Jena, La. AP photo Alex Brandon
September 20, 2007
Scar tissue, just down the road in Louisiana
Sept. 20, 2007As thousands gather in central Louisiana today in support of the Jena 6, I am reminded of the summer of 1971 and what took place just down the road from Jena, Louisiana.
My friend Mary, with her bright-red hair in Natchitoches, was dating a good-looking black man. But this was central Louisiana and the Ku Klux Klan was still recording our names on their hit list of people to be killed. What we did were simple things, organizing food baskets for those without food and occasional race unity picnics. It seemed to us these were pretty small offenses to attract a place on the Ku Klux Klan hit list. But things grew worse, in the end, they chased Mary and her boyfriend out of town with rotten tomatoes and eggs. Mary, in her old convertible, fled to the sunshine state of Arizona. Would anyone have imagined then, that after 36 more years of civil rights struggles, that once again, buses would be rolling into central Louisiana today. Looking out on a world scale, it seems so odd that the U.S. is still claiming to be able to fix the world's problems, when the wound of racism in America festers beneath all this scar tissue. In America, it is always more about television and Hollywood, than about the cold facts and reality.
--Brenda Norrell
My friend Mary, with her bright-red hair in Natchitoches, was dating a good-looking black man. But this was central Louisiana and the Ku Klux Klan was still recording our names on their hit list of people to be killed. What we did were simple things, organizing food baskets for those without food and occasional race unity picnics. It seemed to us these were pretty small offenses to attract a place on the Ku Klux Klan hit list. But things grew worse, in the end, they chased Mary and her boyfriend out of town with rotten tomatoes and eggs. Mary, in her old convertible, fled to the sunshine state of Arizona. Would anyone have imagined then, that after 36 more years of civil rights struggles, that once again, buses would be rolling into central Louisiana today. Looking out on a world scale, it seems so odd that the U.S. is still claiming to be able to fix the world's problems, when the wound of racism in America festers beneath all this scar tissue. In America, it is always more about television and Hollywood, than about the cold facts and reality.
--Brenda Norrell
September 19, 2007
Jena exposes viral racism and new era of hope
The news came on Democracy Now! radio today from Harlem. Buses loaded with supporters were preparing to go to Jena, Louisiana, to support the Jena 6. It has been nearly 40 years since similar buses of supporters headed to Louisiana and Mississippi. Who would have thought then, that there would be a need for those buses of support 40 years later.There was also good news from British rocker David Bowie who donated $10,000 to the legal defense fund of the Jena 6.
Of course this trial is not just about white students claiming the domain beneath a schoolyard tree, or the nooses dangling there, or the fight. It is about oppression and racism, the kind that lives like a viral infection in the deep crevices of the United States, from the skinheads, Minutemen and Border Guardians in the West, to the Ku Klux Klan and racism that lives, festers and spreads like fungi in the Deep South, signaled by the waving of Confederate flags and the prejudices passed down through generations.
It is the kind of viral infection that needs strong medicine to heal, strong universal love and understanding, to heal.
It is the type of injustice that requires bold action by all people of goodwill to make things right again.
But there is hope. Rallies are being held all over the nation. On Thursday, tens of thousands of people are expected to protest in Jena, Louisiana, the small town where I spent one summer of my childhood.
It won't just be the South rising again, but it will be hope in America rising again.
Minutemen pepper spray migrant activist at sanctuary church
Minutemen Provoke, Pepper Spray, in Simi Valleyby Marcus
Tuesday, Sep. 18, 2007 at 11:45 AM
SIMI VALLEY, California, Sunday, September 16, 2007: At 10 a.m., 40 pro-immigrant supporters and about 80 Minutemen and their supporters gathered on each side of the driveway leading to the parking lot of the United Church of Christ on Royal Avenue where Liliana took refuge from the Immigration Services. During the protest, a small group of three Minutemen came on the pro-immigrant side apparently to provoke. Pro-immigrant supporters complained to the Simi Valley PD, but to no avail. Despite the angry protests of immigrant supporters, the police didn’t force the Minutemen to move, Half an hour later at 11: 12 a.m. a Minuteman pepper sprayed Naui Hutizilopochtli, an immigrant activist, so badly that he had to be taken to the hospital by paramedics. The protests went on until 1 p.m. without further incidents.
More photos:
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/09/207304.php
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