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• Published by Roger Snyder

• Roger's Rumblings

[From Irregular Times: News Unfit for Print]

I’ve been following the “Jena 6″ issue for a few weeks now, and I haven’t posted on it because I believe the situation is more complicated than the way in which either “side” portrays it.

“Free the Jena 6″ is the slogan being bandied around by marchers and protest organizers, and there are explicit calls by organizers to for the legal system to respond by “immediately dropping the charges against all six young men.” But a kid was beaten hard enough to be knocked unconscious and with head injuries and lost vision in an eye for three weeks. That’s a violent attack carried out six-on-one. Free the Jena 6? No. Drop all charges? No. I’m disturbed by the lack of mention of the seriousness of the injury by protest groups.

On the other hand, these were six kids, and they were charged as adults. That’s not right. They were charged with attempted murder. That’s not proportionate. In the same town, a white kid threatened black kids with a gun, and when the black kids wrestled his gun away and walked away from the scene, who was charged? The black kids, for theft, not the white kid, for threatening the black kids with his gun. That sounds like a clear case of injustice to me.

I’m going to continue to read, and consider, and think about this, and I can’t agree with those who say the case of Jena is simple. It’s complicated. I don’t fit snugly onto either “side,” and I think there’s more territory to sit on than on one or the other “side,” and I won’t be pushed onto either one.

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