[NYTr] Sharpton: "Jena: The Beginning of a 21st Century Rights Movement"

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[See also CSPG Party Auction, below Sharpton interview]

sent by Ed Pearl - Sep 24, 2007

[Jena's been covered, but Sharpton's right - I hope.  This could be
the beginning of a mass movement, not only logical, but demonstrated.
Interviews with some of the 60,000 people, mostly black and from all
parts of the country, showed people were drawn not by organizations
planning this for months, but by common, agonizing experience with
modern day racism and the justice system.  From police, to courts to the
vast, imprisoned population of young, Black men and now women. Often
mothers, fathers, children and other relatives and friends.  They just
couldn't take it anymore.  Nor could you, nor I.

Rev. Shapton is more populist orator than a visionary like Dr. King.
Here, he touches the elements.   This would be reason enough to post
this, but beyond is the mass, profound unease about the war, the
economy for regular folks, rampant corruption, the destruction of our
very democracy. This event, if played out, could trigger the
nation-wide movement that is begging to be born.  If you're thinking
the 1960's and Rosa Parks in 1956, you're right on.

The CSPG, in what they do and its relationship to the above, fits right
in.-Ed

PS.  Today's LA Times has an on-point front-page article in Health
(Sec. 5): The Toll of Racism "The stress of discrimination, real or
perceived, may be shortening black men's lives."  This may be
coincidence, but...] 



Democracy Now - Sep 21, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/21/158225

Democracy Now Interviews the Reverend Al Sharpton
September 21, 2007

"The Beginning of a 21st Century Rights Movement"

AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights leaders from across the country, including the
Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton and Congressmember
Maxine Waters, traveled to Jena to take part in Thursday's march. This
is the Reverend Al Sharpton.

REV. AL SHARPTON: This is the beginning of the twenty-first century's
civil rights movement. In the twentieth century, we had to fight for
where we sat on the bus. Now, we've got a fight on how we sit in a
courtroom. We've gone from plantations to penitentiaries, where they
have tried to create a criminal justice system that particularly
targets our young black men.

  And now we sit and stand in a city that says it's a prank to hang a
hangman's noose, but that it is attempted murder to have a fight. We
cannot sit by silently. That's why we came, and that's why we intend to
keep coming. We are going from here to Washington, D.C. We're going to
change the federal laws. You think we brought thousands to Jena. You
wait 'til we go to D.C. and bring the whole country, because there's
Jenas all over America. There's Jenas in New York. There's Jenas in
Atlanta. There's Jenas in Florida. There's Jenas all over Texas.

  We're going to coordinate Detroit, Cleveland, everywhere there's a
Jena. We're going right to the nation's capital, just like Dr. King did
a generation ago. We are going back a generation later. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and others faced Jim Crow. We come to Jena to face James
Crow, Jr., Esq. He's a little more educated, a little more polished,
but it's the same courthouse steps used to beat down our people. And
just like our daddies beat Jim Crow, we will win the victory over James
Crow, Jr.

AMY GOODMAN: The Reverend Al Sharpton speaking yesterday at the massive
rally in Jena, Louisiana. He joins us on the phone now from Baton Rouge.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Reverend Sharpton.

REV. AL SHARPTON: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the latest news you have? We understand there will
be a bond hearing for Mychal Bell this morning at 10:00.

REV. AL SHARPTON: There will be a bond hearing in the context of a
hearing to have the judge recuse himself. And I have talked throughout
the night with the attorneys. We are hopeful and prayerful, Marcus
Jones and Melissa Bell, the parents of Mychal Bell, and I might say the
parents of the other five, because these families have stuck together
since this began a year ago, and we are hopeful that maybe some sanity
will come and it could lead to Mychal's release.

Certainly, he should not have been in jail this long. Let us remember
that a week ago, it was ruled -- it was overturned, that he should
never have been tried as an adult, which was the first point that was
made in his particular case. I got involved in June. I've been to see
Mychal three times, and I can tell you that that was a tremendous
victory in the courtroom there, thanks to his lawyer. And now, he's
still, a week later, still in jail, even after the overturning of the
original adult trial.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Sharpton, I want to go back to this issue of the
judge. What do you mean you want the judge to recuse himself?

REV. AL SHARPTON: The lawyer's point is that the judge, himself, who
tried the case as an adult and who ruled that he must be tried as an
adult, has now been overturned. For this judge to sit on the further
motions and all this thing -- has shown bias, will not, in the judgment
of the attorneys -- and many of us certainly agree -- will not give a
fair and balanced judicial outcome for Mychal. So they want a new judge
to handle this and go forward into the remaining juvenile charges. That
is why there's a hearing on the judge stepping aside, as well as a bond
based on the new status of Mychal Bell, being that Mychal Bell is no
longer being charged as an adult.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the DA? What about Reed Walters?

REV. AL SHARPTON: Well, Reed Walker [sic] -- our organization, National
Action Network, filed a formal complaint about ten days ago against him
in Baton Rouge. One of the reasons I'm in Baton Rouge today, aside from
the fact that Mychal may be released, is that I want to follow up on
when they're
going to schedule proceedings on our complaint. Reed Walker [sic] has
been, in our judgment, guilty of -- 

AMY GOODMAN: Reed Walters.

REV. AL SHARPTON: Reed Walker [sic] has been guilty -- 

AMY GOODMAN: Walters.

REV. AL SHARPTON: I'm sorry, Walters has been guilty of prosecutorial
-- and now I'm having the complaint; you're correct -- Reed Walters has
been guilty of prosecutorial misconduct, in the filing that National
Action Network has done. He has been the DA that was there throughout
all of these incidents.

And I think one of the mistakes the media is making is they're saying
that some in Jena are saying that there was no direct connection
between the fight that the Jena Six were indicted for and the hangman's
noose. Our argument is that one does not have to prove that, one way or
another.

The fact is that if you have a prosecutor that decided that he could not
prosecute the students, the white students that hung the nooses,
because a hate crime, you must be an adult, according to Louisiana law,
and these were juveniles, yet he felt that the black kids in the fight
who were the same age, going to the same school, were adults. How do
you have white kids juveniles, black kids adults, same age, same
school? The fact that he did not, in any firm way, prosecute the young
white student that had a shotgun on school grounds, threatening the
black students, that there was a black student that was beaten at a
party that he was invited to by a white female, and that person, the
white student, was given a hundred-dollar ticket, tantamount to a
traffic ticket.

So when you have a pattern of prosecutorial behavior that he will go
after blacks harsher, charge them initially with attempted murder as
adults for a schoolyard brawl, and relatively nothing on the side of
white students, then he must at least have to come before the
authorities here in Baton Rouge, which is the state capital, and
explain his prosecutorial misbehavior.

Secondly, we're going to Washington, D.C. next week, and we're bringing
some of the parents, to meet with members of Congress, and we have been
assured by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, that marched with us
yesterday, that she will bring us to the Judiciary Committee to try to
get hearings on this. So far, Mr. Walters has not answered any
questions, but he will have to answer an ethics committee here in Baton
Rouge, and he will have to answer if the Judiciary Committee in the
United States Congress brings him to Washington. He has no choice but
to answer questions. He ought to be removed. I do not believe he can
answer the questions. I do not believe that he can support his
arguments. So we must, as was done a generation or two ago, before my
time, when they brought the federal government in to protect our people
in the South, we must do likewise in 2007.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Sharpton, we went to Jena a few weeks ago, and
one of the people we talked to was a school board member. His name was
Billy Fowler. He is well known in the community, a white member of the
school board. And when six of the ten members of the school board were
brand new last January, it was the time that the students were
expelled, and they appealed their expulsion to the school board. The
school did an investigation. Three people were appointed to do the
investigation. The school board members wanted to look at the
investigation and decide whether to uphold the expulsion. But the
school attorney told them they couldn't look at their own school
investigation, because it would jeopardize the criminal investigation.
The school attorney was none other than Reed Walters, both the school
attorney and also the district attorney, the man who is going after,
who is prosecuting the six young African American students.

REV. AL SHARPTON: That is part of our complaint, because what makes
that -- you're absolutely correct on the facts. What makes that even
more egregious is that when he told them it would interfere with the
criminal proceedings, he was over the criminal proceedings, which
meant, at best, he had a conflict of interest, either as the district
attorney or as the attorney to the school board. And it is clear that
he is the one that was determined to prosecute these young men as
adults. He was determined to, in many ways, allow those that had -- the
initial hate crime culprits to walk away with no penalty, in terms of
overturning their being expelled from school. People must remember
around the country that listen to your show that these white students
suffered nothing for hanging those nooses. And this whole idea that it
was a prank clearly is an outrageous cover-up of a racist act. What
prank? They did it only after a black student sat under that tree. This
meant clearly they were responding to the presence of a black body
under that tree. There is nothing prankish about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Sharpton, we want to ask you to stay for a few
more minutes. We're going to break for sixty seconds, come back, and
then we want to play a clip from the radio show of David Duke, the
Louisiana resident who got about 60% of the vote in La Salle Parish.
This is where Jena is. We're talking to the Reverend Al Sharpton. We'll
be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: One vocal critic of Thursday's protest was David Duke, a
Louisiana resident, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1991,
white residents of Jena overwhelmingly voted for David Duke when he ran
for Louisiana governor.

  DAVID DUKE: This is David Duke, and this is the David Duke internet
web radio broadcast, broadcasting to the entire world with news and
information of vital importance to Europeans and people of European
descent, no matter where they may live around the world. Today, I have
an important program. Today, the city of Jena, Louisiana is being
besieged. It's being invaded by thousands of thugs, demanding that a
specific black criminal be let out of jail -- he and his cohorts who
committed a vicious hate crime against a white student in that city.

  The people of Jena, the people of Louisiana, and I, are not racist. We
simply want justice to be done. We understand that white people in
America have lost our basic civil rights. Whites are now deprived of
human rights by racial discrimination in jobs, promotions,
scholarships, college admittance, and in many other programs. More
importantly, whites are increasingly victims of black racial violence
and hate crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: You've been listening to an excerpt of a radio program by
David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Reverend Al
Sharpton, your response?

REV. AL SHARPTON: Well, I think, clearly, anyone that was the Grand
Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, to say that he is not a racist and that
those that think his way are not racist, is so absurd it doesn't even
-- is not even worthy of a reply from me or comment from me. Obviously,
David Duke and that whole kind of person is the problem here. You have
a Klan mentality that does not feel that the white students should be
in any way penalized for the violence that happened, that they
perpetrated on these black students, that anything should happen to
those that hung the noose.

They clearly have no problem with having a tree in a public schoolyard
that only whites could sit under. Let us not forget, race was brought
into this when you had a tree only for white students. And when a black
student sat under the tree after questioning that, that was responded
to by hangman nooses. Race did not come into this from six black
students two, three months later. Race did not come into this by those
of us that came here for the last several months or the tens of
thousands yesterday. It was brought in by the tree and the hangman
noose.

And for them to try to in any way change the facts only shows the
typical demagoguery the Klan has always played to try to whip up
elements in the white community that are not already with them and may
not understand the facts.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Sharpton, I spoke with Kelly Barker, Justin
Barker's mother. Justin Barker is the young white man who was beaten
up, the white student, in the Jena schoolyard. She is manager at the
Super Wal-Mart in town in Jena. I then talked with her and her husband
David Barker on the phone. They were very upset about people saying
"Free the Jena Six." They were saying, "Should they get no punishment
for beating up our son?" Your response to that?

REV. AL SHARPTON: The response is very simple. Mychal Bell has done ten
months in jail as an adult, that even the Louisiana courts are saying he
should not have been tried with. I think that, one, no one ever said
that we condone schoolyard fights, but that's what it was. And the
punishment should have been a schoolyard fight. Had these young men
been dealt with in juvenile court in a regular proceeding for juveniles
like any other juvenile, including the white student that pulled the
gun, the shotgun at the school, and the white student that beat up, I
believe it was young Mr. Bailey at the party, I don't think there would
have ever been an issue, local or national.

What I think she is not mindful of is that is not the case. It is the
imbalance of justice, the imbalance of the charges, that raised the
outcry. So I think that if she had said, "Yes, they should be punished,
but he's done ten months in jail as an adult, and even the courts
disagree," I think she would have more credibility. But to have a young
man still sitting in jail ten months later in adult jail and to act
like there's been no punishment, I think, takes a lot of credibility
away from their kind of outrage that somebody is not paying for a fight
in the schoolyard with their son. No one does not in any way condone
her son or any other son being beaten up, but we don't condone Bailey
getting beaten up at a party. We don't
condone young black students being confronted with a shotgun. And we
don't condone black students told you can't sit under a tree or we're
going to hang lynch signs or lynch symbols up on that tree.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Reverend Al Sharpton. What do you know of
an FBI investigation and report?

REV. AL SHARPTON: I know that we talked -- Martin Luther King III, who,
along with Michael Baisden, really helped to organize and call
yesterday's rally, he and I had a long lengthy conversation with the US
attorney who is over in that area, Mr. Washington, who is black, by the
way. And he told us there was some review. I don't think it was a
detailed investigation. And he said that the review, in part, was that
the state law banned the prosecution of the juveniles, which is why we
didn't understand -- in terms of the hate crime, that would be -- which
is why we didn't understand why these young white students were being
juveniles and the black students -- same age, same school -- being
adults. He also told us there were some other findings in their review
that barred federal intervention at that time. We argued against that,
and that is why we're going to Washington to members of Congress to
press that for a full Justice Department involvement investigation, not
just a surface review.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Al Sharpton, I want to thank you for being with
us, speaking to us from Baton Rouge. Yesterday, he was in Jena,
Louisiana, where one of the largest rallies in the South was held in
decades. By estimates of the police and AP and different media reports,
between 40,000 and 60,000 people marching in this small Louisiana town
of just over 3,000 people. Thanks for joining us.

REV. AL SHARPTON: Thank you, Amy.

                            ***

Celebrate the Art of Resistance

pARTy AuCTION
Saturday, October 13, 2007 - 6:30pm
Union Station, 800 North Alameda
Downtown L.A.

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) invites you to
celebrate 18 years of using art to inspire social change at the historic
Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles.

There will be a fantastic dinner, entertainment, great company, a dynamic
poster presentation, and a unique auction of vintage posters and original
artworks.

Please join us as we honor these outstanding individuals:

- Barbara Hadsell, civil rights attorney, and Douglas Hadsell, history
professor, will receive the Culture of Liberation Award.

- Barbara Kruger, feminist artist, 
will receive the Art of Resistance Award.

- Rudy Acuña, activist historian, 
will receive Historian of the Lions Award.

CSPG is an educational and research archive that collects, preserves,
documents, and circulates domestic and international political posters
relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. With
more than 60,000 domestic and international graphics, CSPG has the largest
collection of post-World War II political graphics in the country. Through
traveling and online exhibitions, presentations, and publications, CSPG is
reclaiming the power of art to inspire people to action. Visit our website
www.politicalgraphics.org to find digital exhibitions, descriptions of
traveling exhibitions, online shopping, and more.

If you need more information, contact Mary Sutton or Katy Robinson at
323.653.4662.

We look forward to seeing you on October 13!

Order your Sponsorship Package or Tickets and Ads ONLINE!

      Volunteers Needed!
      Upcoming Annual pARTy AuCTION - October 13, 2007
      WE NEED YOUR HELP!

 We need volunteers in the weeks before and on the day of the
event. Before the event we need help running errands, acquiring,
organizing and mounting auction items, coordinating volunteers, and
calling CSPG supporters to support the event. On the day of the event,
we need people to set-up tables and decor, set-up the silent auction,
deliver items to Union Station, clean-up, and work various stations at
the event: the bar, guest tables, welcoming, auction, registration, and
sales.

If you have a specific talent that might be helpful, let us know. Our
events are a lot of fun, even for the volunteers!

If you would like to help, please respond to this email or call Katy,
Megan or Mary at 323-653-4662.