the paterson ymca supports the jena 6 on 9/20/07

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.

The Cities of the Future?

The upcoming election will almost certainly continue to focus on one thing: war in Iraq. The war, and our seemingly intractable situation in the Middle East is of utmost importance, but it isn't the only thing we should be talking about. One of the other integral topics should be: whose America is this? Specifically: is the US becoming a third-world country?


I have lived for the last 3 years in Brazil, which is a developing nation. I live a few hours outside of the city of São Paulo, which is the third largest city on the planet, and a world unto itself. It is also becoming an experiment in isolation and segregation. Open a newspaper in the city, and what jumps out at you are ads for luxury condos. They are a trend where every amenity will be available to the select 1% who can afford to pay the sickeningly high prices to buy one of these mini-palaces. In the next few years, developers have plans to create cities within cities. The condo-dweller in Sao Paulo will be able to go to a movie, church, the dry cleaners, a restaurant, and home again without leaving the confines of his "apartment complex." The poor, middle-class and the outside world in general stay outside.


But, we, Americans, would never allow something like that happen to our greatest cities, would we? We do not live in a land of favelas, slums where fear is like a virus, and crime is rampant. We live in the civilized, fluid, and open-minded world of the USA. Right?


I just finished reading a Q&A with the writing team of the book above: The Suburbanization of New York. I started to think about its subject a long time ago, when I was living on the border of Bushwick and Ridgewood, in Brooklyn. I never had money to live in Manhattan, but I love New York. Its variety, it craziness, it life. It is a world, not a city. And it was so different from the New Jersey suburb I grew up in. That is changing. One of the responders to the NYT forum about the book was Jeremiah Moss, the creator of Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. His blog tracks the irreversible (in his opinion) disappearance of all things original and creative in the Big Apple. Jerilou and Kingsley Hammett, with their book, move beyond that visual investigation to attempt to pin down the causes and effects of the branding of New York City, and its transformation into a place where "a nondescript building sells for $1,000 a square foot while family homelessness is at its highest level since figures have been kept and 500,000 children go to bed hungry every night (see The New York Observer, March 26, 2007)."


I love New York City. I am also afraid for my country and this great metropolis. Brazil, with its infamous inequality and striking contrasts, is less striking when you think of the above stats. Can a city be diverse and progressive, or is the city doomed to become the shopping mall of the rich and pampered?