[Crossposted from Zuky.]

When I stopped blogging not too long ago, the Jena Six case was one reason among many that I decided to quit. I was disheartened a little, even as the petition kept growing and the images were spreading. I was worried that the case wasn't sexy enough, and I was afraid to do more work because it seemed like my work among those I considered my peers wasn't honored. If I casually did something reckless or made myself scarce from a project, it eventually got done. I felt like one of those armchair revolutionaries, obsolete, and I wanted to celebrate finishing my first year of law school, but I couldn't. I wanted to run down to Jena and play Perry Mason after a tan and a sex change, but I couldn't. At the same time, I felt knots in my stomach because of how late the U.S. seemed to pick up the case in its own backyard.

I first got a Chicago Tribune article from Shawn Williams sometime in May, and I posted something a few days later. But when I looked for coverage, I found more information abroad from BBC, the New Zealand Herald, and eventually Le Monde in France (a link that appeared on my blog that I cannot retrieve now) than I found in America where the case was taking place. (Though my hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun, did surprise me by picking it up on its wire early — likely because we've had our own racial unrest issues in our amorphous Mason-Dixon state.) I worried heavily that people wouldn't care because our media didn't care; people wouldn't care because they'd think they're criminals and criminals are thrown to the wolves; people wouldn't care because it's merely a pet issue that race conscious people indulge in so they can cock their berets to the side later and say, "Yeah, I tapped that."

My issues with the Jena Six are similar to the issues I had with the Shaquanda Cotton case. Both cases involved young black Americans who reacted to an institution's indifference with physical retaliation. (If you believe the "noose incident" build-up idea, as I do, you understand this sentence.) Both cases resulted in long and amorphous punishments that placed ridiculous standards of criminality and punishment on young men and women. (For example, in the Shaquanda Cotton case, her stay at the youth correction facility after one year was prolonged because "contraband" was found in her quarters — more than required pairs of socks and a styrofoam cup. In the Jena Six, the charge of "battery" was amplified to "assault with a deadly weapon" or "aggravated battery" — depending on your jurisdiction — because the fighters were wearing shoes.) Both cases left little to the imagination about the purposes of these sentences — they wanted to teach a lesson. Not to the students, but to the students' local communities as well — any step out of line will be your last step. In both cases, the internet galvanized (and still galvanizes) a larger community — the largest jury, perhaps, since the ones formed in Ancient Athens — and it established a different standard of review to which the criminal justice system reluctantly yields: the verdicts handed down by public opinion and outrage.

However, the public's interest in this case should be manifold. Kai (bless him!) has given a foundation for dialogue about where to go from here:

The good news is that we — meaning, our little corner of blogland — are presently sitting on a piece of heavy political artillery: our petition addressed to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which has now gathered almost 400,000 signatures and is still going strong as ever. I've been corresponding closely with Tom (who posted and is maintaining the petition in the face of near-constant racist spam attacks) about what to do with this hefty list of names. We're planning on launching a simple website dedicated to the petition and Jena 6 activism, a place which activists and journalists can google to find out what's going on. We're planning on putting together a press release about the petition (in response to interest from the media) and a coalition-building memo seeking collaboration and participation from all interested parties. We're looking for help, both in terms of ideas and execution.

On the heels of Shaquanda Cotton being "freed" from the confines of the Texas Youth Commission, steps towards reform of the entire system (reported by Eddie Griffin here) were in the works. Cases like those of Cotton, the Jena Six, and similar cases stand to benefit greatly from state-based and federal-based legal activism and lobbying for fair sentencing. A presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion is rare, and the same presumptions trailing into the courtroom are legal fictions. We all need to play our part in eradicating these legal and political specters because our examples and exceptions have become bureaucratically generated rules for inadequately processing and grossly over-incarcerating deviant behaviors by young and old people of color, from the minuscule to the severe. (For example, mandatory minimum sentencing, anyone?) And to narrow the focus of our fight, Mychal Bell is still in jail. Out of true legal process? Out of absolute stubbornness that outsiders see fit to control a racially tainted and unjust legal proceeding? Out of fear? We have yet to see where this move will lead, but we can't slack up in our energy to follow through and to fight.

So what glimmer of understanding do I wish to impart? Very simply, the Jena Six is not a matter of guilt or innocence. If you think this case is about dancing and singing with Al Sharpton in Jena while wearing black, go home or bury some soap or something. If you view this case as a stepping stone for your own self-aggrandizement here there and everywhere, sit at home and think a few seconds before stepping back out again. If you think this case is only about freeing these young men, you're half-steppin'. If you view the Jena Six incident as uppity newcomer Negroes wanting to start some ruckus, then please go back to your guard post under your bridge. Denial about a person's criminal actions in a case is unwanted. This fight is not about what we can do to stop people from being criminals (though there's no denying that goal is important); it is about what happens when those people are already within the criminal justice system and cannot afford an OJ-style legal Dream Team. (Unlike the amorphous debates over God and hip-hop, Johnnie Cochran is dead — bless his soul.) Even if those six teenagers are guilty of participating in a school fight, the penalty of decades in prison does not fit the crime. If our mainstream media watchdogs are sleeping on the job or are too busy staring up Britney's skirt, we will lose people to our system routinely burying them under the jail in a matter of days because of insufficient representation, reckless convictions on circumstantial evidence, inadequate investigations, the wonders of a legal device known as a peremptory strike, and many other devices and systemic indifferences that ensure any perception of a person's equal justice under the law is gone. The Jena Six punishment scheme is steeped in racial animus, even if the average Jena citizen's colorblindness is kicking into stratospheric oblivion (wait for the Jena librarian's explanation). Even as the citizen of a neighboring Louisiana town shows his biases and hostility proudly. If an overall goal must be set that encompasses the legal concessions of the past few months, that goal is fair sentencing and legal processing for people of color. If a specific goal must be set that is targeted towards Robert Bailey, Jesse Baird, Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, and Theodore Shaw, it is a fair trial with adequate legal representation and sentencing proportionate to their offenses if it is determined that they are guilty.

Whatever direction you choose, remember to speak out about it before there's no one left to speak for you.