Web Letters: 'Jena Is America'

Jena is Jena. To extrapolate what happened there and use it to paint the entire country with a broad brush is one more example of race-mongering. I expect something like this to be written by shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Victor Sama

San Francisco, CA

In an unsolved arson case, a wing of the school was burned down. A few days later, Justin Sloan, a white man, attacked black students who tried to go to a white party in town. Sloan was charged with battery and put on probation. A few days after that a white boy pulled a gun on three black students in a convenience store. One of the black students wrested the gun from him and took it home, only to find himself charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who produced the gun was not charged.

Jena High School administrators, teachers and students say students of both races congreated from time to time beneath a tree and that the tree was never officially or unofficially reserved for white students. The Jena Times reports that the black student who asked permission to sit beneath the treat did so in jest.

The party at the Jena Fair Barn was an invitation-only event. Both blacks and whites were invited. Trouble started when a group of uninvited black teenagers, including Robert Bailey, one of the Jena Six, attempted to crash the party. When one of the hosts asked them to leave, they refused. A 22-year-old white male hit Robert Bailey. The police arrived, interviewed witnesses and arrested Sloan, who was charged with battery. Sloan pled guilty, was sentenced and placed on probation because it was his first offense. To date, he is the only person sentenced in connection with the Jena Six incidents.

The shotgun incident the following day at the Jena Fair Barn involved a 21-year-old white male named Matt Windham and three black students, including Robert Bailey. The three black youths allege Windham, who had attended the private party, approached them with a shotgun as they stood in front of the store and threatened to shoot them. Windham alleges he got out of his truck and was about to enter the store when he heard one of the black youths shout, "We got action." He said he looked up and saw the black youths "running after" him. He claims he retreated to his truck and pulled an unloaded shotgun out of the rear seat to defend himself. Witnesses, including the store employees, who called police, and customers supported Windham's version of the event. After interviewing the witnesses, the police arrested the three black youths, who were charged with aggravated robbery and theft of a firearm. Windham was treated for injuries at a local hospital and released.

In the first incident, the Jena police, after interviewing witnesses, arrested a white man for assaulting Robert Bailey. In the second incident, the Jena police interviewed witnesses and arrested Robert Bailey. Sound like equal justice to me.

William B. Case

El Paso, TX

What we need here is some perspective. A dopey DA in Louisana is no more representative of American justice than his counterpart in North Carolina. Yet on the web and in the streets, we see the same actors using superficial interpretations of statistics to peddle their self-glorifying agendas.

If we are ever going to have a serious conversation, it can't be in this toxic context. Here you have no openess or acceptance of responsibility. Just more racist bomb throwing that leads nowhere.

Robert Stephens

Flagstaff, AZ

While the media coverage of the march in Jena shone the spotlight on Jim Crow in present-day America, I can't help but fear that now that the protesters are gone, so too will be the media attention.

It saddens me that while the crowd was large, the faces were almost all black. Where were the concerned whites, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans who care about social justice and civil rights? Why was this still, after almost 300 years, primarily a "black" thing and not a human thing? Have we learned nothing from history? Why were the only white faces on the news those of the "townspeople" who are convinced that they are being misrepresented--though no local outrage was apparent when the Jena 6 were charged.

If America is to ever realize its potential as the land of the free where all men are created equal, we'd better move resolution of racism to the top of our collective "to do" list.

If we remain in denial, we become instruments in the decline of our nation, as opposed to being patriots who speak out to demand that our nation be all it can be.

Ellen Brown

San Diego, CA