RE: Afrosphere press releases in the Jena Six Case
I am encouraging all of the AfroSpear and afrosphere bloggers who have talked to members of the press about this case to call those contacts and offer a statement for articles about this victory:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In response to the advocacy of AfroSpear and other bloggers, tens of thousands of Black marchers, the mainstream media and intervention by the governor of Louisiana, the district attorney in the Jena Six case has reduced the requested penalty from 22 years to 18 months in the prosecution of Mychal D. Bell.
1). “AfroSpear bloggers and our audiences will continue to assert our role as forceful advocates of equal justice for Blacks in the American justice system.”
2. “Although the charges against Mychal D. Bell have been reduced, it still is not equal justice when a Black student receives an eighteen month prison sentence while the white students are not penalized at all for their offenses.”
3). “We will continue to insist that ALL ADULT AND JUVENILE CHARGES AGAINST ALL 6 DEFENDANTS be dropped and foreclosed for the future, and that de jure and de facto segregation be ended at Jena High School.”
4). “This victory shows that Blacks armed with blogs can confront injustice and win. Our readers, those who marched to Jena, oppose unequal justice in Jena and everywhere such outrages occur.”
5). “We have to ask ourselves whether the final result in this criminal case is what it would have been if Mychal D. Bell were white. We know that it isn’t. Black young people in Jena should not go to jail while white students commit the same acts with impunity.”6). “This is still not equal justice, because white students who committed armed assault, and terroristic acts in this case still have not been charged at all.” (One white person confronted Black students with a firearm at a variety store, and white students hung three nooses on school grounds and were not criminally charged at all.)
Sincerely,
Francis L. Holland, Esq.
francislholland@yahoo.com
NOTE: The purpose of the Black Accused Support Groups is to publicize cases of unjust treatment of Blacks at the hands of legal systems while building on this advocacy to promote fundamental and systemic change, so that Blacks will, for the first time, be treated equally before the law.