[Peace-discuss] N-G: Jena Six volunteer to be part of Unity March

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

Jena Six volunteer to be part of Unity March
By Paul Wood

Friday October 12, 2007

CHAMPAIGN – An investigator on the racially charged Jena Six case in  
Lousiana will be here this weekend as part of C-U Citizens for Peace  
and Justice's Unity March.

A retired union organizer and part-time investigator for the Chicago  
public defenders' office, Terry Davis served as an investigator on the  
Mychal Bell legal team for three weeks and expects to go back in  
November.

Davis, whose visit is co-sponsored by the Urban League of Champaign  
County, will be at the Urban League at 314 S. Neil St., C, at 7 p.m.  
today.

She will also be present for the Unity March at noon Saturday.

That march starts from two points – the front of the Champaign County  
Courthouse in Urbana and West Side Park in Champaign.

The two groups will meet at University Avenue and Wright Street, then  
march north to Douglass Park, 512 E. Grove St., C.

The Jena Six are six black teenagers charged with beating a white  
teenager in Jena, La., in December 2006 after racially charged  
incidents there.

The six were initially charged with attempted second-degree murder and  
conspiracy to commit second-degree murder.

"I went down there because it sounded to me like the kids were not  
given a fair chance by the legal system – and I didn't change my mind,"  
Davis said Thursday.

Bell, the only member of the "Jena Six" to be tried so far, has had his  
convictions set aside on appeal on the grounds that he should have been  
tried as a juvenile.

Bell was released on bail Sept. 27.

"In reading the transcript of Mychal Bell's first trial, not a single  
witness was presented for him; it was clear that the judge and district  
attorney were pretty openly assisting each other," Davis said.

Davis said she was dismayed by the attitudes she encountered in  
Louisiana.

"I hadn't realized probably how difficult it would be in Jena, the  
social pressure. I don't think the good people of Jena see themselves  
as racist, most of them ... they don't perceive it," she said.

But institutionalized racism is not limited to Southern states, Davis  
said.

"Statistics show that minority kids are given much harder discipline in  
school, and it's pretty well-established that the penalties for crack  
cocaine (sales and possession) are worse than for powder cocaine. A lot  
of these things are systemic," she said.

"Here in Illinois, we incarcerate huge numbers of minorities."

An appreciation dinner honoring Champaign County Board member Catherine  
Hogue, D-Champaign, and labor organizer Robert Wahlfeldt will follow  
the march at 3:30 p.m.
  Find this article at:
   
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/2007/10/12/ 
jena_six_volunteerto_be_part_of_event
JAN Kruse
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