The System is Fine

Pathless

Pathless

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An excerpt from a radical article that grew out of what is happening in Louisiana with the "Jena 6":

Justice in Jena requires justice for all the others as well – for all those who have suffered (and some who have died) silently behind bars and for their families who have fought without benefit of TV cameras and news reporters. It requires understanding that we will not, we can not achieve racial justice in this country if we do not fight against the criminal justice system, not just in individual instances, but in its institutionalized, systemic form. If we do not understand this – and understand it deeply – then this newly discovered energy, this tidal wave of outrage, this beautiful, intergenerational protesting isn't going to mean a damn thing past next week's news.

Justice in Jena requires all of us across the country to rise up against the racism and exploitation of the criminal justice system in all the places where we've come to see it and grown to accept it whether that's allowing for an abysmal public defender office in your county or turning away when you see a police officer trample the rights, and perhaps the body, of a fellow citizen. We must cast off once and for all, the fundamental lie that the system has anything to do with criminals or justice or public safety. We must not back down, as so many movements have, when we are "crime-baited," accused of defending rapists and murderers, accused of defending crime itself. We must not make excuses for some parts of the system while protesting others. Similar to opposing the war, the whole war, and not simply certain battles or certain strategies, we must oppose the system in its entirety. We must dismiss, once and for all, the urge to discuss what's wrong with the system – what's broken and needs to be fixed.



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Read more of "The Justice that Jena Demands"



Democracy Now synopsized the Jena 6 thusly in a broadcast of July 10, 2007:

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.


​
 
The black kids should have been charged with aggravated assault. The real problem with this case is that the local DA's office decided to abrogate normal procedure to make a cynical point about prosecuting offenses as hate crimes. I'm sure this played well to the local bubba's, but any sensible person knows that the purpose of the designation of hate crime is to remediate entrenched historical injustices. On the other hand, the noose in the tree was an expression of free speech. It can be considered as a mitigating factor which goes to provocation, but it's not the same as six guys beating the crap out of one guy.

Chris
 
The real problem is that it wasn't solved with detention for both parties at school.

Write 1000 times on the black board...

I will not intimidate others by making nooses

and

No part of the school ground is owned by any group, we all have a right to assemble where we wish at lunch.

and

Violence does not solve any issue, especially mob or gang violence against one individual.


Is there anyone here who didn't see fights in school...is there anyone here who didn't know about someone taking a beating by a group when found alone in the bathroom, hall or playground.

By no means did I live in any gangland...but we had Greasers, Jocks, Rednecks, Blacks, Hispanics, Hippies, Nerds, Geeks....and the first of all those groups lead their way violently and lived to intimidate the other groups when they could, especially the latter who had no inclination to fight back or retaliate...

While we had guns, drugs, fights, walkouts, protests, I don't recall anyone going to jail..it was all handled internally by the school.
 
Naw the real problem here is that someone hung a noose up in a schoolyard.

A NOOSE!!!

Think about what that means to you if your skin is "black" in this country, or if it's light but your momma's skin is black. Or if your hair is kinky and your skin is some kind of dark. It means lynching, burning, Ku Klux Klan, 400 years of oppression.

The real problem here is also that the "criminal-justice system" in Louisiana has thrown the book at these kids. They were not charged with assault and battery, they were all charged with attempted murder and face up to 100 years in prison without parole. That is not justice. It is criminal. So the system is half-right.

Let's stop theorizing about "what should of happened," because it obviously did not happen. Detention, wil? Please. :rolleyes:

The real problem here is really that a black kid cannot sit under a certain tree without racial tensions blowing up.
 
I remember when I first learned how to tie a noose. It was never racially motivated...we lived out west and we were pretending to hang rustlers, murderers and horse thieves.

Now I realize this was racially motivated, and I realize that attempted murder charges against these boys is as ludicrous as their actions of beating a lone boy over the noose incident.

Detention...writing on the black board....YES...if the school was in control, it would not have got this far!!! And YES there should not have been any trial...the kid was treated and released...so there are wrongs on all sides.

The swastika is a symbol of Peace...until hateful people used it otherwise....the noose was a symbol of law and order...until hateful people used it otherwise....
first_class_emblem_color.gif
that knot at the bottom means "Do a good turn daily"

How many racially motivated lynchings have occurred in the last 50 years??

How many black on black drug violence deaths have occurred in the same time period??

How many children are without fathers raising them??

We need quit sensationalizing instances which are so small in the fabric of the system...and find out how to stop the real problems that are out there.
 
Where did you get that image, wil? It looks like a Boy Scout badge of some sort.

Yes, the swastika has roots in eastern spirituality as well as western. It was used by Indians and, well, Indians long before it was corrupted by the Third Reich.

The noose, though? "Do a good turn daily?" What kind of good turn are we talking about here? Could you give us some more detailed history? I am having a hard time understanding how the noose is a symbol of peace. Of "keeping the peace" perhaps, but that's not any kind of peace that I want to be a part of.

As far as sensationalizing goes--again, please. :rolleyes: You only think it is sensational because this brings an undercurrent of racism to the forefront. America, or I should say white America, likes to believe that the days of racism ended sometimes in the '60s or maybe '70s. That is a myth of the worst kind; to call it a myth actually denigrates the meaning of myth, but I really don't know what else to call it. Oh, lie seems appropriate.

Myths should give meaning and value to life. Popular American mythology does the opposite.
 
You are correct it is the boy scout insignia...for a first class scout.

You are incorrect I did not say the noose represented peace...but law and order....as it was the standard answer to reduce crime...the equivalent of the roman collesium in the old west.

6 whites beat up a black kid today that is a hate crime, 6 black kids beat up a white kid that is attempted murder, putting a noose out is a hate crime....and you think none of this is sensationalizing???

Do I think lynching is attrocious....of course I do...but we are talking about less than 50 instances in the past 70 years... that is too large a number...but

What is CRIMINAL is that OVER 50 black kids die at the hand of other black kids every WEEK, not decades...every WEEK...and all our papers focus on the Jena 6.

What about the Baltimore 6 that died this month? Or the Washington DC 6? Or the Chicago 6? Or the Detroit 6? Dead, not a racial crime, but a crime of poverty, of drug territories, of lack of education, of lack of hope. An internal genocide leading their own community to killing each other and jail...leaving thousands of kids without father figures, perpetuating the CRIME on society on infinitum as long as we continue to ignore it and rant about lessor issues.
 
I recently this week drove up to a fast food drive thru in the south and the 'white' young woman spoke with a fairly sharp degree of southern eubonics. A person I was with at the time is from the south and tells me that with 100% certainty the girl was married to a black man. I said good, that shows the power of upbringing and of learning and duplicating generalizations rather than having those choices selected within the genes or color of skin.

China Cat Sunflower said:
I'm sure this played well to the local bubba's, but any sensible person knows that the purpose of the designation of hate crime is to remediate entrenched historical injustices.
Click to expand...
I submit that entrenched historical injustices can not be remediated except to rebuke the originator and hope that they will confess the injustice, seek forgiveness, and hopefully alter their pattern of thought. Or, to rebuke it and hope others will recognize the injustice and learn from it. History is never undone or fixed, only learned from (or not), and added to.
 
Namaste Wil,

wil said:
What is CRIMINAL is that OVER 50 black kids die at the hand of other black kids every WEEK, not decades...every WEEK...and all our papers focus on the Jena 6.

What about the Baltimore 6 that died this month? Or the Washington DC 6? Or the Chicago 6? Or the Detroit 6? Dead, not a racial crime, but a crime of poverty, of drug territories, of lack of education, of lack of hope. An internal genocide leading their own community to killing each other and jail...leaving thousands of kids without father figures, perpetuating the CRIME on society on infinitum as long as we continue to ignore it and rant about lessor issues.
Click to expand...

Okay, let's widen the discussion then. I think that is a great idea.

I don't think we can confront or understand the problem of autogenicide in American ghettos without taking a look at history. The problems being faced by African-Americans in their communities, in ghettos and inner cities, and the problems they face with the criminal justice system, with the prison-industrial complex, have roots in American history. If we are truly concerned about the problems of the day, we need to be willing to take a hard look at our history, and at the ongoing illusions that we perpetuate about America.

Howard Zinn writes in A People's History of the United States:

The United States government's support of slavery was based on an overpowering practicality. In 1790, a thousand tons of cotton were being produced every year in the South. By 1860, it was a million tons. In the same period, 500,000 slave grew to 4 million. A system harried by slave rebellions and consipracies (Gabriel Prosser, 1800; Denmark Vesey, 1822; Nat Turner, 1831) developed a network of controls in the southern states, backed by the laws, courts, armed forces, and race prejudice of the nation's political leaders.​


--Zinn, page 171​

We are still dealing with ingrained racial prejudice today, which is why Jena made the news. Rather than sweeping this news under the rug and pointing the finger elsewhere, as noble and necessary as looking elsewhere and deeper may be, let us take a look at both of these issues as manifestations of the same problem. I see no reason to sweep aside the problem in Jena to look instead at the problems in the ghettos of America. The two are interconnected, and it would be ignorant and counterproductive to try to seperate them from each other.

This issue is so interconnected and entrenched into United States policy and American mythology that we would be wise to expand our discussion to include other manifestations of oppression perpetuated by the United States of America. Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, writing for Black Commentator, provide a great critical look at the monstrosities of American policy and military aggression in "America's Endless Race Wars and Massacres," in which they also find it necessary to bring the ugly, spreading, racist issue back to historical roots:

Slavery was not an aberration; it created the wealth that allowed the United States to emerge as a world power only a century-and-a-quarter after the Declaration of Independence, and to become a magnet for successive waves of European immigrants. Genocide of Native Americans was not an aberration; it was the logical outcome of the original European hemispheric-theft project, and became the national project with the triumph of the settlers over the British. The ever-expanding United States was born. Was it an aberration?​

Another useful reading for furthering and deepening this discussion is "Those Who Deny the Crimes of the Past," by Paul Street.


Peace,
Pathless
 
It's also interesting that if the races of the kid with the concussion and the group beating him were switched, then it would be a hate crime.
 
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