31 Comments
BSO and the Barnard Organization of Soul Sisters, along with other activisty types, have tacked the SIPA graffiti incident on to a national walkout Monday to protest the Jena 6 business. It’s at noon, so you can symbolically walk out of your 11:00 AM class 15 minutes early.
Also tomorrow, of less cosmic significance but significantly more medieval fun, the annual Renaissance Festival is going up in Fort Tryon Park. Take yourself back to a land before midterms, if only for an hour.
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31 Comments
@bottom line Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are already behind all six of these criminals, calling them “good Christians”.
If they’re in the picture, it means the kids deserve to have the book thrown at them. Al and Jesse only defend the kids who should never be defended.
@another interesting article on the Jena incident:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOl6L858y0iDf4k_28ojhYLcuLGg
and overcharging somebody with a whole bunch of charges is a common tactic by DA’s. Competent DA’s understand that doing so will usually intimidate the defendent into pleading guilty to the lower charge which they actually are guilty of.
@umm way to twist my words asshole.
all i said was, no matter how angry/hurt/oppressed/threatened they were, jumping a kid six on one is NOT the way to fight back at racism. it was STUPID. what happened to the good old-fashioned sit-ins and walkouts? Violence is NOT the way to get respect, even if that respect (meaning basic respect for fellow human beings) was already deserved.
i never said i condoned what was going on as far as the racism, and the fact that i “isolated” the incident doesn’t make assault any less illegal. I think that anyone who assaulted/threatened anyone (including the noose-hangers) should be dealt with accordingly. So what — I’m racist because I feel that people who break the law should go to jail no matter what the color of their skin is?
@btw that was in reply to #5 and #4, but mostly #5. i clicked reply but it didn’t work for some reason.
@agreed the way for blacks to shed the stereotype that they are just violent criminals is probably not to behave like violent criminals.
just a thought.
@how about we protest barnard by having six women kick the living shit out of a sad boy with a columbia t-shirt.
i would skip class for that, as i long as i get to beat bitches up after
@... Thus far all of the walk-out or strikes from class at Columbia have occurred at times when I did not have class.
@na-na-na-na na-na-na-na. hey-hey-hey. good-bye
@i've read about jena the prosecutor should be disbarred
the superintendent/principal should be fired/sharply reprimanded
the noose kids should be suspended
the kids who beat the heck out of the white kid (particularly the ones with decent records already) should get jail time
and the people of jena (all of them) should be stuck in a room together and forced to watch remember the titans, the defiant ones, etc
done
@yeah that sounds fair.
http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/296701.html
And I think Jason Whitlock would agree with you.
@number 15 here again.
Ralph Smith is quickly becoming one of the best serious sports writers in the country (Simmons spends more time talking about Laguna Beach and losing to his wife in nfl picks to be considered serious).
I remember looking at some of his Vick articles and was pretty impressed to.
It’s amazing what types of narratives purported journalists (take a note here bwog) will run with to create a compelling story. At this point you still have to think that Walter charged them way too severely, but I don’t know that he deserves to be necessarily disbarred. Of course, I’m sure that Whitlock’s reporting won’t be covered by anyone.
@sadly whitlock is often dismissed by blacks as an uncle tom.
@CUSFS is meeting at noon at the 116th st. gates to head up to the Medieval Fest in style. Do feel free to tag along.
@well... Six kids kicked the living shit out of another kid and hospitalized him. You know that if the races were reversed people would be even more pissed off. Don’t deny it.
@julia it’s medeival fest, the cloisters the MEDEIVAL branch of the met, runs it.
DUh
@hello friends can someone explain to me in a few sentences why i should care about the jena six controversy? i’m rather uninformed.
@couldnt you just bother to read any of the tons of articles floating around?
@hey kids A little break from the tense banter:
Columbia is trailing Princeton 35-32 with seven minutes to go in the football game. The CU running back (Jordan Davis) just threw a touchdown pass, and CU converted the two-point conversion to pull within three. CU was expected to lose pretty badly, so all things considered, the team is playing well.
@yea... or princeton is having an off year…which they are
@npr is stupid From that link: ” “White students can do things and receive a slap on the hand,” Jackson says. But authorities “want to throw the book at blacks,” he adds. ”
Hanging nooses is not the same as physically assaulting somebody. The former deserves expulsion (it’s reasonable to consider it a direct threat against the black kid), the latter deserves jail time. the only double standard i see here is that blacks are allowed to just say “but i was angry about racism” but whites cannot.
@you are some ignorant fools. You’re blaming the students for living in a racist town? Sickening, how racist even a place like Columbia continues to be.
@you are the fool being surrounded by racism does NOT excuse assault! remember, racist speech is STILL free speech. those with racist tendencies still have the right to voice their opinions and they have the right to see their assailants in jail should they be beaten up. nobody is blaming the students for where they live. we are BLAMING THE STUDENTS FOR COMMITTING ASSAULT. are you denying that HAPPENED? or are you just another idiot who thinks that blacks are forever exempt from the law, because they’re surrounded by “racism”.
@This is ridiculous. It is almost pointless to even respond to this thread, based on the fact that the commenters seem to know NONE of the details of the trial.
The assault victim didn’t just call the six students names; he threatened them with a SHOTGUN. After they wrestled the gun away from him, yes, they DID assault him; however, the only injuries he sustained were to an eye (swollen), the hands, and the ears. This was a high school fight, but the teens are getting charged with up to 100 years of jail time, including “conspiracy to commit murder”, “theft of a firearm” (the shotgun they commandeered), and “assault with a deadly weapon” (the tennis shoes they were wearing to kick the other student—yes, really). The white student who pulled the shotgun is being charged with absolutely nothing and was hospitalized for only two hours before leaving to go to his class ring ceremony. While these six young men may deserve some form of punishment for the assault, the charges they are up against are most definitely exorbitant and undeserved. THAT is the Jena 6 controversy. Not that they didn’t commit a crime, but that the crimes they are being charged with are extremely excessive, coming from a DA who months earlier threatened a group of black students with the words: “I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.”
Why don’t you learn a little something before you start claiming reverse racism, you ignorant idiots.
@wrong “I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.”
Jason Whitlock already refuted this in the article I posted above. I recommend you read it before you start claiming racism, you ignorant idiot.
@seriously read the thread before you start cribbing. First–i’m pretty sure #23 and #19 are different from the earlier posters (definitely 23 cause its was me) but you’ll notice I never claimed reverse racism.
In fact, I think its obvious there’s at the least a disturbing amount of racial insensitivity and racism in the town of Jena–even if the kids put up the noose–2 weeks of out of school suspension and other actions suggest it wasn’t taken serious enough.
However, a lot of the ‘fact’ that people who’ve really became infuriated about this are pointing to are in fact somewhat unrelated and have been manipulated into a digestable narrative made for television.
The police report itself says that the student with the shotgun went back to get it when he was confronted by the three other individuals–he felt threatened by them, got it in self defense and then had the shotgun wrestled away from him–there are puportedly two female witnesses to this.
Also you’re completely confusing the incidents (please go back and read the facts like you’re suggesting to us). The shotgun incident was outside a convenience store I believe and nobody got hurt in that particular inicident. The one which the six were charged for was outside the high school where the ganged up on the one student (Justin Barker) who had apparently yelled racial epithets at them. They didn’t only just cause a black eye etc in a high school fight. He suffered a concussion and went to a ring ceremony to quickly recieve his ring and then he ended up leaving early due to pain. According to police reports and medical records, he was blinded for a while and suffered from headaches. Ganging up on and kicking a guy in the head while he’s on the ground and has already suffered a concussion isn’t a high school fight. And Barker was not the same guy as in the convenience store incident. Mychal Bell, a guy who already has a rap sheet that includes punching a 17 yr old girl in the face, definitely deserves to do some time for his part.
I dont doubt that they were excessively charged when he put an attempted murder charge on them, but the truth is that we’re at least listening to facts of the case and making decisions on that. You appear to be blinded by your fury–which is understandable when a sensitive topic of race is involved–but which is dangerous and foolish when justice needs to administered. Maybe you should figure out exactly you’ll be walking out for when you participate in monday’s demonstration
As always, this is a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six
@#26 You’re completely right. Hypocritically enough, I responded with the same haste that absolutely enrages me.
Ah, well. I sincerely apologize (as I remove my foot from my mouth). Peace out.
@no worries I don’t fault anybody for having a visceral reaction to what appears to be outright racism at first glance
@besides... it was 6 on 1. now, i’m no criminologist, but to me, that sounds like plain old assault. even if it was provoked by the white kid (i don’t know for sure, i haven’t read anything about it because i don’t care), 6 on 1 is just not a fair fight, unless you’re Rambo.
and it was pretty fucking dumb of those kids to get a bunch of black kids to jump a white kid in a racist town. What did they expect?? I’m not saying they should have sat back and took the racism without standing up for themselves, but there are better ways to um, squash negative stereotypes than to get a gang of kids to beat up on one, and then cry about it later.
@simplification yeah because isolating the incident from a series of beatings makes things clearer.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12353776
@what the hell i do NOT understand why people are protesting this shit. black kids attacked a white kid who was not involved in the noose thing. just because they’re black they should be not charged with a crime? blacks are exempt from the law? that’s BULLSHIT.
@asdf wasn’t the big jena protest day sept. 20?