What did i just read?!

Girl, let me tell you what i heard just went down in jena...

"Yo..word on the street is that three nooses were found under the 'white tree' son…after

that black dude sat there yesterday..."

no way!!!

Post-racial society, my ass!!!

I feel so awkward.

sorry, that i ran out of class...but some of

those people back in there are so damn ignorant about racial issues

man, i might have to check

somebody up in here...

as you should, white boy.

get up and do something,

principal!!!

frankly, administration ain't

sh*t.

that wasn't a prank!

ni**er.

You gon' learn

today...

F**k these crackers…and f**k this school too!!!

yeah, my friend did it…and???

mhmm…i have no reason to

worry. at least, i'm not the one

locked up

i'M NOT EVEN THE ONE YOU SHOULD BE ARRESTING… NEITHER ARE MY BOYS!!!

since mainstream media won't cover it, i will.

Wtf?!

Lord have

mercy...

Somebody about to get knocked the

f**k out

"Dear  Mykal,

[I  read  a  blog  post  about  your  story],  and  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,  Mykal,  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,  Mykal,  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.  Mykal,  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  Mykal.

Your  brother  in  the  struggle,  

Joseph" (Young 2007)

Cheryl's son Joseph wrote the

most eloquent letter to them jena

6 boys…lawd knows he did!!!

MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT HE FOUND OUT

ABOUT THEM JENA 6 BOYS ON SOME BLOG, MABEL

AUNT BAM, wHAT YOU SAY NOW? ON A

"BLOG"? WHAT THE HELL IS A "BLOG"???

why you so slow, mabel??? catch up… blogs are like diary

entries on the internet that

publicize issues...

…LIKE WE'RE IN GEORGIA, AND

JENA IS IN LOUISIANA…AND WE HEARD THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH BUT JOSEPH

HEARD ABOUT THEM BOYS ONLINE

THAT'S REAL CUTE BAM, BUT YOU KNOW GOOD AND WELL THAT THEM BLOGS AIN'T GONNA DO anything UNTIL "SHARPTON OR JACKSON MAKE AN

APPEARANCE" (kvasny et al)

madea, don't forget we go waaaay back in the day!!! fyi, i'm in jena right now…aunt bam called me

and told me you were talking s**t.

she was shook

wasn't she? hahaha you know

she was, joe!

that negro only went because he was "seeking [some damn]

attention" (kvasny et al).

mabel, you always

were a big 'ol bag of salt…just plain salty

word.

Sharpton, you are a liar. how

about you think about your motives. remember now, the lawd looks at the

heart, not the outward, rev! thanks for being there for us black folks, i guess, but

do it in the right spirit, that's all i'm saying. that

goes for you too jesse!!!

what we do to her???

Aunt bam told her about blogging, and now she thinks we haven't given credit

to the blackosphere, or "online discussions taking place in the black

blogging community [that] provide authentic accounts of african american discursive

practices, lived experiences and cultural perspectives" (kvasny et al).

in other words, we

showed up, took the credit, when really

we didn't do all the work.

remember those blog posts we looked at, jesse?

we responded to them, and the media responded to us.

wow, all that blogging paid

off. this is incredible.

if we don't get down to jena and

cover this story, our image will be

ruined.

why is this even a

debate? cnn is there.

sure, my voice has been heard,

but do the people know that it was

my voice?

i did read once that "[WEB] networks have always been key

sources of power, providing access to social and financial capital." Only thing now is that these networks are "faster…

larger…more complex and more efficient" (watkins, 195).

anD I THOUGHT "THE TRUTH WOULD SET US FREE," WHEN REALLY IT HURTS LIKE HELL…i guess "black blogging

communities [actually] are important because they provide an alternative venue for information dissemination and social

action to promote economic, social, judicial and educational equity" (kVASNY ET AL).