I'm not one much for prayer these days, but friends from Chicago who do are holding a prayer vigil in Chicago on September 19th. They asked me to spread the word about this event. I detest injustice - whether its from the WTS or any other source, especially racially motived injustice!!!!!!!! Thanks for reading and your support.
Rev. Dr. Michael L. Pfleger JENA SIX BRIEFING . Jena, Louisiana is in LaSalle Parish, Louisiana .There are about 350 African Americans in the town of less than 3000.LaSalle Parish has a population of about 14,000 people – 12% African American. On September 20, 2007 in Jena, Louisiana , a judge will determine if 17-year-old Mychal Bell, a young black male will be sentenced to serve 22 years in prison. Bell and five of his fellow black high school students, ranging from the ages of 15 to 17 years of age, are facing a lifetime in prison for a schoolyard fight. In total, the young black male high school students are facing up to 100 years in prison, with charges of attempted murder, the alleged weapon, tennis shoes. In rural Louisiana , a black student asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.”Permission was granted and the next day three nooses were hung from the tree, a tree symbolically labeled “for white students only.” ü The principal recommended expulsion for the three white students responsible.The superintendent of schools over-ruled the expulsion and gave the students a three-day suspension for “an adolescent prank.” ü Over the next several weeks, Black students organized a sit-in under the tree;the District Attorney threatened them with “stop making a fuss over this innocent prank – I can be your best friend or your worst enemy.I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” ü The school was put on a lockdown.A still unresolved fired burned down the main academic building. ü A black student was beat up at a party by whites.A white student involved in several of the incidences, on and off campus, began taunting the African American students at school, was knocked down and beat up by black students.He was taken to the hospital, treated, released and went to a social event that evening. ü Six black Jena students were charged with attempted second-degree murder and expelled from school.Bails were set from $70,000 - $138,000. Jena is the same place where in 2000 the Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth was forced to close due to racism and choking of juveniles by the guards. Jena now joins the historic and infamous line of gross legal injustices against African Americans in the tradition of the Tulia, Texas arrests in 1999. And throughout America’s rural communities, the story is being repeated over and over again, case after case, our children wasting away in adult prisons.African American man-child in the promise land still at risk and still under watch.