I got a truly spineless response, from a faceless bureaucrat, to my letter to Governor Blanco in support of the Jena Six. It said the Governor could say nothing since this would be unconstitutional – the matter is in the hands of the Judiciary. It was condescending and hostile, yet still laughable. I almost blogged it, but I cannot blog everything. On August 11, however, the ColorOfChange.org team wrote saying we can and should still contact Blanco to keep the heat up. Read on:
On July 31st, more than 300 people came from around the country to stand with the families of the Jena 6.
It was quite a scene for Jena. We rallied in front of the courthouse and marched through the city, but perhaps the most intense moment was when a group of six supporters, led by a Jena 6 family member, walked through a line of sheriff’s deputies into the District Attorney’s office, to deliver stacks of petitions representing the demands of more than 43,000 of you that District Attorney Reed Walters drop the charges against the five students still waiting to be tried.
It was a tense and powerful moment. Black folks don’t confront power like this in Jena, and certainly not with hundreds of people of every color supporting them. From the looks on the faces of the sheriff’s deputies and other officials in the court house, it was clear they got the message: it is no longer business as usual in Jena and their racist attack on these young men will not be allowed to stand.
We also know we’re making an impact on Governor Blanco. She finally started responding to the more than 60,000 emails ColorOfChange members have sent. Her condescending and insulting response claiming she’s powerless to intervene and failing even to condemn the egregious injustice that’s taking placewas clearly an attempt to back away from the issue completely. We’re not going to let that happen.
You can help build momentum and keep the heat on Governor Blanco, by spreading the word and asking your friends and family to get involved. You can find a brief letter to send them here:
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena/thanks.html
Our impact has also been felt by the families of the Jena Six. Your support for their sons – in person, and in spirit – gives them energy and strength to continue their struggle for justice. Concretely, ColorOfChange members have raised over $70,000 to provide legal support for the Jena 6. It’s critical that these young men get representation from exceptional lawyers; even if they find pro bono counsel, they are likely to incur $30-50 thousand each in expenses. To help, visit the following link. Every penny goes directly to the legal defense of the Jena 6. You can contribute by credit card, PayPal, or check.
http://www.colorofchange.org/jena_fund
We are planning on-the-ground events on or around September 20th, the new date set for Mychal Bell’s sentencing. In the next few weeks, we’ll nail down the dates and locations. Until then, please keep the Jena 6 in your thoughts and do what you can to let others know about the situation.
The road ahead for the Jena 6 is not likely to be short. But together, with a little persistence and some decent smarts, we can help them win. Moments like thesewhere the law and government oversight fail ushelp us remember that our ability to survive and protect our children comes down to building a community of support. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to do this work, and so thankful that you are part of this community.
Keep contacting the Governor … and keep your eye on this story!
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Cero, muchas gracias.
An Open Letter To The Jena Six
By Joseph Young
Washington Informer
Dear Mychal,
I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous.
It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union.
Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America.
Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization.
Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred.
Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny.
It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children.
Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain:
“You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.”
Godspeed Mychal,
Your brother in the struggle, Joseph