Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[For those who think that the Internet isn't a place where real
activism happens, read this. Then read "A Digital
Movement: Demos are Fine, but We Need Information" by Barbra Bearden of
Peace Action (Sep 19, 2007) here:
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070917/068782.html

Then decide if it's worth actually learning how to use the tool
skillfully, efficiently, and effectively. You'll need to know
this the day The Man decides to shut down all the dummy net
users on the so-called left who need Mr. Mom to wipe their ass just
so they can bring up their IE, much less exchange e-mail
reliably. SECURE communications and information exchange is essential,
but while the Revolution will be digitized, it won't be point and
click, and it might not even be broadband. When the shit hits the fan,
it might well be laptops, anonymous land line phone booths and plain old
text.

The revolution won't be funded by George Soros, it won't be provided
"free" on yahoo, hotmail or YouT00b, boob. MoveAlong.org and all
the other fat "activist" groups, with their perpetual multimedia
funding pleas, won't be anywhere around. The people who will be are
those who know what goes on under the hood. -NYTr]

Counterpunch - Sep 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/modiano09202007.html

Jim Crow's Children

The Jena 6, Shaquanda Cotton, and Blog Power

By CHARLES MODIANO

Did you hear the good news on "The Jena 6"? The adult conviction and
potential 22 year sentence of Mychal Bell has been overturned. This
comes less than one week before widespread protests scheduled for this
Thursday in Jena, Louisiana. Since this case and the fate of the other
five boys are a looooong way from being resolved mass protests will
continue as planned.

The development of Jena story is only part of a much larger "Cyber
Rights Movement" that has been gaining greater ground in America in
2007. Let's call it "BLOG POWER"! It goes a little something like this:
yet another African-American teenager falls victim to Jim Crow-like
criminal injustice; the injustice is covered in some local newspaper;
national mainstream media completely ignores story; story spreads like
wildfire across hundreds of predominantly African-American blogs;
national media still ignores it; bloggers still blog; national media
keeps ignoring; bloggers keep blogging on irresponsible national media;
one national mainstream outlet might pick up story; bloggers keep
blogging; other embarrassed national outlets might pick up story;
bloggers keep blogging; finally, previously voiceless activists start
to receive national media attention; bloggers keep blogging; more
well-known activists such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are part of
planned widespread national march; bloggers keep blogging; just days
prior to the scheduled protest the charges against the young teenager
have been reduced or thrown out. While there exist many examples of
BLOG POWER, perhaps the greatest two in 2007 involve "The Jena 6" and
Shaquanda Cotton. But before we examine what they represent, some
context might be necessary.

JIM CROW'S CHILDREN

More than 40 years ago it took an unrelenting civil rights campaign and
appalling television images of government abuse to wake up the wider
and whiter nation from its slumber about the terrorism of the Jim Crow
South. But something not-so-funny happened on the way to the freedom
march. Jim Crow never really went away ­ like Madonna, he only
reinvented himself. While Jim Crow has produced various offspring (see
separate schools, health care, and employment access), Mr. Crow's two
most successful children are America's criminal justice and juvenile
justice systems. As the 1960s came to an end, a whole new set of laws
were enacted in the 1970s and 1980s at a time when the term "gangsta
rap" didn't even exist as a political scapegoat. As politicians became
savvier, and policies became slicker, the signs of Jim Crow became
subtler. Gone were the likes of George Wallace who proudly and
unapologetically defended "the good ole days", and in came the likes of
Trent Lott who only publicly reminisced about it at birthday parties.
Political slogans such as "segregation forever" were buried forever as
new mantras like "tough on crime" came into vogue. Brand new mandatory
minimum sentencing laws for NON-VIOLENT drug offenders hand-cuffed
judges and turned prisons from places that housed violent criminals
into places that CREATED them. With the proliferation of private
prisons in the 1970s, the term "non-violence" went from a protest
strategy built on gaining rights, to a prison-building buzzword built
on denying them. By the 1980s separate water fountains were officially
replaced with drastic disparities in punishment between crack and
cocaine. By the 1990's mayors in every depressed rural area in America
were begging for a new prison as their economic-development strategy.
When the 21st century came around, a nation that was once outraged at
images of young children being hosed by water and bitten by dogs became
fully comfortable with the more tastefully oppressive-images of kids
walking right out of performance-reducing schools and right into
profit-producing prisons.

As a result, America's prisons have grown SIX-FOLD in a 30 year span
after relative stability the PREVIOUS 50 YEARS. Of course, this
completely dwarfs all other industrialized countries in the world. This
statistic, in and of itself, would be cause for national crisis and
wholesale prison reform in any other country. But the majority of new
prisoners are not just non-violent, they are non-white. And if there is
one subject that white Americans have collectively and historically
been in denial about: it is about its own institutional racism (for
more see The Absurdity and Consistency of White Denial by Tim Wise).
Whether in 1776, 1896, the 1960s, or 2007. But while Jim Crow at least
had the decency to put his race cards on the table, his children have
not been so kind. Politicians want no part of prison reform for fear of
being accused of "coddling criminals", and most white Americans have
little outrage because it hasn't been their children being locked up.
Even the best of anti-racist movements have failed in fighting the
terror that is our criminal and juvenile justice systems. There are
perfect foils or evil faces attached to Jim Crow's offspring. Martin
Luther King had Bull Conner, FDR had Adolf, and George Bush didn't even
need the right "evil guy" to garner public support. But when it comes
to prison reform the collective white non-response for the last 30
years has essentially been "Data schmata. I'll believe in institutional
racism when you show me some actual lynchings!"

ENTER "THE JENA SIX"

Jena Six in Context: No actual lynchings occurred, but just about
everything else ­ rope included. Discussing the Jena Six is an exercise
in determining just where to start: subjects like "the white tree";
tree permission slips; hanging nooses; school boards wrist-slaps; DA
threats; "deadly" tennis shoes; and outrageous sentences are all worthy
of outrage in their isolation. Taken together, they form a coordinated
web of systemic Jim Crow terrorism that even the likes of Rush Limbaugh
can understand. It must be noted that "The Jena 6" is also happening in
a town that needed a federal emergency court order back in 2000 to stop
the abuse of children at the Jena Juvenile Justice Center, a facility
where local Judge Mark Doherty told NPR "treats juveniles as if they
walked on all fours."; and a facility, not surprisingly, that is owned
by one of America's largest and often scandal-plagued private prison
industries, Wackenhut Corrections (since renamed The GEO Group). And,
of course, Jena is located in Louisiana: the state whose majority white
population voted for David Duke for Governor back in 1991; the state
where a town's very first African-American mayor was executed
(immediately ruled a "suicide" of course) just two days before he was
set to take office way back in 1957 2007; and a state that is
essentially the prison-building capital of a country that is the
incarceration capital of the world.

Mainstream Media Coverage

This CounterPunch article reports early local grassroots resistance and
how the Lafayette public access TV show, "Community Defender," was the
first media outlet from outside Jena's immediate area to give coverage
of the case right after the arrests last December. For the next few
months the story was kept alive largely by the efforts of non-corporate
alternative media and, mostly, a vast network of predominantly
African-American bloggers (called "the Afrosphere" amongst other
names). By May you were still more likely to learn about "The Jena Six"
living in England than in America. While the BBC posted an article on
May 24th and aired a documentary on the case, it wasn't until July 1
that CNN investigated the story. And it wasn't until September where
most mainstream outlets were domestically and internationally shamed
into covering it. In this July 11 post, dna from Too Sense, one of
hundreds of bloggers on the case, critiques the initial CNN coverage
and the mainstream media's (non)coverage prior to July.

"the mainstream media has felt absolutely no obligation to cover
the story with appropriate depth. The New York Times has not covered it
at all. Neither has the Washington Post, whose vast website carry a
single AP article on the subject. MSNBC has twice the AP articles on
the subject the post does, which brings the grand total to two, with no
original coverage on their website. Fox seems to have found one more AP
article than MSNBC, with the extra one titled "White Students Removed
Over Nooses," the poor dears."

ENTER SHAQUANDA COTTON

Cotton in Context: If the Jena Six represent Jim Crow's son that is our
criminal injustice system, Shaquanda Cotton from Paris, Texas is the
daughter that representing our juvenile injustice. Unlike then-16 year
old Mychal Bell, Cotton could not be tried as an adult as she was only
14 when she shoved that fragile school hall monitor. Instead she was
merely sentenced to up to 7 years. The same judge sentenced a
14-year-old white girl to probation for burning down her family's
house. With absolutely no assistance from mainstream media and an
avalanche of BLOG POWER, Shaquanda Cotton was freed on the significant
date April 1st. This day kicks off "April Fool's Month" a time that 30
years from now will a subject for some "Race and Media" college
course's attempt to grasp American culture in 2007. You may recall
April as the month that our national media dissected the grave racial
injustices such as the job status of Don Imus, the trials and
tribulations of the Duke boys [1], and those oppressive hip-hop double
standards. While white rage seethed over issues like "why can't we all
use the 'N-word' while that darn Snoop Dogg gets to run amok", you may
have missed some other April news like:

DNA evidence exonerated James Giles after serving 25 years;

Jerry Miller was also exonerated after serving only 24 years
(Miller marked the 200th person exonerated by DNA evidence) [2];

and Billie Ray Johnson won his civil trial after being racially
mocked, knocked unconscious, and left for dead by four white men none
of whom received more than 60 days of jail time.

And for those wondering, yes, it was over 50 years ago that Ralph
Ellison authored "The Invisible Man".

Cotton Media Coverage

The story -- first exposed March 12 by Howard Witt of the Chicago
Tribune (note: Witt was also reported "Jena 6" in May)-- led to an
unprecedented blogging blitz. In a follow-up article, Letter from
Cyberspace, Witt explains:

"every once in a blue moon, you write something that literally
explodes across the Internet in ways no one could predict. That has now
happened with a story I wrote nearly two weeks ago If you had Googled
Shaquanda Cotton, the day before the story was published, you would
have gotten zero results. On Friday afternoon, there were more than
21,000 hits. The story has been picked up on more than 200 blogs around
the country, many of them concerned with African-American affairs. It
has generated thousands of postings to Internet message boards And now
the story has jumped across the ethernet into the physical world:
Dozens of talk-radio stations across the nation were buzzing about
Shaquanda last week, protests on her behalf were held in Paris, a
petition- and letter-drive aimed at Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the judge
in the case, Chuck Superville, is underway, and civil rights leaders
from the NAACP and the ACLU to the Rev. Al Sharpton are weighing
whether to get involved. I've written thousands of stories for the
Tribune over the last 25 years, from around the nation and across the
world, and I've never seen a reaction like this before."

Perhaps, Mr. Witt has never seen such a reaction in part because of the
relative newness of BLOG POWER. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of
the Cotton story was the virtual shut-out by the national mainstream
media [3]. If you were to do another google search today, Ms. Cotton
would receive more than 50,000 entries -- almost exclusively from
alternative media and bloggers. However, a CNN website search only
reveals quality links on cotton bedding. Want a good deal on "400
Thread Count All Cotton Sateen Sheet Sets"? Our national media will be
there for you. Want to expose institutional racism within our juvenile
justice system? BLOG POWER! In his Cyberspace article Witt would go on
to write:

"But what's particularly interesting to me has been the vehemence,
and what it may tell us about the powerful new Internet communications
tools we all now have at our fingertips but don't yet fully comprehend.
I had no idea, for example, of the extent of the African-American
blogging world out there and its collective powers of dissemination.
But now, after reading thousands of anguished, thoughtful comments
posted on these blogs reflecting on issues of persistent racial
discrimination in the nation's schools and courtrooms, what's clear to
me is that there's a new, "virtual" civil rights movement out there on
the Internet that can reach more people in a few hours than all the
protest marches, sit-ins and boycotts of the 1950s and 60s put
together."

This powerful observation is one that hundreds of other bloggers have
also already made. In this context, it should be noted that reminiscent
of this week's dismissal of Mychal Bell's charge, Cotton was released
exactly one day before Sharpton and others had planned a widespread
protest. This suggests that protest marches ain't dead yet, but have
just been heavily augmented as part of a multi-pronged strategy toward
achieving justice. A collaboration between new school blogging and
old-school marching will allow thousands to "get on the bus" and get
over to Jena, Louisiana this Thursday.

BLOG POWER and THE CYBER RIGHTS MOVEMENT

One must wonder if without the aid of the internet: would "The Jena 6"
ever made national mainstream news?; would Shaquanda Cotton still be
locked up?; or even, would we have experienced the meteoric increase in
profit-inducing prisoners over the last 30 years? And what about all
the other Bell's and Cotton's who never received a protest march in
their name. Is it because we simply don't know their stories? Witt
reports that thousands of juvenile cases in Texas are currently being
reviewed "as part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued
system". While this is encouraging news, what will happen in Louisiana
and the other 48 states? In 1964, grotesque television images helped
coalesce just barely enough national support to get President Johnson
to sign a new "Civil Rights Act" in the face of vitriolic
segregationists. Is it possible for BLOG POWER to wake up America to
deal with Jim Crow's children and get a "Criminal Justice Reform Act"
signed at a juncture in American history that boasts a rise in hate
groups?

While such a suggestion may only be a pipe dream, BLOG POWER is not
quietly hoping for Senators, governors, and other elected officials to
do their job, nor is it patiently waiting for Tim Russert, Chris
Matthews, or Joe Scarbarough to determine what is newsworthy. BLOG
POWER is a place that demands an end to mainstream media's insidious
practice of "racism-by-omission". It is a "cyber rights movement" that
won't stop until widespread white denial is widely denied. It is a new
virtual democracy at work and a voice for the voiceless. But perhaps
the greatest contribution that a handful of committed local journalists
and thousands of committed bloggers can make is not its ability to show
that Jim Crow has returned, but only to demonstrate that he has never
really left.

End Notes

[1] Of course, what happened to the Duke Lacrosse players is an
injustice. However, it is important to note that case was NOT symbolic
of racial and economic discrimination in our justice system. In and of
itself and given the case's sensational backdrop, there is nothing
wrong with the media coverage of their tribulations, but such coverage
COUPLED with the virtual absence of any real mainstream coverage of
exponentially worse AND symbolic criminal justice travesties detailed
in point is a complete slap in the face to the suffering of Shaquanda
Cotton, James Giles, Jerry Miller, and Billie Ray Johnson. Perhaps the
worst effect of "racism-by-omission" in media coverage is it completely
distorts the viewers understanding of racism embedded in the criminal
justice system. Ironically, one of the few people to get it right was
lacrosse player Reade Seligman when he stated: "This entire experience
has opened my eyes up to a tragic world of injustice I never knew
existed. If police officers and a district attorney can systematically
railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't imagine
what they'd do to people who do not have the resources to defend
themselves. ... all of us need to take a step back from this case and
learn from it." Good luck to Mr. Seligman who started his first
semester at Brown last week to become criminal lawyer.

[2] One may ask the legitimate question if these African-American DNA
exoneree examples of racial bias or just criminal justice failures as
we can all point to individual white defendants who have been wronged.
A look at The Innocence Projects Report "200 Exonerated: Too Many
Wrongfully Convicted" will answer this question and show that black
defendant are much more statistically likely (proportionate to racial
incarceration rates) to be the victims of such system failures. See:
http://www.innocenceproject.org/200/ip_200.pdf

[3] Cotton received a couple of token website articles and TV segments
on the day that she was RELEASED.

[Charles Modiano writes for the new sports media watch website
COSELLOUT" at http://www.cosellout.com and can be reached at:
."]

*