Round-Up Oct 12, 2007

1. Jena Six — Bell Back in Custody
   Mychal Bell is back in custody after a probation hearing. Reportedly he was found to have violated the terms of an earlier probation, and is now sentenced to spend 18 months in juvenile detention for that earlier conviction. He is also reportedly to be retried for the fight with Barker, but as a juvenile this time.The participants in the probation hearing are reportedly under a gag order. So we don’t have enough information to determine whether this re-imprisonment is purely a tactic to continue the pattern of injustice against the Jena Six that began with the authorities winking at white students’ racial terror tactics, threats and violence, and mounted with wildly disproportionate charges for six (or seven) Black students.

   Mauffrey and Walters’ record in these cases justifies deep skepticism about their intent.

   Justice for the Jena Six is as important as it ever was. The same treatment that young white men would receive under equivalent circumstances, that would probably be something like justice.

   To address a certain point of view that I’m not linking below … It shouldn’t be necessary to remind anyone that a working justice system must protect the rights of people who have been accused of crimes. A working justice system must protect the rights of people who have been convicted of crimes. If we only care about the rights of people who haven’t had any contact with the system, then what we maintain is not a justice system at all.

   Posts I’ve seen on this development, from a variety of perspectives:

   Mychal Bell Sent Back to Jail at The Primary Contradiction.

   Wow: Jena 6 Defendant Mychael Bell Sentenced to Jail, at BlackPerspective.net.

   Mychal Bell is back behind bars, at All About Race.

   Jena 6? Boycott All Christmas Purchases Until the Week After Christmas, at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

   Unusual Punishment for Mychal Bell, at the Bakare Chronicles.

   Mychal Bell Back in Jail, at Too Sense.

   Mychal Bell’s Probation Rescinded, Bell Jailed, at The Unapologetic Mexican.

   Jena 6: A Judicial Lynching the Victim Has to Fund, at Ten Percent.

   UPDATE: Jena Vendetta, at Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

   UPDATE: Judge Mauffray’s odious revenge: jailing Mychal Bell at All About Race.

   UPDATE: By hook by crook at Having Read The Fine Print (via All About Race).

   UPDATE: Mychal Bell, Of Jena 6, Back In Jail, at WDSU News, New Orleans (via Having Read The Fine Print).

2. Brown FemiPower posted a long roundup of cases of Institutional violence against girls.
   I read this and I just … I had to leave this one as a placeholder until the end of the round-up, or I wouldn’t have been able to finish or post. The list just goes on and on.There are so many liberals and progressives around. We can do something about some of these cases, if we care to.

   Via Vox ex Machina.

3. Thinking Girl reacts to being made to read some kind of … material about “whether or not black judges and female judges could be impartial.”UPDATE: So, I’m kinda saying here, perhaps Judge Mauffray (see entry #1 above) might consent to teach a course in “Objectivity on the Bench”.
4. Kevin at Slant Truth 2.0 put up a series of political theory type posts from the old Slant Truth. I’m finding these really inspiring and calming to read.
   Transformative Politics, A Manifesto of Sorts (The Beginning)
   Transformative Politics, A Manifesto of Sorts (The Next Episode)
   Transformative Politics — A Brief Departure
   Transformative Politics — More Quotations (or Rigidity Means Death)
   The Common Elements of Oppression, by Suzanne Pharr
5. Equally inspiring and less calming is The White Liberal Conundrum, at Zuky.Apropos of Kai’s piece especially … I really want to thank Kai and everybody else around here who has been willing to teach and encourage me in … whatever it is that I’m doing. I really, really appreciate it.
6. A few months old, but if anything even more topical now, is 1933 Reichstag Fire: Prologue to 9-11, by Jim Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi) at A Radical Blackfoot. As you can guess from the title, it’s about excuses for seizing power.H/T to Eugene for telling me about A Radical Blackfoot.

   Also at A Radical Blackfoot, Revolutionary Consciousness as a Material and Motive Force.