Protesters shine spotlight on the injustices of town

by Hazel Trice Edney--NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Washington (NNPA)--A protest march through the town of Jena, Louisiana, drew tens of thousands of protestors last week.

This in spite of the good news that the Circuit Court of Appeals in Lake Charles, Louisiana, had overturned the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of imprisoned Mychal Bell of the now nationally known Jena Six.

However, the court still refused to release Bell, prompting his legal representation and activists to appeal for federal intervention.

"They’ve reduced the original charges, we believe in part, because they knew we were coming. Now you’ve got to finish the job. The job wasn’t to have reduced injustice. It was to have justice," the Reverend Al Sharpton told the NNPA News Service.

His National Action Network brought 50 buses to the march and students from around the nation converged on the small town for the peaceful protest.

Sharpton, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, Bernice King, radio talk show host Michael Baisden and other national names led the protest in relation to the case that has caused national outrage among conscientious observers. Bell has been imprisoned since December 4.

"I hope that [the court’s] decision will lead the prosecutor to reconsider the excessive charges brought against all the teenagers in this case," says U. S. Senator Barack Obama, also a Democratic presidential contender.

"And I hope that the judicial process will move deliberately to ensure that all of the defendants will receive a fair trial and equal justice under the law."

Sharpton points out the remaining unfairness that the three White Jena High School students who hung nooses in a so-called White tree--the event that led to the brawl in which a White male classmate, Justin Barker, was beaten unconscious--were never charged.

Bell, who had faced up to 15 years, could still face time in jail even as a juvenile. Five youth, including Bell, were initially charged as adults with attempted second-degree murder.

Following the national protests and publicity surrounding the story, charges against three of the students were reduced from attempted second-degree murder to aggravated second-degree battery. A sixth student was already being charged in juvenile court.

"The reality is that with none of the Whites being charged, they shouldn’t be charged at all," Sharpton says.

"They said they could not charge the Whites with a hate crime because they were juveniles. Yet, they charged the Blacks as adults and they’re all the same age."

The march pushed for equal justice--not just in the Jena Six case--but around the nation. "I think the fact that this kind of reaction is there, it really vindicates a lot of what a lot of us have been saying," says Sharpton. "And that is that the people are ready. It’s just that a lot of the so-called leadership has become stagnant.

"And those of us who stayed out in the field are now being rewarded by a knowing that we were right. People want action.

"People are tired of this backroom stuff and this whole politics of beyond race when we are not beyond race."