From the Francis Holland blog:
thegrio.com counts the Jena Six March among the ten most important events for Black people of the last decade, saying:
We didn't know what to expect of course and there's no way anyone could have truly predicted the events of the early 2000s. It's definitely been a roller coaster. As we close out the decade and await the imminent arrival of 2010, here are the ten stories that have shaken us up and changed the way we see this country, the world and ourselves.
It feels good to have known political news when I saw it and to have participated in helping to write and catalyze the enormously successul petition and organizing for the Jena Six March, as well has having announced in writing in 2006 and then on YouTube in April 2007, that, 'It's time to end the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency.'
Not everyone agreed with me initially, particularly many jaded Black bloggers, that it was time for a president who is not a white male, but virtually everyone who is not a Republican or a right-wing independent eventually realized the truth of this proposition.
This post along with the prioritized list of "important stories in Black America during the 2000's" highlights the problem that the power to "self-prescribe' one's own tonic" presents to our interests as Black Americans struggling to obtain and maintain the standard of living that we desire.
In the mind of "The Grio.com" and Mr Holland of AfroSpear fame the actions of a few Black males and a White district attorney in a small town in Louisiana had a more significant impact upon Black Americans than did the daily slashing upon our collective epidermis suffered by our community from other "less noteworthy" self-inflicted wounds from forces from within.
In the bifurcated threat assessment that is present among some Black Americans - no "Street Pirate" will ever be able to do anything that threatens the interests of the Black community to the scale at which J. Reed Walters - the district attorney of Jena Louisiana did to threaten our collective spirits. (Note: The PBS Series: "The History Detectives" ran an episode today that featured a fund-raising stamp associated with the "Scottsboro Boys". They were the group of Black males who indeed suffered from the race driven injustice of a small town, racist White criminal justice system that attempted to railroad them the rape of two White women in a railroad box car in Jim Crow-era Alabama. I strongly suspect that the Civil Rights Establishment was seeking to make the "Jena 6" into the modern day "Scottsboro Boys". The key difference is that the "Scottsboro Boys were COMPLETELY INNOCENT. The story was a complete fabrication)I am still on a quest to define the formula that models the number of assaults upon Black people by "Street Pirates" that equals the assault of ONE White man in the authority of a police man, a district attorney, a judge or a jailer. Thus far not even the aggregate impact of individual pirate attacks in total in just one large metro area out of many around the nation can trigger such a large protest march where thousands of interested souls are willing to drive more than 9 hours to attend the rally which tells the Street Pirates: "NO MORE!!!".
In my view the "Jena 6" diversion is not worthy of mention in the top 10 list of "important stories" for the decade with respect to Black America. If the "HIV Epidemic" made it to the list despite the fact that this threat has metastasized via one interaction where "body fluids" were exchanged at a time - then so should merit the gross number of "Pirate Attacks" upon the Black Community during the decades. In addition the fact that these CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS did not register on the radar of the Black Civil Rights establishment should also be noted.
There is no other event that took place in the decade that had more "Black people crying on the nightly television news" than what these serial pirate attacks around the nation hath triggered.
In just ONE DAY in ONE CITY'S newspaper - the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
- Man Killed In Dekalb Home Invasion - There Will Be No Protests
- Smash And Grab Street Pirates Hit West End Mall - There Will Be No Protests
- Three Men Shot In A Night Club Argument - (You know the deal)
- Former NFL Player Shot In Dekalb - No Police Involvement - No Protests
5 comments:
At the bottom of the Jena 6 story is at least one street pirate--the main character Mychal Bell was arrested for shoplifting shortly after all the marching and hell raising.
There not one thing that anyone can name that came out of Jena 6--not one damn thing that we can point to that has lasting impact on the condition of those of the blood Afric. What is the purpose of doing anything that's supposedly of great importance when you can't point to anything of note that came out of it?
We look like fools and that's dismaying because I know we're way better than that.
That case is a particular pet peeve of mine and gets back to the entire premise that we spend 90% of the effort on 10% of the problem.
Imagine a "Black People's Dry Erase Board" that lists the priority focus for our people.
Those who have the POWER to add new items to this list ALSO have the power to keep things off.
My proposal is to TAKE THIS POWER AWAY FROM THEM.
They have shown in abundance that they don't have the best interests of our people in mind. They only have the self-serving interests of their party and ideology.
Our community suffers until THEY are held to account for their leadership, being pushed out as they fail to deliver.
I'm not really sure what you mean when you refer to "street pirates". I've been out of the USA for almost ten years, so there's a lot of slang that I simply won't understand.
I gather that a street pirate is a member of the public who targets others for unlawful and maybe immoral attacks against their persons and their possession.
The Jena Six are no more inherently important than the fifty Americans who have died by police pre-trial electrocution and execution this year, disproportionately Black, and the others who have been electrically shocked but have not died.
What Jena showed is a massive ability among Blacks, including bloggers and radio personalities and crucial national groups like Color of Change to organize and to focus our attention on one specific political ill and then do something effective about it.
Our defense of the Jena Six was about who we are, our sense of injustice and the limits of our patience with the (in)justice system.
While specific legal gains were made for the Jena Six, we know that we have a national problem of systematic injustice that results in Black unemployment being twice that of whites and Black prisoners being half or more of the prison population when we are only 12.8% of the populace.
These are the problems we need to solve and we know that one march is a first step, but systematic change requires systematic resistance based on a clear understanding of where we've been, where we are, and how we can move forward.
The most difficult part for Blacks is the "how we can move forward" part. President Obama and his advisers had a clear vision of how to end the 43-term white male monopoly of the presidency,even if that was only a byproduct of his determination to win the presidency.
Rarely do I hear Black people (and whites for that matter) express a clear vision of where we are and what we need to do to get where we need to be going. In campaign mode, before the inauguration, Senator Obama expressed the clearest statement of where are and what we need to do next, not as Blacks but as Americans. But his actions in office lead a lot of people to doubt whether he has as clear an idea for governing with justice as he had for winning with hope and promise.
If we could develop a strategy to stop killing each other, we might accomplish as much within our community as we need to accomplish outside of it. I believe these are related problems, in which we can only engage Blacks in positive action by focusing our anger outward, where the majority-white society is not discomfited a bit by our incarceration, taser torture, unemployment levels and segregated and unequal public schools.
S/He, that group, who can turn out attention toward these problems with an engaging solution for fixing them will be a gift from heaven.
Mr Holland:
My concern and criticism of you and other Black people who think like you is not about your ABILITY to organize and speak united against issues that impact Black people.
My criticism of you and the "Black Establishment" is centrally focused upon your "sorting methodology" of how you arrive at your list of PRIORITIES by which to focus upon. From this you all seek to "bring the Black race along with you". From this UNITY comes some cathartic experience.
Take a look at the newspaper series on the state of crime and justice in Philadelphia. The majority of people featured in the entire series are Black. If you want to talk about SYSTEMATIC INJUSTICE look no further than this.
Jena was easy to frame. It was supposedly our era's "Scottsboro Boys" despite all of the gross exceptions that required propaganda to smooth over. At the end of it all - a group of Black national media personalities used their mass media presence to order a MASS SHOWING.
Unfortunately - instead of "Police Wielding Police Dogs and Fire hoses being trained upon the masses of Black people" - I saw the attendees doing the Electric Slide.
Now consider my consciousness as an OBSERVER OF BLACK PEOPLE AND WHAT MAKES US TICK, Mr Holland. I hold the "Jena 6" up in one hand. I hold the gross CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS WITHIN THE BLACK COMMUNITY DONE BY BLACK FOLKS in the other. I realize that regardless of the brutality of the crime (ie: 2 Black mothers in College Park GA are forced to strip naked and are shot in the head - execution style. Add them to the 5 total Black people who are killed in a 4 month stretch of a 2 mile strip of road near the "World Changers Ministries church) - that NOTHING WILL BECOME OF THIS THUGGISH BRUTALITY by this same group of Black operatives.
Mr Holland - I firmly believe that the "Black Establishment" fails to realize that they are THE OPERATING ESTABLISHMENT ORDER in our communities. In accepting this they would have to ACCEPT the entirety of results that stream out of these areas that they purport to help. Instead they prefer to STRUGGLE. When one is a VICTIM - there is no need to accept accountability. After all you were doing what you are supposed to do and were MUGGED.
The bottom line of it all is that someone needs to counter-check the Black Establishment just as most other forces in America in general place a check upon other establishment authorities (ACLU, NRA, NAACP, NOW).
By the way a "Street Pirate" is a SERIAL CRIMINAL. They terrorize (primarily) the Black community and they don't give a WHAT. Their goal is immediate gratification of their demands, SCREW the consequences.
Their weapons are bricks thrown through glass, size 13 Timberlands to kick down the front doors of a family's home and the knife or gun held up to a community-member's head as a threat.
They don't care about the rules of society or OUR COMMUNITY.
With all due respect, Mr Holland - please afford me to use your words to display the differences in VIEWPOINT that I have with you.
None of this is done in a spirit of "mocking" or belittling you.
I assume that reasonable and conscious adults are reading the both of us and will come up with their own conclusions.
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