Jena 6: action down in Louisiana

it's amazing what our news media buries. the events in this campaign happened one year ago, but it's just now beginning to filter to the attention of progressive bloggers and folks who keep tabs on racial justice issues.

truthout has an awesome profile of the story here.

this is the short story:

Last fall in Jena, Louisiana, the day after two Black high school students sat beneath the "white tree" on their campus, nooses were hung from the tree. When the superintendent dismissed the nooses as a "prank," more Black students sat under the tree in protest. The District Attorney then came to the school
accompanied by the town's police and demanded that the students end their
protest, telling them, "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy... I can
take away your lives with a stroke of my pen."1 A series of
white-on-black incidents of violence followed, and the DA did nothing. But when
a white student was beaten up in a schoolyard fight, the DA responded by
charging six black students with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit
murder.

the first of these students is about to be sentenced for 22 years and a campaign has begun to halt the legal process because it is so clearly uneven, biased and racist. it's like something happening out of 1952 Jim Crow south. the families of the remaining 5 students are frantically trying to stop what's happening to their kids.

ColorOfChange.org has the full story and a petition to be sent to the louisiana governor.