here's an article from today's herald news about my co-workers' support for the jena 6. i'm so proud that we are all standing up against this injustice. keep fighting and make your voices heard...
Friday, September 21, 2007
By HEATHER HADDON, HERALD NEWS
Across North Jersey, people dressed in all black Thursday to show support for six black Louisiana teenagers facing attempted murder charges after a schoolyard fight with strong racial overtones.
Joann Hill, of Paterson, picked black workwear to express her outrage. For Hill and many others, the incident stirred personal and painful experiences of racism, and a deep sense of grief that blacks still have to deal with the possibility of injustice.
"It is scary," said Hill, 47, dressed in a flowing black blouse at her job at the Paterson YMCA. "I have a 17-year-old son. How's he going to feel when he hears about this?"
In Jena, La., a pair of altercations between black and white high school students last year led to dramatically different punishments for each. Last September, a black student sat underneath a tree that white teenagers congregate by, prompting three white students to suspend nooses in the tree.
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Then, in December, six black students badly beat a white student on school grounds. The victim was well enough to attend a school function later in the evening.
The three white students received a temporary suspension. But the black teenagers were charged with attempted murder. News about the incident gained widespread media attention in recent weeks as some of the cases came to trial.
On Thursday, thousands of people from across the country converged on the small town to demand justice for the "Jena Six." The chanting crowd, drawn by heavy promotion from black radio stations and including the Rev. Al Sharpton, flooded the streets of the predominantly white town of 3,000.
In the last few weeks, North Jersey residents have responded publicly and privately with shock and sadness. For some, the case smacks of a pre-Civil Rights era injustice. Yvonne Smith's son attended Thursday's rally, driving 1,200 miles from his college, Howard University in Washington, D.C.
"He couldn't believe we were still in that stage of our history," said Smith, 53, a Paterson transplant from Jamaica.
Chante Bobbitt, 27, sent off an angry letter to the governor of Louisiana. The incident strikes her as modern-day slavery.
"Those boys' lives have already been destroyed," said Bobbitt, an East Orange resident who works in Paterson.
Even as throngs descended on Louisiana, several other protests occurred across the country, including in North Jersey. On Thursday afternoon, more than 100 protesters rallied in front of Newark City Hall. Those attending ranged from Mayor Cory Booker to local schoolchildren.
Shelia Green-Barnhill, a Newark resident who attended the rally, felt that all people should be treated humanely.
"If you see someone injured in the street, you help them," Green-Barnhill said in a phone interview. "That person should be someone you talk to and eat next to, because they are a person, not just a color."
In solidarity, North Jersey residents agreed to wear all black to work on Thursday.
Dark attire appeared across the hallways of the Passaic County Board of Social Services, within the Paterson YMCA and in classrooms at the Passaic County Technical Institute. Black shirts popped up on employees in Paramus, throughout the East Orange school system, and at the Millburn Municipal Golf Course.
"This issue is everybody's child," said Thelma Stevens, 56.
For some, the issue presented an opportunity to talk to their children about ongoing racism -- even in subtle ways like preferences for white dolls. Others prayed in their churches. And for older folks, it brought back the past.
Joann Hill recalled her mother's experiences as one of only four black students in Passaic High School's graduating class of 1944. From her, Hill heard stories of finding burning cardboard on her yard, or having students rip up her books.
Since the Jena incident, Hill's 81-year-old mother has fallen quiet. "This has been hard on her," said Hill, of Paterson.
-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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