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Message Boards9-21-07. Protesters gathered by the thousands to march against the racial injustice that occurred in the small city of Jena, Louisiana. A school yard brawl between black and white students ended in unequal treatment and punishment by the law. In early August, nooses were hung from a tree a day after a group of black students received permission from the school to sit under the tree, a place normally “reserved” for the white kids. The students who committed the hate crime were briefly suspended from class. A few months later six black youth were accused of brutally beating a white classmate and received harsh punishments—accusations of attempted murder. They are the “Jena 6:” Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey, Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw, and Jesse Ray Beard.
The civil rights march included college students from historically black colleges and civil rights activists like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King III. Most of today’s black youth do not know anything about the civil rights movement of the ‘60s and with each passing year, grow further and further from a connection to a turbulent past and struggle as a people. The closest event that they may remember would be the Million Man March of 1995. According to Jackson, “Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment.” Sharpton states that “this is a march for justice. This is not a march against whites or against Jena.”
NEW YORK, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Calling it a "blatant miscarriage of justice" the president of the 100,000-member c, called on Louisiana Governor Kathleen B. Blanco to intervene in the case of the Jena 6. The six African American high school students were charged with aggravated battery and conspiracy following a series of racially charged incidents involving black and white youth in the town of Jena, Louisiana.
"The events leading up to this case, the overzealous prosecution and the extended incarceration of these young men are a moral outrage and a throwback to the Jim Crow era. They should offend everyone's sense of justice, including Governor Blanco's," said RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum.
"The RWDSU stands with our brothers and sisters in the civil rights movement in demanding justice for the Jena Six -- Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey, Jr., Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis and 'John Doe,' the young minor whose name has been withheld. The fact that the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals has tossed out the conviction of Mychal Bell is a step in the right direction," Appelbaum said. The RWDSU president said that Blanco and Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti must "take immediate action to protect the rights of the Jena 6."
"Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' That's why all Americans have a stake in challenging what's happening in Jena."
The RWDSU represents 100,000 members throughout the United States and Canada.
Source: Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
Web Site: http://www.rwdsu.org/
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones joined a number of her colleagues and millions of Americans across the country to shine a light on the plight of Robert Bailey, Jr., Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw and Jesse Ray Beard, also known as the Jena 6.
"While I am pleased that the charges against Mychal Bell have been reduced, justice requires that his incarceration be reexamined. As a former prosecutor and judge I know that District Attorney Reed Walters is vested with significant discretion, and he is ethically bound to charge a defendant with crimes consistent with the facts.
"In this instance, based upon the fact that a court has thrown out the charges against Mychal Bell, he is bound to reexamine the facts and make a determination as to whether the charges are consistent when applied to the law. I call upon my colleague to do just that so the American public, regardless of color, will have faith that there is justice for all people.
"So today, I join all of the concerned citizens across this country and across the world in demanding fairness and justice in the case of the Jena 6."
Source: Office of Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Web site: http://www.house.gov/tubbsjones
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Coinciding with today's march in Jena, Louisiana, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement in response to a recent ruling from the Louisiana appeals court overturning the verdict against a young student in the Jena 6 case:
"The recent ruling by the appeals court is a positive step towards ensuring that all those involved in the Jena 6 case receive equal justice and fair treatment under the law. Racial discrimination and intolerance have no place in America, particularly not in our judicial system. The decision of the appeals court should not be the last word in this case. A thorough investigation of every aspect of this case is needed to determine if these students received what every American is entitled to: equal treatment under the law, without regard to race. As a country we must continue to work to remedy disparities in our justice system and work to ensure that all Americans are treated equally under the law."
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, http://www.democrats.org/. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Source: Democratic National Committee
Web site: http://www.democrats.org/
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Singer Angie Stone and "Jena Six" students will participate in the Tuesday, September 25, evening session of the Children's Defense Fund's (CDF) national Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit at Howard University.
Stone will take part in a panel discussion on "Transforming Popular Culture into a Positive Force to help Dismantle the Cradle to Prison Pipeline." Following that, students Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw, two of the "Jena Six" will join others involved in the case for a panel discussion on "Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice and the Pipeline". Bailey, Shaw and four other Black high school students in Jena, Louisiana, known widely as the "Jena Six," have been unjustly charged with adult felony charges for allegedly participating in a school fight. Both events will take place in Howard University's Cramton Auditorium.
The panel will be part of a larger Summit to address America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis and its devastating impact on children, youth and their families, particularly within the Black and Latino communities. A full Summit agenda is attached. For more information on CDF's Cradle to Prison Pipeline Initiative visit http://www.childrensdefense.org/cradletoprison.
WHO: Children's Defense Fund
Singer Angie Stone
"Jena Six" students Robert Bailey and Theo Shaw
WHAT: Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit Tuesday Evening Session
WHEN: September 25th, 2007
7:30 PM Panel: Transforming Popular Culture into a Positive Force to
help Dismantle the Cradle to Prison Pipeline.
9:00 PM Panel: Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice and the
Pipeline
WHERE Cramton Auditorium
Howard University Campus
2455 Sixth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20059
Media check-in begins at 6:30 PM
RSVP: Media wishing to attend this event must RSVP to Nayyera Haqat
nayyera@childrensdefense.org or 202-662-3592. A mult box will
be provided.
National Summit on America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline(R) Crisis
The Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
September 25-26, 2007
Howard University
Washington, DC
TENTATIVE AGENDA 9-18-07
Tuesday, September 25
8:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. Registration
Blackburn Auditorium
Second floor lobby
8:30 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. Continental Breakfast
Blackburn Auditorium
Second floor lobby
Morning Session:
Rankin Chapel
10:00 a.m. -- 10:05 a.m. Welcome to Howard University
Dr. H. Patrick Swygert, President, Howard University
10:05 a.m. - 10:20 a.m. Meditation on Why We Are Here
Reverend Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., Senior Minister Emeritus Riverside Church, CDF Board Member
10:20 a.m. - 10:35 a.m. Welcome, Introduction and Overview of
Summit's Goals
Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund
This session will introduce the honorary co-chairs of the Summit, Dr. Dorothy Height, Dr. John Hope Franklin, and Dr. Dolores Huerta and set the stage for activating the action phase of a broad-based National Community Crusade for Children, the social movement needed to dismantle the Pipeline that CDF seeks to catalyze at this Summit. It also will provide an overall framework for the Summit itself. Special emphasis will be placed on the exceptionally high personal, family and societal toll the Pipeline exacts, the striking failure of our nation to recognize its existence, and to take the urgent and sustained actions needed on the policy, programmatic and investment fronts to redress the multiple, convergent factors that fuel it. (This session will announce the official release of America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline(R) Report that all participants will receive.)
Dismantling America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline: What Will It Take? Part I. "Mobilizing Public Demand and Political Will"
Moderator: Angela Glover Blackwell, Overall Summit Moderator and Synthesizer, Founder and CEO Policy Link and CDF Board Member
10:35 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Angela Glover Blackwell Overview of Summit agenda, schedule and plan of action
10:45 a.m. - 10:55 a.m. "What About the Children?" Yolanda Adams song with Slide Presentation of Photographs of Children in the Pipeline by Veteran Time Magazine Photographer Steve Liss
10:55 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Introduction: Robert F. Vagt, President Emeritus, Davidson College and Chair, CDF Board of Directors
11:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Dr. John Hope Franklin, James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, Duke University
11:15 a.m. - 11:20 a.m. Introduction: Carol Biondi, California's State Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, CDF Board Member
11:20 a.m. - 11:35 a.m. Dr. Dolores Huerta, President, Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder and First Vice President Emeritus, United Farm Workers of America
11:35 a.m. - 12:05 p.m. Interaction between Speakers and Summit Participants (Angela Glover Blackwell presiding)
The opening addresses seek to provide a historical context for the Summit by highlighting key past achievements, the serious continuing challenges and unfinished agenda, through the lens of the Black and Latino communities, and to build the requisite power base to prevent and dismantle the Pipeline. They will be followed by an interactive dialogue with Summit participants including Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel and President, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund commenting on the role of race in the Pipeline.
12:05 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. Participants transit to Blackburn East Ballroom
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Buffet Luncheon served Blackburn East Ballroom Invocation 1:30 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. Participants transit to Cramton Auditorium
Part II. Reweaving the Fabric of Family and Community: Challenges and Opportunities
Interactive Dialogues
1:50 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. The Need for Personal and Community
Cramton Auditorium Responsibility to Dismantle the Cradle to
Prison Pipeline
Moderator: Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent, National Public Radio
Dr. Bill Cosby, Educator, Entertainer, and Author, including Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, with Alivin F. Poussaint
Dr. Robert Michael Franklin Jr., President, Morehouse College, author of Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities
2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. Perspectives of Youth and Parents
Cramton Auditorium Moderator: Maya Harris, Executive
Director, ACLU of Northern California
Discussants:
Donnie Belcher Boyd, Youth Advocate, Chicago, Ill.
Michelle "Mickey" McKinney, Youth Advocate, Los Angeles, Calif.
Lupe Ortiz-Tovar, Youth Advocate, Tucson, Ariz.
Hun Pham, Youth, New York, N.Y.
Jasbir Singh, Youth Advocate, New York, N.Y.
Ms. Lorna Hogan, Parent Advocate, Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Wanda Taylor, Parent Advocate, Minneapolis, Minn.
This session will be an honest and provocative dialogue with parents and youth, some of whom have been caught in one or more of the key feeder points into the Pipeline, and all of whom are now working to help keep from entering or being trapped in the Pipeline. Mothers and fathers, many of whom have confronted the Pipeline themselves, know all too intimately the struggles and perils faced in fulfilling care-giving roles for children and youth amid often profound personal and family challenges and unsupportive environments and systems. Through this intimate sharing of experiences, the session hopes to illuminate the very real but often insidious factors that funnel children and youth into the Pipeline and how this affects their lives and that of their families. It also seeks to provide valuable insights from those who have faced the Pipeline head-on about the most urgently needed preventive and other interventions and escape paths.
3:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Break
4:00 p.m. - 5:15 p.m. Interactive Dialogue
Cramton Auditorium Promising Approaches to End Violence and
Strengthen Communities in Dismantling the
Pipeline
Moderator: J. Michael Solar, Esq., Solar & Padilla LLP, Houston, Texas and CDF Board Member
Discussants:
Reverend Dr. Ray Hammond, Chair, Boston Foundation and Chairman and Co- Founder, Boston Ten Point Coalition
Dr. Carl C. Bell, Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health, University of Illinois in Chicago
David Kennedy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and founder of Operation CeaseFire
David Valladolid, President and CEO of the Parent Institute For Quality Education (PIQE)
In the past, parents, neighbors, faith-based and educational institutions and communities were expected to and did assume major responsibilities for keeping children and youth safe, within their families and out of child welfare, and juvenile and criminal justice systems by providing positive adult role models and helping to guide them along paths to success in school and beyond. Today, pervasive poverty, unemployment, rampant substance abuse, widespread crime and violence fuel already high and increasing rates of incarceration of children, youth, and their parents. Popular culture frequently demeans academic achievement and glorifies violence and disrespect of others, including women. Together, these forces have seriously eroded traditional values and undermined family and community stability. This session will explore successful multi-pronged strategies to create new community norms to quell violence and to engage key community stakeholders to buffer children and youth from entering the Pipeline and facilitate the sustained exit of those who already have entered it. Within this interactive format, each discussant will provide a brief overview of his/her respective initiative to be followed by a discussion of the key lessons learned from these experiences and their replicability, to illuminate how to staunch violence within communities on a large scale.
5:15 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Summit Participants Transit to Dinner 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Dinner for Summit Participants Blackburn East Ballroom Presider: Katie McGrath, Child Advocate, Los Angeles, CA and CDF Board Member Invocation Howard University Jazz Ensemble performs during dinner
7:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Summit Participants Transit to Cramton Auditorium for Evening Panel (Note: this evening session will be open to a wide audience, in addition to the Summit participants)
7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Part III. Cramton Auditorium
Transforming Popular Culture into a Positive Force to help Dismantle the Cradle to Prison Pipeline
Moderator: Confirmation pending Discussants: Geoff Canada, President and CEO, Harlem Children's Zone and CDF Board Member Dr. Edward Cornwell, Chief of Adult Trauma and Professor, Johns Hopkins Hospital Christy Hauberger, Founder, Latina Magazine Angie Stone, Singer and Composer Others pending confirmation
Prominent community leaders and positive role models for children and youth are needed from the entertainment world to share their views on what it will take to transform the negative influences that permeate much of today's national and youth culture into more positive forces to affect the family, community and societal changes required to foster healthy, safe children. They will help formulate a call to action for promoting positive and productive lifestyles for children and youth, and helping change community and cultural norms about violence, underachievement and prison.
9:00 p.m. - 9:45 p.m. Endangered Black Males: Racial Injustice
Cramton Auditorium and the Pipeline
The Jena Six
Moderator: Confirmation pending
Robert Bailey, Student
Casiphla Bailey, Mother
Theo Shaw, Student
Tracie Washington, Esq., Louisiana Justice Project
9:45 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Closing: Marian Wright Edelman
Cramton Auditorium
Wednesday, September 26
8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast
Blackburn East Ballroom
9:30 a.m. - 9:40 a.m. Meditation: Rev. Dr. Bernard Richardson,
Blackburn East Ballroom Dean of Rankin Chapel, Howard University
Part IV. Priority Systemic Reforms to Dismantle the Pipeline:
Interactive Dialogues
9:40 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. Current Challenges in Major Feeder
Blackburn East Ballroom Systems' Treatment of Children and Youth
Major reforms in key contributing factors and feeder systems are urgently needed to halt the Pipeline. This session will focus on interventions and systems which can and must play powerful roles in protecting children from rather than feeding them into and trapping them in the Pipeline. These include the health and mental health care, education, child welfare, and juvenile justice systems. Discussants will share promising strategies from selected communities and states to ameliorate these risks, and provide three major recommendations to redress the Pipeline from the perspective of his/her respective system. Special importance will be assigned to the need for scaling up and linking these strategies to achieve the greatest impact for children and youth and help inform the larger action plan to reroute children to successful adulthood.
Advancing Child Health, Mental Health, Early Childhood Development, Education and Poverty Reduction
Moderator: Confirmation pending Discussants: Jane Knitzer, Executive Director, National Center on Children in Poverty
Bill McNeal, Executive Director, North Carolina Association of School Administrators and former School Superintendent of Wake County, Raleigh, N.C.
Peter Edelman, Co-Director, Task Force on Poverty, Center For American Progress
Others pending confirmation
11:15 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Break
11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. Improving the Child Welfare, Alcohol and
Blackburn East Ballroom Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment and
Juvenile Justice Systems
Moderator: Charles Ogletree, Professor, Harvard Law School
Discussants:
Honorable Judith Kaye, Chief Judge of the State of New York
William Bell, President and CEO, Casey Family Programs
Jeremy Travis, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
James Forman, Jr. Associate Professor, Georgetown Law School, Co-founder
of Maya Angelou Charter School, Washington, DC, and CDF Board Member
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Luncheon Buffet
Blackburn East Ballroom
Invocation - Rev. Gordon Cosby, Church of
the Saviour, Washington, DC
2:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m. Participants Transit to Rankin Chapel
Part V. Bringing Us All Together to Dismantle the Cradle to Prison
Pipeline
2:15 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Leaders Needed at the Table of Change
Rankin Chapel
Moderator: Confirmation pending
Discussants:
Ralph F. Boyd, Jr., Executive Vice President, Community Relations, Freddie
Mac and Chairman, Freddie Mac Foundation
Iva Carruthers, General Secretary Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference
Honorable Donald Cravins, Mayor, Opelousas, LA
George Flaggs, Representative, Mississippi State Legislature and Judiciary
Committee Chair and Member, Dellums Commission
Others pending confirmation
Representatives from selected fields that also must serve as important allies in any initiative to successfully dismantle the Pipeline will discuss how best to mobilize and engage their respective colleagues in our social movement. These key stakeholders include: elected officials, the corporate world, faith community, foundations, juvenile judges and law enforcement officers.
3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Building the Will to Do What We Know Works
Rankin Chapel to Reroute Children to Successful
Adulthood
Interactive Session with All Summit
Participants
Moderator: Angela Glover Blackwell
Summit participants will be encouraged to share insights gleaned from
their own leadership roles within initiatives to dismantle the Pipeline.
4:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. A Call to Action
Rankin Chapel Next Steps to Dismantle the Cradle to
Prison Pipeline
Marian Wright Edelman
This is to be an inspirational and motivational closing session, underscoring priority steps needed to dismantle the Pipeline, already identified and discussed, and mobilizing each and every one at the Summit to commit fully to work within their own families, communities and networks to this end.
Thursday, September 27
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Town Hall hosted by Congressional Black
Caucus
Washington Convention "Unleashing our Power to Dismantle the
Center, 801 Mt. Vernon Place NW Prison Pipeline"
Washington, DC 20001
Source: Children's Defense Fund
Web site: http://www.childrensdefense.org/
DETROIT, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Detroit Branch NAACP will lead hundreds of community activists to Jena, LA to protest the unjust treatment of six African American Jena students. Departure will take place on Wednesday, September 19 at Northwest Activity Center located at 18100 Meyers in Detroit at 10 a.m. Detroit Branch NAACP Deputy Director Donnell White and Detroit Branch NAACP General Counsel Atty. Melvin Butch Hollowell, among others, will give remarks prior to the departure. The march and rally will take place on Thursday, September 20 in Jena, LA.
The NAACP is working with numerous groups, individuals, local, state and federal officials to coordinate demonstration activities in support of the six Louisiana teens facing overly aggressive prosecution and extended incarceration. For more information please contact the Detroit Branch NAACP at 313-871-2087.
The Detroit Branch NAACP is the organization's largest branch. It holds monthly general membership meetings, which are free and open to the public. For more information please call 313-871-2087 or visit http://www.detroitnaacp.org/.
Source: Detroit Branch NAACP
Web Site: http://www.detroitnaacp.org/
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