliberations in juvenile court, Louisiana State District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. decided to implement Bell's probation for previous untried charges, and send Bell to 18 months in prison.

The move caught the defense, who were expecting another day of deliberations today, by surprise. They plan to appeal.

I wonder whether the 9 months Bell already spent in adult prison don't count.

The whole thing, including the timing, seems like a message Louisiana's justice system is trying to send: "Mind your own business, or these kids will suffer for it."

I reported here previously about the public-opinion backlash among Southern whites; here's another example. A teenage in Nashville banned from wearing a 'Free the Jena  6' T-shirt to school. This shirt is apparently included in one of the following categories:

...anything associated with criminal gangs or bearing slogans "that are about or suggestive of drugs, alcohol, sex, obscenities or prove to be a disturbing influence

The next time there is a trial of a black man who is convicted by an all white jury chosen from an all white jury pool and you represent the 15-20% black in your town, you have no right to cry "racism" if you are an eligible voter who is not registered to vote.  We all know that they pick jurors from the voter rolls which means that it isn't just "the best justice that money can buy," it's also "the best justice from people who hide."

From the moment I heard about the Jena 6 story on July 3 when Mychal Bell was convicted (conviction overturned since), I've felt this is a classic case for nationwide progressive mobilization.

It had taken a couple of months, and thanks mostly to Colors of Change, grassroots Black organizations, Democracy Now and other radio stations, and the ACLU, a movement has emerged. (the predominantly-white progressive blogosphere has also played a role, but a secondary one; Jena 6 and racial/social justice issues are still blown out of the water any given day here at DK, by  Obama/Hillary/Edwards related posts and headline news).

So some points have been won. But the rural South is still very much an Away game for progressives. The South's blacks and anti-racist whites still need lots of help - because the dormant giant of overt racism there is waking up in response, at least according to this Chicago Tribune story (relayed via truthout.org)  

So don't rest on the laurel leaves.

More below...

In a follow-up to a story that has been slowly building into biggest civil rights case in our generation, the only member of the Jena Six to face trial has finally been released on bail.

Mychal Bell has been freed today on $45,000 bail, one day after Louisiana Kathleen Blanco met with LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters to urge him to drop his appeal and try Bell as a juvenile, as directed by the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeal.

The scales that have been so heavily weighted against blacks in Jena have finally started to deliver justice.

Jena 6 prosecutor Reed Walters, under fire for his handling of the Jena 6 case, has written a defense of his actions in the New York Times today. He argues that his actions were consistent with the law of Louisiana and that the six Black youths should be charged under the law, which he is sworn to uphold.

There has been a continuing tension on the Democratic side of the political divide over the efficacy of mass protest. Many have expressed the view that such activities are a waste of time and resources, even counter productive. Recent events in Jena, Louisanna have led some to reconsider this position. Some now, rather grudgingly, admit that national mobilizations may make sense in certain cases but only as a media tool rather than as part of an overall political strategy. I believe this revised view shares with its predecessor a fundamentally flawed political perception at odds with democratic values.

This is a great example of what happens when hate crimes go unpunished. Charles Chucky Manson had a plan. Commit a sting of horrible murders and blame it on the Blacks. He felt that this would bring about a race war and  "Helter Skelter," a situation of chaos in which he'd be the obvious choice for world leader... Yeah he was nutz. The three dweeby young white kids who hung those nooses from the tree are no mansons but the certainly stirred up a lot of racial angst. Of course they were given a slap on the wrist by the local yokel pricipal. If that moron had taken this seriously, maybe even called a school assembly and explained to all the kids that this sort of behavior would not be tolerated, the subsiquent beating might not have happened.

On December 2, 2006, six black teen-age boys brutally assaulted a white teenager who had allegedly made fun of one of them the previous week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

The ring-leader of the group of teens who committed the crime appears to be a young man named Mychal Bell.  Mychal Bell savagely kicked the victim several times in the head while he was lying on the ground.

The victim, Justin Barker, lost consciousness as a result of his injuries.

I've never done this before but I am using this diary to pimp blueintheface's Breaking: Bell Denied Bail Jena Six Update.

I know everyone loves a good time after this hideous week.  I know there are a bunch of Edwards fans and satirists.  But my God, can we do what we do best and rally behind a just cause.

While 15,000 to 20,000 people marched through Jena, Louisiana yesterday to protest the race-based justice meted out by District Attorney Reed Walters, all eyes were on the little town with the big racial divide. In a march where the only two arrests were white kids with nooses, hopes were high that shining a light on the racial segregation of Jena would start the process of ensuring racial equality in Jena's judicial system.

Those hopes were further raised when an appellate court issued a surprise ruling, ordering a bond hearing for Bell, who is still sitting in jail despite his criminal conviction being over-turned. But as of 30 minutes ago, it is clear that there is far more work to be done in Jena.

Mychal Bell's request for bail was just denied.

Obviously, I was very excited when the President approached me, owing to my screenplay portraying his heroic daughters, to help him organize his online journal. I understand that readers might prefer the original (very) spellings and grammar of his rough drafts, but I am attempting to convey what I think it more important, the shining diamonds dormant in the coal-lumps of his thought process. Below is today's entry.

Three years ago I was standing with two friends outside the courthouse in Scottsboro, Alabama, reading the plaque there about the Scottsboro Boys.  A (white) man coming out of the courthouse saw us by the plaque and came over and said "that was a long time ago."  My friend replied "not that long; there are people alive who remember."  

"Well," said the man, "those boys weren't even from here, anyway.  This is just where the trial was."

And of course, that was the point all along.  Scottsboro was the town in which nine men and boys were railroaded and tormented in court and in jail because they were black.  The crime, even if it happened , was not the outstanding fact.  The application or misapplication of justice was.

More recently I'd been assuming that the story of the Jena Six was one that everyone who followed the news knew about.  Then last night I talked to my father, who reads a couple newspapers and a couple political magazines and at least this blog, and found out that he hadn't heard about the story until I linked it in yesterday's midday open thread.

So for any other readers of the New York Times who heard about the Jena Six for the first time when they got their morning paper, just so you know.  

The Times describes the events in Jena like this:

The Jena High School students, known as the Jena Six, are part of a court case that began in December, when they were accused of beating a white classmate unconscious and kicking him and a prosecutor charged them with attempted murder.

The beating was preceded by racially charged incidents at the high school, including nooses hanging from an oak tree that some students felt was just for white students. The tree has been cut down.

This leaves a few things out.  The nooses were not just an "including" - they were the beginning.  Whatever racial tensions or outright racism existed in Jena all along, it by all reports came to the surface when the trespass of a few black high school students under a "white" tree was answered with nooses hanging from that same tree.  Nor did it proceed directly from nooses to attempted murder.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, someone set fire to the school, reducing the main academic wing to rubble (no one has been arrested, and though a link between what was ruled an arson and the racial discord hasn't been proved, many suspect there is one). The following day, Bailey was punched and beaten with beer bottles when he tried to enter a mostly white party in town. The white kid who threw the first punch was later charged with simple battery and given probation. The next day, Bailey ran into a young white man who was at the party. Bailey and parents of the Jena Six say that when the man pulled a gun on him, he tangled with him and stripped it away. He was later charged with theft of a firearm.

The tension culminated back at school the following Monday. Justin Barker, a white student who says he is friends with the kids who hung the nooses, reportedly taunted Bailey at lunch (Barker denies this). A while later, an African-American student allegedly punched Barker from behind, knocking him unconscious. Then, say white witnesses, a group of black students that included Bailey continued to assault Barker, kicking and stomping on him. (Jena High student Justin Purvis and other black witnesses dispute this.) Barker, who was treated for injuries at a nearby hospital, was released later that day, apparently in strong enough shape to attend a class-ring ceremony that evening. - Newsweek

It is not, in other words, about violence between teenagers.  It's about justice unequally applied, about a school system and a legal system (run by a district attorney who told students "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear.") in which white students could provoke and threaten and beat black students and expect little formal sanction, while black students would face disproportionate punishment.

Nor should those of us not from Jena feel satisfied with the justice applied where we live.  As Gary Younge writes in The Nation:

These incidents have turned Jena into a national symbol of racial injustice. As such it is both a potent emblem and a convenient whipping boy. Potent because it shines a spotlight on how race and class conspire to deny black people equality before the law. According to the Justice Department, blacks are almost three times as likely as whites to have their cars searched when they are pulled over and more than twice as likely to be arrested. They are more than five times as likely as whites to be sent to jail and are sentenced to 20 percent longer jail time. This would not be a problem for the likes of Kobe Bryant, but in Jena's "quarters" high-powered legal teams are hard to come by.

Convenient because it allows the rest of the nation to dismiss the incidents as the work of Southern redneck backwoodsmen without addressing the systemic national failures it showcases. According to the Sentencing Project, the ten states with the highest discrepancy between black and white incarceration rates include Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York and none from the South. What took place in Jena is not aberrant; it's consistent. The details are a local disgrace. The broader themes are a national scandal. Jim Crow Jr. travels well--unencumbered by historical baggage.

So while it was in Jena, Louisiana, that tens of thousands marched against racism and for justice, neither racism nor the need for justice is confined to Jena, and it's a struggle we all have to take up.

When the marchers were leaving Jena last evening they were treated to a red pickup truck which zoomed back and forth in front of the Black crowd, it was trailing two more nooses attached to the tailgate. Two White boys were arrested drunk and with at least one firearm. Just another prank! Racism is a thing of the past. Which is why the GOP is so staunchly against Affirmative Action.
Picture of truck onsite

It has always driven me nuts to hear people wax nostalgic for the 1950s. I guess the 1950s were pretty great, except if you were poor and/or old (no Medicare or Medicaid), a woman, or, above all black in America. That would account for, hmmm, about 75% of the population of 1950s America. It sure wasn't great for them. This is the lesson I try to teach my U.S. History classes (mostly adults above 30) at my college. Most of them (mostly the white ones but even non-whites as well) have this built in nostalgia, passed down from their parents, about that time period. We all know the generalities of it, no need to repeat those myths. Well Jena has, at least for me and hopefully for many Americans who have generally progressive views on racial equality (i.e., they're in favor of it), reminded people about the inequities and crimes and discrimination still faced by blacks today, issues that many thought or perhaps hoped were relegated to the past. My thoughts in this diary were prompted by a report on CNN about another incident, from yesterday, where a noose was, once again, hung in public view in that part of Louisiana. Join me after the jump for more.