The Freedom Riders in the south of America in the 1960's are well-enough known.
Sadly, it appears that 40 years hasn't seen much change in the south. The now well-known Jena 6 case has served to highlight the injustices still seemingly well entrenched in the American judicial system in so far as it effects the Afro-American community.
As Linn Washington Jr., a Philadelphia based journalist who is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program and a Washington is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune, [America’s oldest African-American owned newspaper] writes on CommonDreams:
"For many African-Americans today, the main battle field against terrorism is not Iraq or Afghanistan but Jena, a small town in the state of Louisiana.
This rural town about 40-miles northeast of Alexandria, La is where a group of six black teens are enduring criminal prosecutions for a school yard fight that many see as a legal lynching.
The prosecutor in Jena is pressing serious felony charges for this fight that produced no serious injury on the specious claim that the Jena 6 used deadly weapons in that fight: their tennis shoes…used to allegedly kick the white victim.
This is the same prosecutor who refused to pursue comparable felony charges against white teens who smashed a black teen in the head with a beer bottle while ejecting him from a ‘whites-only’ party and a young white man who pointed a shotgun at black teens.
The reason why African-Americans react to the Jena injustice as domestic terrorism is rightly rooted in America’s history of racism…that scourge that still infects American society and is still widely ignored."
Sadly, it appears that 40 years hasn't seen much change in the south. The now well-known Jena 6 case has served to highlight the injustices still seemingly well entrenched in the American judicial system in so far as it effects the Afro-American community.
As Linn Washington Jr., a Philadelphia based journalist who is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program and a Washington is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune, [America’s oldest African-American owned newspaper] writes on CommonDreams:
"For many African-Americans today, the main battle field against terrorism is not Iraq or Afghanistan but Jena, a small town in the state of Louisiana.
This rural town about 40-miles northeast of Alexandria, La is where a group of six black teens are enduring criminal prosecutions for a school yard fight that many see as a legal lynching.
The prosecutor in Jena is pressing serious felony charges for this fight that produced no serious injury on the specious claim that the Jena 6 used deadly weapons in that fight: their tennis shoes…used to allegedly kick the white victim.
This is the same prosecutor who refused to pursue comparable felony charges against white teens who smashed a black teen in the head with a beer bottle while ejecting him from a ‘whites-only’ party and a young white man who pointed a shotgun at black teens.
The reason why African-Americans react to the Jena injustice as domestic terrorism is rightly rooted in America’s history of racism…that scourge that still infects American society and is still widely ignored."
Comments