Friends of Justice Works for All of Us

My friend Alan Bean, the founder of Friends of Justice, has played a central role in a number of major cases of racial injustice in recent years: the falsified drug busts in Tulia, Texas; the out-of-proportion charges in Jena, Louisiana; and more.

His most recent work is being done on a case from Winona, Mississippi. A man named Curtis Flowers has been tried five times for the same crime, but the District Attorney can't get his conviction. So, against all odds, he is going to put Curtis Flowers on trial again. In the meantime, Flowers has spent thirteen years in prison for a crime for which he has not been convicted.

Bean has traced the meandering, strange, and disturbing details of this case for months now. As happened with the Jena case, Bean kept doing his hard work, studying history, meeting with people, writing, speaking, and negotiating, until finally a major media company took notice. With Jena, it was the Chicago Tribune, and then the BBC. This time, the BBC bit first.

Thanks to Alan Bean, a shady case of racial injustice that was allowed to fester for over a decade will now be brought into the light of day. You can listen to the BBC story and read a shortened version online. But for the best coverage, with a wide range of research, you will have to read Bean's blog.

Bean's work is often featured on the Sojourners blog, "God's Politics." Check out Friends of Justice, and let's all learn from Bean. I'm hoping to see his good research and writing find its way into book form sometime soon.

Jena 6 Case Finally Over

When the Jena 6 were charged far out of proportion for their fighting which injured Justin Barker, it touched a tender nerve among those of us who long for an end to white supremacy. I first posted about the story over two years ago, having read the Chicago Tribune news story and the earlier work by Alan Bean, director of Friends of Justice (If you don't know Alan's blog, you should check it out.)

All over the news and talk shows, self-righteous pundits were raging at Duke University and the Durham legal system for daring to believe and act on the charges brought against three young white men by a black woman. Tragically, in the Duke case, the charges turned out to be unsubstantiated. People pretended not to believe that this sort of thing ever happens in the good ol' US of A.

Yet the Jena case had been around almost a year before it got any attention. The DA in Jena said that the violent crime was "aggravated" because when the boy was kicked, it was with a sport shoe which he dared to call a deadly weapon. With no ability to meet bail, these boys were facing attempted murder charges even though the victim had not been hospitalized and attended a party the night of the fight. The story did not make sense.

Thanks to folks like Alan Bean, the news began to get out. In a few months, it became a major national issue. Now, years later, the case is coming to a conclusion. The boys who beat and kicked Justin Barker are paying restitution and fines. They have all served jail time. But they also have finished high school, and five of the six are now in college.

For more information, check out Alan Bean's post today.

A racialized society (using a term from Divided by Faith by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith) has become skilled in living a double life. Having demonized overt racism, this sort of society has expunged explicit racist speech. Only the most careless and the most bigoted persons ever speak in overtly racist terms in our day.

People express racial prejudice now in code. These codes of speech substitute acceptable language as a way to avoid saying explicitly unacceptable ways of thinking. The encoding of the language allows a great deal of self-deception, so that people can state with full sincerity, "I'm not prejudiced." Coded speech also allows for the reproduction of racist social structures through indirection. Indirect arguments which never address race reinforce and reproduce barriers to overcoming deeply entrenched inequalities.

For instance, the "Southern strategy" of the Republican party has been to use racialized rhetoric in code by associating blacks with crime (Willie Horton) and "welfare queens." Even a reborn David Duke did not use overtly racist arguments in public events when he ran for office. But Republicans have no corner on the market in a racialized society--coded language is pervasive. "Living in the past" is code to argue for ignoring the long-term effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial inequality. Being "angry all the time" is code for unwanted resistance to racial injustices when people don't want to hear about it.

So it was not a big surprise that the discussions about the Jena 6 are full of claims that "this is not about race." By trying to keep the focus on only one fight that took place in Jena, District Attorney Reed Walters was hoping to convince people that his approach to enforcing the law had no variation when it comes to race. Observers who saw the differential treatment of white kids who beat up a black boy and black kids who beat up a white boy saw something different. This sort of racialized law enforcement gets renamed in public rhetoric.

Walters was unable to hide another thinly veiled example of racialized thinking at the press conference (see the article and a video of the press conference at MSNBC.com) when he announced he would not appeal the ruling that threw out his prosecution of Mychal Bell as an adult. His problem was not merely that he had surrounded himself with white people to support his statement to the public. His problem was that black people were even in the room to hear his remarks.

During the statement to the public he began to wax theological. He said, "The only way — let me stress that — the only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community." In his context, that remark seemed to be broadly appreciated, regardless of what people think of the justice or injustice of his decision.

However, the comments he made during the press conference revealed a racialized theology at work. He did not say directly that large groups of black people inevitably produce riots, violence, and crime. That would have been unacceptable. He said it in code: "I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened. You can quote me on that."

A local black pastor in the crowd did not let that coded message stand. Reverend Donald Sibley's reaction led to the end of the press conference. He stood and replied that he thought it a shame that Walters could not give credit to thousands of black people acting respectfully and responsibly. Walters responded in his own defense, interpreting his previous statement clumsily, then ended the question period and abruptly left the room.

Rev. Sibley noted that Walters seemed to have two Jesuses at work in his theology, "his Christ and our Christ." Sibley went on to say, "I can't diminish Christ at all. But for him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order -- that's not the truth."

Rev. Sibley deserves a strong commendation for his insight, his wit, his courage, and his clarity in dealing with a racialized justice system and the racialized theology which supports it.

Justice Everywhere Now, Always

Today on the campus of Shaw University, students from at least seven North Carolina colleges rallied to join their voices for justice in the legal system. The occasion for the rally was the September 20 protest against the treatment of six black high school students accused of attempted murder and aggravated assault against a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana. Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP spoke powerfully to the crowd, and he suggested the acronym for Jena that I used for the title of this entry.

The rally was not a call for ignoring any acts of violence which have been committed. It was a call for fair treatment of blacks and whites caught up in the same legal system. Numerous web sites and newspaper articles tell the story of the events which unfolded in Jena. Whites assaulted blacks in Jena during the period of unrest which followed the racist threat of nooses hung in a tree outside the high school, but district attorney Reed Walters brought no charges in those cases. But in this case against a group of blacks who beat a white boy, leaving minor injuries which allowed him to return to a school activity the same day, the district attorney brought charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault. Setting bonds very high for these students meant that they spent weeks and months in jail. The case bursts with examples of the unequal application of the law.

It is a case which has caught the attention of black students across the country. It has touched a nerve in their world. Many have friends who have been victims of legal injustices. Others fear what might happen to themselves. Primarily, they recognize that this widespread problem affecting African Americans long after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts must be challenged. As Jesse Jackson was widely quoted to have said, there is a Jena in every state of the United States.

Apparently, blogs and social networking sites became powerful tools in organizing the large protest in Jena on September 20, as well as many local events. It was only in the last week that the brewing protest was noticed by major news organizations. Prior to that, it was only a few news sources, such as the Chicago Tribune, the BBC, and NPR, to name some, which made note of what was happening in Louisiana. I tried to get local news coverage in Durham, but had to settle for writing my own Op/Ed article. So clearly some other form of information exchange and organizing made the difference.

Some used existing organizations, churches, and just plain word-of-mouth organizing. In Durham, a father named Kevin Williams became agitated by thinking about his own teen-aged son getting caught up in an unjust legal procedure. He became a leading organizer to bring attention, and ultimately busloads of North Carolinians, to Jena.

At Shaw, Dean of the Chapel Quincy Scott and his staff deserve praise for their work to facilitate the student rally. President Clarence G. Newsome and other administrators joined their support and presence to the event. Over half of the participants were Shaw students, but large contingents came from North Carolina Central University, Livingstone College, and St. Augustine's College. Other groups of students came from Elizabeth City State University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and North Carolina State University. There were also Shaw alumni and other community members who joined in the event.

Well-deserved attention is finally being brought to this case. Recent developments seem promising. The bait and switch tactic of lodging a charge of attempted murder allowed Walters to bring underaged Mychal Bell's case into an adult court. After the trial started, the charge was reduced to a charge that did not justify taking Bell out of juvenile court. Yet the case was carried through, and Bell was convicted. The appeals court threw out the verdict on the grounds that it should never have been tried outside of the juvenile court. Charges have been reduced for the other youths who have not yet stood trial. Will the legal officials of Louisiana rein in this rogue prosecutor? Will the full story be told, rather than the abbreviated version which focuses only on the one event which led to these students' arrest?

Finally, we must remember the important early publicity given to this case by a couple of ministers. Eddie Thompson of Jena spoke frankly about racism in his town, at the same time acknowledging that it is not unique to Jena. Alan Bean of Texas worked hard to get the details of the case publicized.

I posted a while back about the racially charged events in Jena, Louisiana. Today I did some research to get an update on those events. So far, one of the young black men has been convicted of aggravated assault. "Aggravated" means, in Louisiana law, that a weapon was used. The prosecutor claimed that the boy's tennis shoe constituted a weapon when he kicked the victim. Ten white prosecution witnesses disagreed about whether Mychal Bell had been the one to initiate the assault. Strangely, the defense attorney called no witnesses and made no case for the defense, even though a coach at the school had observed the fight and publicly stated that Bell was not the one who struck the victim. The other five boys who were charged have not yet been brought to trial.

I got the image above from the website of a former Baptist preacher turned advocate named Alan Bean. His organization is called Friends of Justice, and he is the one who got the word out in April that led to broad coverage in national and international media. Another thing I learned from him was that when the black youths protested by sitting under the controversial tree, law enforcement and the District Attorney were called to the school for a sobering assembly. District Attorney Reed Walters has been quoted as saying (while looking at the black students), “See this pen in my hand? I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen.” Sounds like he "Nifonged" them. A summary of other shocking details of the case can be found on the blog Pursuing Holiness. The news report from the local Alexandria, Louisiana, newspaper is here.

A quick web search will find many other sites discussing this case. Sadly, it still does not seem to be making the news. If you are so inclined, it would be good for the faith community to write letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, or otherwise make it known that this sort of thing is not any more tolerable in Jena than in Durham. In addition, I located a campaign to contact Governor Blanco and District Attorney Walters at colorofchange.org.

Let the spotlight shift to Jena, LA. Durham, NC, has been the focus of national attention on politics in the justice system, the presence or absence of racism, and the way that people debate about crime and race in public. The continuing residue of this discussion has to do with (1) what kinds of power a district attorney can have in the investigation and pursuit of criminal cases and (2) how public intellectuals such as university faculty ought and ought not to speak out in the context of a public criminal case.

In Durham we have the so-called Group of 88, Duke professors who signed a statement concerning the ongoing problems of racism and sexism at their university. They wrote it in the heat of the early investigation about the Duke Lacrosse team party which employed African American exotic dancers in a setting of heavy drinking. As most everyone knows, one of the dancers charged that she was raped, and three members of the lacrosse team were charged. Eventually, the woman's account of the alleged crime fell apart, and all charges were dropped. These professors continue to be the object of attack for having spoken out in a context that some people say was prejudicial to the students charged, unduly critical of their university, and overall in bad taste for talking about racism and sexism as if they are problems in this day and time.

Well, now the same kind of hubbub has appeared in Jena, Louisiana. It is not really new. It started last September. But only now it is getting picked up by a few news sources. Curtis Freeman alerted me to a news story on the BBC website. I found another article at the Chicago Tribune site. I'll quote a bit from the latter as I highlight the story here. I have not seen any all day coverage on CNN or MSNBC or Fox. We'll see if that comes (NOT).

There is a racial incident that started it all. When black students got permission from the principal to go and sit under a tree in the school yard that traditionally was only for the white kids, they did it for the first time. This is 2007. The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. It was not hard to find out who had done it, and three white male students were recommended for expulsion from school. They eventually only got a three day suspension.

This sequence of events led to a good deal of conflict, and a series of incidents involving fights, beatings, and guns (no shootings) occurred. When white people were harassing blacks, they received lesser charges. But when some black boys ganged up on a white boy, causing only minor injuries, they were charged with attempted murder.

So there is a District Attorney acting in arbitrary manner. Many folks around the country incensed about the situation in Durham seem to think that prosecutors acting in ways that don't seem fully just, and even acting arbitrarily, is a new thing in the Duke Lacrosse case. What is new about it is that it happened in a racial context to the disadvantage of privileged white boys in a major university. It has happened over and over to the poor, to blacks, to Latinos, to other minorities, but seldom does the public hear about it. Let's make sure the public hears about Jena, Louisiana, and District Attorney Reed Walters of LaSalle Parish.

Second, most people in Jena want to say that there is not a problem of racism in their community. Yet only sixteen years ago, most of this town's white votes for Louisiana Governor went for David Duke, KKK leader. But in response to the hanging of the nooses, the white school superintendent "ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt." The mayor tried to play it down, too. "Jena is a place that's moving in the right direction," said Mayor Murphy McMillan. "Race is not a major local issue. It's not a factor in the local people's lives."

Thanks be to God for a Pentecostal preacher who spoke up, and the lone black school board member who added his agreement.

"I've lived here most of my life, and the one thing I can state with absolutely no fear of contradiction is that LaSalle Parish is awash in racism -- true racism," a white Pentecostal preacher, Eddie Thompson, wrote in an essay he posted on the Internet. "Here in the piney woods of central Louisiana ... racism and bigotry are such a part of life that most of the citizens do not even recognize it."

The lone black member of the school board agrees.

"There's no doubt about it -- whites and blacks are treated differently here," said Melvin Worthington, who was the only school board member to vote against expelling the six black students charged in the beating case. "The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided."

On one web site I read someone's comment that they feared for him now that he had made these public comments. They expected that he will be harassed and maybe worse. Rev. Eddie Thompson and Melvin Worthington and Caseptla Bailey (mentioned in both news articles) are Jena's Group of 88. When they see racism, they call it what it is. May there be at least another 85 people to stand with them.