Donald Washington

One Black Man’s Blog has a number of useful points to make on the Jena situation.

Perhaps the parents of a few of the black students would have informed the Jena School Board how threatened their children felt if they had been given their right to speak at the school board meeting. According to the blog post on Pursuing Holiness, news reports stated that the parents were not allowed to speak and register their complaint about the noose incident, which was also a violation of their Constitutional First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. So here we have a government body (Jena School Board) and a government official (Jena District Attorney), both violating the civil rights of parents and students in an attempt to keep a hate crime of racial intimidation quiet. . . .

US Attorney Donald Washington was appointed to his position by President Bush in 2001. Because he is a Black man old enough and educated enough, you would assume he knows the terrorist symbolism of the noose to Blacks, especially in the South.

I was compelled to look up information regarding Donald Washington’s background to get a clue of why he would lean towards viewing this as a prank. Like another Black appointee of Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Mr. Washington worked in the oil industry for the company Conoco. He held various positions with Conoco from 1982-1996 and was at one time its Chief Counsel in its Gulf of Mexico Division. . . .

In addition to his duties as US Attorney, Mr. Washington also serves on embattled US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ Advisory Committee, the Anti-Terrorism Subcommittee, the Controlled Substance Subcommittee and the Native American Issues Subcommittee. He also was a part of the failed “War on Drugs” campaign serving as the Chairman of the Southeast Region Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force which covers Atlanta. It is not know at this time if he played any advisory role in the scandalized political firings of the eight US Attorneys that is currently being played out in Washington.