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JENA, Louisiana: In a scene reminiscent of the US civil rights
movement of the 1950s, thousands marched through this small
Louisiana town Thursday protesting what they say is widespread
inequality and racism in the US criminal justice system.
Wearing black clothing as a sign
of mourning, protestors bused in from across the country chanted
“No Justice! No Peace!” and swarmed the grounds of the town’s
high school, many bending to touch the stump of a tree cut down
after it sparked months of racial tensions.
A few black students tried to
cross the schoolyard’s invisible color line last September and sit
under the “white tree.” Arriving next morning they find three
nooses hanging from it, a stark symbol of the lynching that once
terrorized southern blacks.
Interracial fights broke out both
on and off campus and somebody lit a fire in the school after a
school administrator overturned the principal’s recommendation to
expel the three white students responsible.
The day after classes resumed in
December, six black students beat a white student to the point where
he lost consciousness, but was well enough to go to a school event
that night.
In most of the incidents, the
white students escaped any criminal charges. But the students who
became known as the Jena Six were charged with attempted murder,
although the charges were eventually reduced.
Tina Jones, the mother of one of
the Jena Six said its not fair and that the DA would wake up and
realize that he’s doing wrong and should release the kids.
The day after classes resumed in
December, six black students beat a white student to the point where
he lost consciousness, but was well enough to go to a school event
that night.
In most of the incidents, the
white students escaped any criminal charges. But the students who
became known as the Jena Six were charged with attempted murder,
although the charges were eventually reduced.
Civil rights leader Reverend
Jesse Jackson told the crowd that there is something wrong with a
country where there are more black youths in jail than in college,
and where drugs favored by blacks carry significantly stiffer
penalties than those favored by whites.
“The Department of Justice in
Washington’s gone silent,” Jackson told the crowd. “We are
intent to have hearings on the matter of criminal justice in Jena
because there is a Jena in every town, a Jena in every state.”
Critics here accuse the local
district attorney of racism for failing to hand out equal punishment
to the white students who started fights with their black peers.
“It’s not equal,” said Tina
Jones, the mother of one of the Jena Six.
“The black people get the
harsher extent of the law whereas white people get a slap on the
wrist,” she told CNN.
“I hope the DA [district
attorney] will wake up and realize that he’s doing the wrong thing
and to release these kids and let them go.”
--AFP
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