The True Story of What Happened in Jena, Louisiana

In Jena, ‘truth’ is real victim
Posted: October 23, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern
A staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle contacted Project 21’s office seeking comments for a piece he was writing about Jena, La., and a “black MoveOn” wannabe. During the interview, I asked if he had personally spoken to Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. He answered no, but said he had seen/heard “him on television.” Which brings me to my point.
The media have failed miserably in accurately and truthfully reporting the news. And I submit the violent attack by seven black youths on one unsuspecting white youth in Jena at the end of a school lunch period as proof. That unprovoked act of barbarism had nothing to do with the noose incident that took place three months earlier. Let me explain.
The public has been led to believe that the genesis of the attack had to do with nooses found hanging on a tree at the school. They have been led to believe that racial hatred in Jena is rife and that this series of events proves it. However, the true facts provide a different reality.
On Aug. 30, 2006, “an all male school assembly at Jena High School was held. Many items were discussed including rules and policies of the school for the upcoming school year. [Toward] the end of the assembly, one black student jokingly asked Assistant Principal Gawen Burgess if black students were permitted to sit underneath the tree in the center of the campus. The question brought laughter from everyone … black and white alike. Burgess [responded] ‘Don’t even go there. You know you can sit anywhere you want.’ [He] and the students knew the remark was made to gain laughter as a joke, not as a serious question. [More jokes followed, although not about the tree], before the lighthearted assembly was dismissed.” (The Jena Times; “Chronological Order of Events Concerning ‘Jena Six’”; Oct. 4, 2007.)

The following morning two crudely constructed nylon ski rope nooses were found hanging from the tree referenced the day before. Only the students who arrived before 7:55 a.m. saw the nooses. The overwhelming majority of the students did not find out about the nooses until the following week, when media reports began to surface. The students responsible for placing the nooses were identified and removed from school with such harsh penalties as are consistent with a zero-tolerance policy for such behavior.
An extensive criminal investigation concluded there was no racial motivation behind the nooses. They were meant as a prank – the act itself being copied from a scene in a movie. The three offending students were investigated and interviewed by persons at every level of authority. The results of the investigation led everyone to the same conclusion: As hard as it may be for some to believe, the students had no understanding that nooses could be construed as an insult to some blacks. (That being said, I’m reasonably certain the descendents of those who crossed paths with Isaac Charles Parker, aka “The Hanging Judge,” and Judge Roy Bean may beg to differ pursuant to who has the pre-eminent right to be offended by nooses.) Every investigator and interviewer, including those from the civil rights division of the U.S. attorney’s office, reached the same conclusion. The students did not act out of hatred and were truly remorseful. They had many black friends whom they were sorry to have potentially offended.
What is not in question is the lack of remorse shown by Michael Bell and his posse. Despite the media doing their level best to foment racial tension, there were no reports of any violence or destruction from Sept. 9 to Nov. 30, 2006. But on Dec. 4, 2006, what has been described as one of the most violent attacks in Jena High School history was orchestrated by Bell and six other black students on one unsuspecting white student. From all evidence and witness statements gathered, the attack of Justin Barker by Bell, Robert Bailey and the five others had nothing whatsoever to do with, nor was it connected in any way to, the noose incident three months earlier.
According to witnesses, the seven jumped the white male, beating him unconscious, with Bell delivering the first blow. It was an unprovoked and cowardly attack. Even for the sake of argument, if Barker had done something untoward, we live in a civilized society – Bell and the others should have reported the offense to a proper authority.
But the plaintive cry has been that the white boogeyman is out to get these poor innocent black youths. The truth is not one of them is innocent. They committed an unprovoked, violent attack that could have led to a death. One can argue that it was intended to severely maim, if not kill, the victim. But that fact has been dismissed by the race mongers. The media has chosen to overlook the fact that the 16-year-old Bell has a continued history of violence as a juvenile, with at least four different arrests for violence. He was on juvenile probation during some of the arrests and was on probation when he attacked Barker.
Contrary to media accounts and protests of the cadre of usual race hustlers – including Jackson and Sharpton – it was not “just an after-school fight.” It was a horrific, unprovoked act of extreme violence. There is no other way to truthfully put it. Nor was the attack in any way brought about by the noose incident. While there have been disassociated acts during the past 14 months since the noose incident, none has been related to it. Not one.
Still, the race mongers, enjoined by the media, continue to paint Jena as a hotbed of racial injustice, and portray Bell and the others as victims. The true victim in Jena is the “truth.” Once again, it is the “truth” that has been kicked to the curb in favor of lies that give theater to those Magdalenians who foment immiseration and malcontent as a means of commerce.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58271

One of Six Black Men Who Beat One White Man Unconcious, Mychal Bell of the `Jena 6,’ Back in Jail for Violating Probation…(and Jesus Wept)

Mychal Bell of the `Jena 6′ Back in Jail
Email this StoryOct 12, 5:47 AM (ET)By MARY FOSTER
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – A judge decided the fight that thrust a teenager into the center of a civil rights controversy violated his probation for a previous conviction and ordered the boy back to jail, the teen’s attorney said.
Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court in Jena on Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys.
Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.
“We are definitely going to appeal this,” she said. “We’ll continue to fight.”
Bell had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear.
Mauffrey, reached at his home Thursday night, had no comment.
“He’s locked up again,” Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. “No bail has been set or nothing. He’s a young man who’s been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it.”
After the attack on Barker, Bell was originally charged with attempted murder, but the charges were reduced and he was convicted of battery. An appeals court threw that conviction out, saying Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that charge.
Racial tensions began rising in August 2006 in Jena after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended but not prosecuted.
More than 20,000 demonstrators gathered last month in the small central Louisiana town to protest what they perceive as differences in how black and white suspects are treated. The case has drawn the attention of civil rights activists including the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Sharpton reacted swiftly upon learning Bell was back in jail Thursday.
“We feel this was a cruel and unusual punishment and is a revenge by this judge for the Jena Six movement,” said Sharpton, who helped organize the protest held Sept. 20, the day Bell was originally supposed to be sentenced.
Bell’s parents were also ordered to pay all court costs and witness costs, Sharpton said.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Jones said. “I don’t know how we’re going to pay for any of this. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.”
Bell and the other five defendants have been charged in the attack on Barker, which left him unconscious and bleeding with facial injuries. According to court testimony, he was repeatedly kicked by a group of students at the high school.
Barker was treated for three hours at an emergency room but was able to attend a school function that evening, authorities have said.
Bell, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw were all initially charged – as adults – with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit the same. A sixth defendant was charged in the case as a juvenile.
Bell, who was 16 at the time, was convicted in June of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime. LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters reduced the charges just before the trial. Since then, both of those convictions were dismissed and tossed back to juvenile court, where they now are being tried.
Charges against Bailey, 18, Jones, 19, and Shaw, 18, have been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery. Purvis, 18, has not yet been arraigned.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071012/D8S7K6680.html

Whoopi calls on Sharpton to apologize to the Duke lacrosse players

Duke Apologizes to Lacrosse Players Who They Threw Under the Bus

Duke Apologizes to Lacrosse Players
Sep 29 03:46 PM US/EasternBy AARON BEARDAssociated Press Writer
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) – Duke University President Richard Brodhead apologized Saturday for not better supporting the men’s lacrosse players falsely accused in last year’s highly publicized rape scandal.
Brodhead, speaking at the university’s law school, said he regretted Duke’s “failure to reach out” in a “time of extraordinary peril” after a woman accused three players of raping her at a March 2006 party thrown by the team.
“Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy,” Brodhead said. “But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize for it.”
Brodhead spoke at a school-sponsored forum on legal and ethical issues common to high-profile cases, and he received a standing ovation following his speech. He left afterward and school officials said he would not be available for further comment.
As authorities began to investigate the allegations, Brodhead and the university initially suspended the highly ranked team from play. He later canceled the remainder of its season and ousted longtime coach Mike Pressler. Meanwhile, Durham County prosecutor Mike Nifong labeled the team “hooligans” as he searched for suspects.
But even as Nifong won indictments against players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans, it became clear the allegations had no merit.
State prosecutors determined in February the accuser’s story was a lie, and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper called the three players innocent victims of Nifong’s “tragic rush to accuse.”
Nifong was disbarred in June for more than two dozen violations of the state bar’s rules of professional conduct, including withholding results of critical DNA tests, and resigned from office. He spent one night in jail earlier this month after a judge held him in criminal contempt of court for lying to a court about having provided those test results to defense attorneys.
In the early days of the case, Brodhead was generally cautious in his comments, saying the players should be presumed innocent while also insisting the crimes alleged had no place at the elite private university.
Brodhead said Saturday he worried that making numerous public comments could be interpreted as an attempt by Duke to “influence the judicial process,” especially since Nifong was insisting a crime had occurred.
That may have created an impression that Duke did not care about the accused students, Brodhead said, which he said was untrue but still something he regrets.
“Duke needed to be clear that it demanded fair treatment for its students,” he said. “I took that completely for granted. If anyone doubted it, then I should have been more explicit, especially as the evidence mounted that the prosecutor was not acting in accordance with the standards of his profession.”
Brodhead also said the school could have done more to show that some members of Duke’s faculty who were openly critical of the lacrosse team did not speak for the university as a whole.
Duke has reached private settlements with Pressler, now the coach at Division II Bryant in Rhode Island, as well as the three cleared players and a teammate who was not indicted but accused a professor of giving him a failing grade because he was a lacrosse player.
Brodhead said the university is planning a national conference of lawyers, educators and student affairs leaders to discuss how schools should deal with students facing serious criminal charges.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RVAO2O2&show_article=1

150 Black New Orleanians Killed by Blacks So Far in 2007; Race Pimps Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson Busy Hamming It Up In Front of CNN in Jena, LA.

N.O. man killed on Chef Highway
Friday, September 21, 2007
From staff reports
A 25-year-old man was shot and killed early Thursday in eastern New Orleans, police said.
The victim, a local man, was shot shortly before 3:30 a.m. in the 15300 block of Chef Menteur Highway, according to a New Orleans Police Department news release.
Seventh District patrol officers responding to a call of an injured male found the victim suffering from gunshot wounds to his upper body.
He was taken to a local hospital and died shortly later. Further details were not available.
The man’s identity has not been released. John Gagliano, chief investigator for the Orleans Parish coroner, said the victim’s name is being withheld until relatives can be notified.
The slaying bumped the total number of homicides this year in New Orleans to at least 150.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-24/1190354844216980.xml&coll=1

6 Black Men Beat 1 White Man Unconcious and then Stomp on His Face; District Attorney Prosecutes Blacks; People Without Jobs Protest and Blame Whitey

La. Protests Hark Back to ’50s, ’60s
Sep 21 01:13 AM US/EasternBy MARY FOSTERAssociated Press Writer
JENA, La. (AP) – Drawn by a case tinged with one of the most hated symbols of Old South racism—a hangman’s noose tied in an oak tree—thousands of protesters rallied Thursday against what they see as a double standard of prosecution for blacks and whites.
The plight of the so-called Jena Six became a flashpoint for one the biggest civil-rights demonstrations in years. Five of the black teens were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate.
Old-guard lions like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton joined scores of college students bused in from across the nation who said they wanted to make a stand for racial equality just as their parents did in the 1950s and ’60s.
“It’s not just about Jena, but about inequalities and disparities around the country,” said Stephanie Brown, 26, national youth director for the NAACP, who estimated about 2,000 college students were among the throngs of mostly black protesters who overwhelmed this tiny central Louisiana town.
But the teens’ case galvanized demonstrators as few legal cases have in recent years.
The cause of Thursday’s demonstrations dates to August 2006, when a black Jena High School student asked the principal whether blacks could sit under a shade tree that was a frequent gathering place for whites. He was told yes. But nooses appeared in the tree the next day. Three white students were suspended but not criminally prosecuted. LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said this week he could find no state law covering the act.
Brown said the Jena case resonates with the college-aged crowd because they aren’t much older than the six youths charged. Many of the student protesters had been sharing information about the case through Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking Web sites.
Jackson, who led a throng of people three blocks long to the courthouse with an American flag resting on his shoulder, likened the demonstration to the marches on Selma and the Montgomery bus boycott. But even he was not entirely sure why Jena became the focal point.
“You can never quite tell,” he said. “Rosa Parks was not the first to sit in the front of the bus. But the sparks hit a dry field.”
The noose incident was followed by fights between blacks and whites, culminating in December’s attack on white student Justin Barker, who was knocked unconscious. According to court testimony, his face was swollen and bloodied, but he was able to attend a school function that same night.
Six black teens were arrested. Five were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder—charges that have since been reduced for four of them. The sixth was booked as a juvenile on sealed charges.
Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said punishment of some sort may be in order for the six defendants, but “the justice system isn’t applied the same to all crimes and all people.”
People began massing for the demonstrations before dawn Thursday, jamming the two-lane highway leading into town and parking wherever they could. State police estimated the crowd at 15,000 to 20,000. Organizers said they believe it drew as many as 50,000.
Demonstrators gathered at the local courthouse, a park, and the yard at Jena High where the tree once stood (it was cut down in July). At times the town resembled a giant festival, with people setting up tables of food and drink and some dancing while a man beat on a drum.
Sharpton admonished the crowd to remain peaceful, and there were no reports of trouble. State police could be seen chatting amicably with demonstrators at the courthouse.
In Washington, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said he would hold hearings on the case, though he did not set a date or say if the prosecutor would be called to testify.
Walters, the district attorney, has usually declined to discuss the case publicly. But on the eve of the demonstrations, he denied the charges against the teens were race-related and lamented that Barker, the victim of the beating, has been reduced to “a footnote” while protesters generate sympathy for his alleged attackers.
President Bush said he understood the emotions and the FBI was monitoring the situation.
“The events in Louisiana have saddened me,” the president told reporters at the White House. “All of us in America want there to be, you know, fairness when it comes to justice.”
While Jena Six supporters were overwhelmingly black, young whites were also present.
“I think what happened here was disgusting and repulsive to the whole state,” said Mallory Flippo, a white college student from Shreveport. “I think it reflected badly on our state and how it makes it seem we view black people. I don’t feel that way, so I thought I should be here.”
Other rallies in support of the black teens were held elsewhere, including Oklahoma City, where about 500 people gathered.
“It is time for us to express our outrage that such a blatant injustice should happen,” said Roosevelt Milton, Oklahoma City NAACP president.
“I’m just glad people are starting to stand up for what is right,” said Kiara Andrews, 15, of the Oklahoma City suburb of Midwest City.
In Jena, many white residents expressed anger at the way news organizations portrayed their town of 3,000 people.
“I believe in people standing up for what’s right,” said resident Ricky Coleman, 46, who is white. “What bothers me is this town being labeled racist. I’m not racist.”
Mychal Bell, now 17, is the only one of the defendants to be tried. He was convicted of aggravated second-degree battery, but his conviction was tossed out last week by a state appeals court that said Bell, who was 16 at the time of the beating, could not be tried as an adult on that charge.
He remained in jail pending an appeal by prosecutors. An appellate court on Thursday ordered a hearing to be held within three days on his request for release. The other five defendants are free on bond.
A group of about a dozen white residents and black demonstrators engaged in an animated but not angry exchange during the march. Whites asked blacks if they were aware of Bell’s criminal record. Blacks replied that Jena High administrators mishandled the incidents.
Another white resident, Bill Williamson, 59, said he tried to convince visitors that the town was being treated unfairly and that Bell belonged in jail.
“I think we changed one man’s mind,” he said. “But most of these people don’t want to hear.”
As she trudged up a hill to a rally at a park, 63-year-old Elizabeth Redding of Willingboro, N.J., remembered marching at Selma, Ala., when she was in her 20s.
“I am a great-grandmother now. I’m doing this for my great- grandchildren,” she said.
Alecea Rush, 21, a senior at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, said her grandmother used to tell her stories about the civil rights movement, including one in which she witnessed a lynching in Oklahoma City.
“I thought about every one of those stories being out here today,” Rush said. “I never really felt the significance until today.”

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RPL6MO0&show_article=1

Memphis Radio Station Makes Al Sharpton So Mad that He Hangs Up

Al Sharpton was to appear on Rock 103 in Memphis, TN this morning to announce that he was protesting something, likely caused by whites. While on hold waiting to come onto the show, the radio station played this commercial that made Al Sharpton so mad that he hung up and didn’t do the interview. (click link below)

http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/23302/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/23302/crew/RAMA%20-%20Sharpton.mp3

Nappy-Headed Ho Rutgers Player Withdraws Suit Against Imus

Rutgers Player Withdraws Suit Against Imus
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Kia Vaughn, the Rutgers women’s basketball player who filed a defamation lawsuit last month against Don Imus and CBS Radio, among others, over his reference to the team as “nappy-headed hos,” has withdrawn her suit, according to a filing she made yesterday in state Supreme Court in the Bronx.
“Last week Kia Vaughn returned to Rutgers University to focus upon both her academic pursuits as a journalism major and upon her basketball team,” Marti McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Vaughn’s lawyer, Richard Ancowitz, said in a statement. “Her strong commitments to both have influenced her decision to withdraw the lawsuit at this time.”
Vaughn had contended that her character and reputation was damaged by Imus last spring as a result of the racially and sexually charged aside he made. A lawyer for Imus, Martin Garbus, said that he had no comment, other than that Imus had paid no money to Vaughn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/sports/12rutgers.html?ei=5065&en=42daab7110db3513&ex=1190174400&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1189609280-1Xjpwfm3xm8YRRTpspNtpw