Monday, May 26th, 2008

Still Awaiting Justice In Jena

Eight months after 40,000 people converged on Jena, Louisiana, justice still awaits the six young men whose cases inspired one of the biggest civil rights marches in recent history.

This Friday, special judge Thomas Yeager will consider a motion made on behalf of the Jena 6 to remove Judge J.P. Mauffray from their cases. Mauffray had previously denied motions by 5 of the defendants to recuse him from their cases. But last week, the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed Yeager to preside over this unusual hearing in Mauffray’s own courtroom.

Supporters of the Jena 6 say that the motion to recuse Mauffray is part of an effort to give them a fair trial. “Judge Mauffray is the man at the center of Jena’s broken justice system and now he is forced to justify his bias in a court of law with the entire nation watching,” said James Rucker, Executive Director of Color of Change, the 400,000 member group that served as the key organizing body of last September’s protests.

Flashpoint For Racial Justice

Last summer, the Jena 6 cases became a flashpoint in the national discussion over racial justice, and more disturbingly, a catalyst for further hate incidents.

On August 31, 2006, two nooses were found on an oak tree at Jena High School, an event that polarized the student body along racial lines. The school principal recommended that the three white noose-hangers be expelled. But the LaSalle Parish School Board—advised by attorney J. Reed Walters, who as District Attorney would later prosecute the Jena 6—voted 7-1 instead to suspend the students. The only African American board member offered the dissenting vote.

After months of racial tensions, including incidents in which white Jena High student Justin Barker and others made racial insults at African American students, Barker was beaten by the boys who would become known as the “Jena 6”. (CORRECTION 5/27 : Of the Jena 6 defendants, only Mychal Bell has admitted to being involved in the beating of Justin Barker.) Barker went home hours after the fight and participated in an evening public ceremony.

But DA Walters charged the 6 African Americans with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit attempted second-degree murder. The disparity in the sentencing spurred calls for a massive September march in Jena.

In the two months following the demonstrations, at least 50 noose incidents were reported nationally, including one found on the door of a Black professor’s office at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University. New York Governor David Patterson recently signed a law making displaying a noose a felony crime.

Judicial Bias

In the first Jena 6 case to come to trial, an all-white jury convicted one of the Jena 6 defendants, Mychal Bell, in adult court. After Bell spent 10 months behind bars, an appeals court threw out the conviction saying Bell could not be tried as an adult and remanded the case to juvenile court. Bell was freed on $45,000 bail.

But just two weeks later, Judge Mauffray agreed with DA Walters’ motion to send Bell back to jail, on the grounds that Bell’s involvement in the beating of Justin Barker had violated his probation for prior convictions. Mauffray then sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility.

Supporters of the Jena 6 say this was only one of the ways Mauffray demonstrated bias against the young Black men.

In his motion to recuse Mauffray, David Utter of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and attorney for Jena defendant Jesse Ray Beard, outlined a pattern of judicial bias.

Before Utter took Beard’s case, he writes in his motion, Mauffray told him that white beating victim Justin Barker was lucky that he did not “bleed to death”. Mauffray also called the Jena 6 “real troublemakers”, and discussed alleged incidents involving the defendants. Utter and others later investigated the rumored incidents and found them to be false.

In March, Mauffray told Beard’s lawyers, “Does anyone know when [Jesse Ray Beard] started his career? His first participation in a crime of violence? It was December 25, 2005.” Utter writes that, in response to a discussion about potential alternatives to incarceration, Mauffray scoffed and said, “Jesse Ray needs severe consequences, short term.”

A similar motion to recuse District Attorney Reed Walters, on the grounds of racial bias and conflict of interest, is pending.

posted by @ 11:43 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, May 26th, 2008

R16 Week!

After the event with Adam Mansbach this week–check it out below!–I’ll be heading out to the second R16 contest. For the three or four of you who have no idea, it’s one of the biggest global b-boy/b-girl competitions in the world.

Sixteen crews from around the world–including Russia, Israel and Brazil–will compete on May 31st and June 1st for over $50,000 in prize money. The Korean crews are the runaway favorites, but the competition will feature many of the top crews you might know from Battle Of The Year.

It’s also a cool excuse to hang with the homies. Thanks to organizers Charlie Shin and Johnjay Chon (plus a big shout to James Kim and my girl Joy Yoon), this event will be ridiculously off the hook. Joe Conzo, Jamel Shabazz, B+, and Brent Rollins are just a handful of my non-b-boy hip-hop heroes who’ll be featured and in attendance.

Much more when I’m back, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to post through the rest of the week and, who knows, may even attempt to blog from Suwon. Tho don’t hold me to that. In the meantime, here’s all the info and def be checking Youtube for the uploads if you can’t be in Suwon and Seoul this weekend…

posted by @ 3:31 pm | 0 Comments

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Adam Mansbach At Intersection For The Arts Tuesday Night!

Please join us Tuesday evening for an incredible event featuring Adam Mansbach at SF’s Intersection For The Arts. It’ll be an amazing event!

Here are the details:

A Reading Featuring Adam Mansbach with Jeff Chang and Dan Wolf

Tuesday May 27, 2008 at 7:30pm
$5-$15/sliding scale, general admission

Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street (btwn 15/16)
Mission District SF CA 94103
(415) 626-2787

This evening features dynamic author Adam Mansbach (The End of the Jews: A Novel, Angry Black White Boy: A Novel) in conversation about hip-hop, literature and race with journalist & author Jeff Chang. Mansbach reads from his latest novel The End of the Jews: A Novel, and also features an Open Process presentation of Dan Wolf’s theatrical adaptation of Mansbach’s critically acclaimed bestseller Angry Black White Boy featuring Tommy Shepherd & Keith Pinto from the hip-hop band Felonious.

posted by @ 6:41 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

McCain’s Moral Compass :: America Is A Bastion Against Islam

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has nothing on Rod Parsley…for real.

BTW, unlike John Hagee, McCain’s other problematic pastor, this “spiritual guide” hasn’t apologized, and most of the media has slept on all of this.

In other news, McCain’s media advisor Mark McKinnon made good on his promise to quit the campaign if Obama were the Democratic nominee. He stepped down from the campaign yesterday.

In a 2007 interview with Cox News, McKinnon said he would vote for McCain, but “I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy.” He added that if Obama were to reach the White House, it “would send a great message to the country and the world.”

posted by @ 6:30 am | 1 Comment

Monday, May 19th, 2008

The Candidates Have An Asian American Problem

One of the main reasons this presidential election has been historic is that every imaginable demographic has been in play. Long ignored constituencies seem to have suddenly appeared on the screens of political operatives.

Speculation abounds. Will African American vote break the Republican stranglehold on the south? Can Republican nominee McCain split the Latino vote? Will young voters make the Dem candidate invulnerable? None of these questions seemed remotely imaginable before January.

But Asian Americans still get no love.

A presidential forum this past weekend in Irvine, California, organized by APIA Vote confirmed this. Before a reported crowd of 1,000, none of the candidates even bothered to show.

Clinton did a canned speech and took no questions, despite her heavy reliance on Asian Americans for the plum Super Tuesday primary victory in California. McCain’s supporters claimed he couldn’t access the satellite tech to make the appearance, even though he was in New York City to tape Saturday Night Live, a show that happens to be broadcast, uh, live via satellite.

(Hmmm, what genius thought that excuse would get over with Asians?)

Obama literally phoned it in from Oregon. But he spoke about his family–which is as Asian as it is African and white–and took questions–including a thorny one about Native Hawaiian sovereignty in his state of birth. If Clinton took the Asian American vote in key states earlier this spring, credit Obama for not taking it for granted looking toward the fall.

Obama has been accused of having an “Asian American” problem. He did. Last year, Obama’s campaign staff issued a memo criticizing Clinton’s support for outsourcing by mocking her as the Democratic Senator from Punjab. Obama quickly distanced himself from the comments but no heads rolled over the foulup.

Truth be told, the other campaigns look like they have it worse.

Last month, Hillary Clinton’s campaign rallied white voters in Pennsylvania with what Emil Guillermo calls “yellow peril” ads. No one on her lengthy list of Asian American endorsers jeopardized their delegate seats by making any noise about it.

Worse, McCain has never apologized for his “I hate the gooks” comment. (Add that to his ongoing denial of his own pastor problem–even the pastor apologized, kinda–and you’ve got a pattern.)

So leave it to Def Slammer Beau Sia to rock the event with this rant. Too bad that by the time he got onstage most of the political operatives had left.

posted by @ 2:06 pm | 2 Comments

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Byron Hurt On Sean Bell

A day after Sean Bell’s birthday, on Malcolm X’s birthday…

posted by @ 7:47 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Hillary And The Racist Gap

Hillary’s argument that Obama can’t reach white working-class voters makes perfect sense. It represents her true politics–based in buzzkill pragmatism of the most cynical kind. Will we cater to the worst in our voters all the time? Yes we will!

Or…to paraphrase Amy Poehler-in-her-Hillary-banana-suit on SNL: “My voters will never vote for Senator Obama because they’re racist.” It was hilarious because it called out the Clinton campaign on its not-so-subtle identity politics. Last night, Clinton all but made West Virginia ’08 into Alabama ’64.

But what if Hillary’s line is right?

Last month after the Pennsylvania caucus, I mentioned a Republican calculation that 15% of white voters would never vote for a Black man. Exit polls gave circumstantial confirmation.

Then came reports earlier this week of Obama canvassers confronting racists in the streets and on the phone.

Last night, more than half of West Virginia’s 95% white voters said that they wouldn’t be happy if Obama got the nomination. A shockingly large number say they would vote for McCain if he got the nomination.

Democrats for both Obama and Hillary insist that this is a temporary condition, that once the rancor of the primaries is over, all hatchets will be buried. Obama, for his part, has ignored the white-baiting and did almost no campaigning in West Virginia.

But Earl Ofari Hutchinson notes that where Obama picked up white voters, the states aren’t even in play. He calls an Obama candidacy “the Democrat’s gamble”.

Is there a racist gap? And if so, can Obama overcome it?

posted by @ 6:22 am | 7 Comments

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Roberto Lovato on the ICE Raids Nationwide + Sean Bell II In Inglewood

Roberto Lovato’s new piece on ICE’s crackdowns speaks specifically to Georgia, but also contextualizes what’s been happening around the country, including here in the Bay Area (see below)::

Mancha and the younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white–and black–children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos’ subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow. Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants.

…

In fact, the surge in Latino migration (the Southeast is home to the fastest-growing Latino population in the United States) is moving many of the institutions and actors responsible for enforcing Jim Crow to resurrect and reconfigure themselves in line with new demographics. Along with the almost daily arrests, raids and home invasions by federal, state and other authorities, newly resurgent civilian groups like the Ku Klux Klan, in addition to more than 144 new “nativist extremist” groups and 300 anti-immigrant organizations born in the past three years, mostly based in the South, are harassing immigrants as a way to grow their ranks.

The whole piece is here.

Davey D pointed out this incident on Sunday in Los Angeles with eerie parallels to the Sean Bell’s murder. (Update here.)

The long hot summer hasn’t even begun…

posted by @ 2:35 pm | 2 Comments

Monday, May 12th, 2008

ICE Raids On Berkeley And Oakland Schools


OAKLAND, CA – May 6, 2008 – Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums joined unions and community groups at Stonehurst Elementary School after agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed up earlier in the morning. Dellums and others protested the ICE activity in Oakland, which is a sanctuary city, just days after marches took place across the country for immigrants’ rights. Dellums talked with concerned parents, as worried children left school at the end of the day. Photos and Caption By David Bacon.

The political campaigns may have become a cartoon, but real issues are still exploding in the streets.

This past week, ICE sent agents to elementary schools in Oakland, shocking and scaring students, parents, teachers, and city officials. Parents reported that the agents intimidated students by patrolling outside the school after being denied entry at Stonehurst Elementary. ICE followed up with arrests of parents at their homes in Oakland and Berkeley.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Berkeley schools superintendent Bill Huyet quickly promised to protect students from such raids. Berkeley schools also offered escorts for worried parents and students.

Both cities–and San Francisco–are sanctuary cities for immigrants.

Parents, students, and immigrant advocates launched protests last week against the raids. In the past, ICE raids have often targeted workplaces. For many documented and undocumented immigrants, these ICE school raids introduce another level of fear and provocation.

ICE raids have often ripped young children from their parents and last week’s were no exception. One lawyer advocate reported being denied access to counsel a couple who had been arrested and detained. She ended up caring for that couple’s young child.

With the immigration debate sidelined for the duration of this presidential term, how will the presidential candidates address the issue in January? Are these kinds of raids throughout the summer the ICE bureaucrats’ way of forcing the issue sooner?

posted by @ 7:11 am | 0 Comments

Friday, May 9th, 2008

When The Campaign Becomes A Cartoon…

…the cartoons are becoming of the campaign. Certainly beats 99% of the coverage…

posted by @ 7:02 am | 0 Comments



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