I remember Winnie

I remember Winnie
Author: Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair, Communist Party USA
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 05/08/04 00:00


Henry Winston, the former national chairman of the Communist Party USA, was a great leader of our party. I had the honor and privilege of working with him for over 30 years. He was a wonderful comrade, my teacher and a very dear friend. I will always remember Winnie.

This year is the 93rd anniversary of Henry Winston’s birth. He was born April 2, 1911, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Winston’s grandparents lived under slavery. Born and raised under the system of Jim Crow, Winnie grew up to become one of the finest Marxist-Leninist thinkers and organizers that the U.S. working class has ever produced.

At the age of 11 his family moved to Kansas City, Mo. Hard economic conditions forced him to drop out of high school after two years. This was the beginning of the Great Depression. Like so many others, he ended up finding the movement of the unemployed. He took part in great struggles against hunger and unemployment and the movement to defend the Scottsboro youths. He was active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the National Negro Congress.

At age 19, Winston joined the Young Communist League, where his remarkable leadership abilities made it possible for him to rise from the post of Ohio organizer to that of national administrative secretary in a relatively short time. During that period Winston joined the Communist Party. He ultimately was elected the CPUSA’s national chairman at the Party’s 18th Convention in 1966. He spent over 20 years as national chairman as part of a team with Gus Hall, the Party’s outstanding general secretary.

I first met Henry Winston in 1961 in Philadelphia. He had recently been released from federal prison. Winston was a victim of the infamous anticommunist Smith Act. He had been convicted along with 11 other leaders of the CPUSA (for thinking, as Gus Hall often would say) and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Their “crime” was basically being a leader of the Communist Party and advocating an end to war, racism, economic oppression and calling for a socialist USA. Like today under the Bush administration’s Patriot Act, the U.S. government then was trying to outlaw all dissent. Outlawing the Communist Party USA was the first step.



Winston and his comrades were political prisoners. By standing up for their rights, they were really upholding the highest principles of free speech and the right to advocate change,

including revolutionary change. They dared to stand up against the postwar anti-Soviet Cold War hysteria created by imperialism – and led by U.S. imperialism – in order to rationalize its drive for world domination.

They were real patriots and should have been treated like heroes for their great work on behalf of the working class and racially oppressed. Instead they were criminalized; they were hounded and persecuted. But through it all they consistently upheld the banner of the right to dissent, of peace, economic and social justice and freedom for all. They refused to join the anti-Soviet chorus of cold warriors who were acting on behalf of imperialism and its military-industrial complex. They were anti-imperialist and believed in proletarian internationalism and socialism. That was their “crime.”

From my time as a youth leader, I cherish the times I had with Winnie. To meet Henry Winston and to be a part of the Party headed by him and Gus Hall was a great experience for young revolutionaries. The Party was full of hundreds of seasoned working-class people of all races and nationalities, men and women who shared with us a wealth of knowledge. Henry Winston was the best. It could be said that he never left the youth movement because he gave his heart and soul to the education of the younger activists. We all loved him for that.

Winston’s organizational and political skills were legendary. I witnessed his mastery of the politics of organization every day for many decades. Having been a Communist political prisoner himself, Winston played a superb leadership role in the international fight for Angela Davis’ freedom. He truly understood the fight against racism, the need for unity and how to build broad, mass movements.

He played an outstanding pioneering role in the U.S. fight to free Nelson Mandela and in solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. He led the Party’s work in the anti-apartheid struggle. His basic thinking helped make the U.S. movement in solidarity with Southern Africa a majority movement. He was the first in the U.S. to call for the boycott of the Republic of South Africa under the slogan of “isolate the racists.” Winston was in close contact with and highly respected by many of the top leaders of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress.

Winston was a master polemicist. The African Communist, the SACP publication, described Winston’s seminal work, “Strategy for a Black Agenda” (International Publishers, 1973), as a “fighting book, written at white heat by someone who is by no means an academic onlooker but a front-line participant in a main battlefield against imperialism.” They characterized the book as “an indispensable weapon for every fighter for the liberation of Africa and her sons and daughters in the USA and Africa.”

This book was soon followed by another, titled “Class, Race and Black Liberation” (International Publishers, 1977). He also delivered many remarkable reports and speeches. Many were made into pamphlets.

Winnie was a special victim of the racism in the U.S. prison system. The African American Communists convicted under the Smith Act were treated more harshly then the others. While serving time in prison, Winston developed a brain tumor. The prison authorities refused his demands for treatment. Winston suffered through weeks of inadequate care and excruciating headaches. Because he was denied proper medical treatment, Winston ultimately lost his sight.

He needed to be released from prison and put under the care of a specialist. The extraordinary lawyer for the Communist Party, John Abt, sprang into action. Abt led the campaign to win an early medical release for Winston. That effort eventually led to President John F. Kennedy granting Winston such a release in 1960.

When Winston was released he uttered these memorable words, “They have robbed me of my sight, but not my vision.”

Winston was quickly put under the care of an able U.S. eye specialist and then went to the USSR for emergency treatment. By that time, however, they were only able to save a small portion of his sight.

Eventually Winston became totally blind. But through all of that, Winnie found the means to be an active, vibrant Communist leader. In that regard Fern Winston, his wife and comrade who recently passed away, was indispensable, as were the various comrades who traveled with Winnie and helped him live an active life. I never saw it firsthand, but a very reliable source told me recently that Winnie loved to go bowling and did well at it. Everyone who knew him admired his great courage and steadfastness.

Despite having gone through what he had, Winston showed no bitterness. He was warm, kind and confident. He had a good sense of humor and a vast knowledge of history, politics and Marxist-Leninist theory. He was fiercely dedicated to the cause of the working class and all oppressed people, a militant foe of all forms of injustice. He was a highly skilled and experienced Party leader who had a great deal of confidence in his people and his class.

That idea of Winnie’s vision became a guide to life for all of us. His vision was the vision of a better world that tens of millions of people all over the world today believe is possible. Henry Winston died on Dec. 12, 1986.

We can move closer to Winston’s vision if we are able to defeat the Bush administration and their policies at the polls this November. Winnie would have been very happy to see that happen.

I will always remember Winnie for his enormous humanism and compassion. He headed what you could call the Party’s “sick and shut-in committee.” If someone was ever ailing for more than a day or so, he or she could expect a call from Winston. I also remember the wonderful barbecue picnics out at his country house and the great times sharing a delicious meal with him and Fern at their apartment in East Harlem.

I remember his great love for music and culture and the great camaraderie between him and Gus Hall, Jim Jackson, William L. Patterson, Ted Bassett, Vic Perlo, John Pittman, and Helen and Carl Winter and other stalwarts. I will never forget the great stories he’d tell and that wonderful smile and infectious sense of humor. But above all, I will remember most his great dignity and confidence as an African American Communist and worker.

Jarvis Tyner is executive vice-chair of the Communist Party USA. He can be reached at jtyner@cpusa.org.

*(see related article below)


Fight racism for unity and progress

By Henry Winston

The giant industrial monopolies, the big banks and insurance companies, the financiers and landowners, all spawn racism and use it as one of their chief class weapons to maintain and defend their regime of exploitation and oppression, of enmity among peoples, of imperialist wars of aggression.

It follows that all democratic and antimonopoly forces, with the working class and Black liberation movement in the van, can effectively defend the interests of the vast majority of people only when they actively further the struggle against racism. This is an essential precondition for the development of a fighting alliance which will unite all democratic and antimonopoly forces in the country.

Marx wrote long ago that “labor in a white skin can never be free so long as labor in the black skin is branded.” This profound observation points up the fact that racism is the consciously employed weapon of the white imperialist oppressors, who use it to create division in the ranks of the working class. And Marx correctly suggests that white workers must take the lead in the struggle against racism. This is the path which can lead to unity of Black and white workers in struggle, which can achieve Black equality and a real improvement in the conditions of all workers.

The conclusion which Communists must draw with respect to this most important question is that it is mere chatter to talk about trade union consciousness developing into class consciousness and advancing to socialist consciousness if there does not exist a conscious, unending struggle against racism.

No worker can be said to be class conscious who does not recognize the community of interests of all workers as a class. And for white workers this means, first of all, recognition of the community of their interests with those of Black workers and therefore of the need to fight for the rights of Black workers.

– From a lecture to a seminar of Communist Party organizers in 1971.

Madam C.J. Walker's fortune had its roots in hair products

As we enter Black History Month, it is welcome to see the Indianapolis Star celebrating Madam C.J. Walker. Madam Walker left an enduring legacy of Black entrepreneurship that is one stream, and an important stream, of the African-American experience in the United States.

However, too often the celebration of Black History Month celebrates themes of African American's "pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps" rather than themes of protest and struggle which are much influential overall to the experience of Black folks and working people in the United States.

The story provided to the reader by the IndyStar gave the only pieces of information that the Star felt would be important to know, and which essentially send the message "You think you have it rough, look what she overcame." Of course, there is another anti-working class message: "She got to be a millionaire starting with nothing and against tremendous odds. See what hard work and commitment to capitalism gets you?"

What do we find out from the Indy Star:

• daughter of former slaves
• parents died when she was 7
• husband died when she was 20, leaving her with a 2-year-old daughter
• perfected a formula for straightening the hair of black women (not sure if this is correct)
• employed 20,000 agents
• a self-made millionaire

Ms. Walker was successful in capitalist terms and helped many people to have a better life, even while there was an element of exploitation involved in her success due to the dynamics of capitalism. She is to be celebrated for her ability to overcome so much at an extremely difficult time in terms of people's attitudes toward Black people in general, and toward women.

It must be remembered that Ms. Walker would never have had an opportunity to become an entrepreneur without the tireless work of those who struggled against slavery including Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.

The celebration of capitalism that the IndyStar.com article implies rings hollow today when capitalism as an economic structure is in crisis and working people, and in particular Black and other people of color, struggle to survive.

A woman from the same time period as Ms. Walker but who took a very different path is Mary McLeod Bethune. Borth in 1875, Ms. Bethune was an educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for Black students in Florida, the Bethune-Cookman University, and for being an advisor to Franklin D. roosevelt.




Like Ms. Walker, Ms. Bethune was born to parents who had been slaves.

[S]he took an early interest in her own education. With the help of benefactors, Bethune attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for black girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for black boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for black students, and rivaled those of white schools. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated black people could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time.

Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor."^[1] Her home in Daytona Beach is a National Historic Landmark,^[2] her house in Washington, D.C. in Logan Circle is preserved by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site,^[3] and a sculpture of her is located in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.^[4]

-- Wikipedia

Bethune was the Florida Chapter chair of the National Association of Colored Women from 1917-1925, during which time she focused on voter registration, and came into conflict with the KKK.

Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York City in 1935, bringing together 28 different organizations to form a council to facilitate the improvement of the quality of life for women and their communities.

About the organization, Bethune stated: "It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and beastly in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy."

Bethune was a fighter for African-Americans as a nationality and as members of the working class. As she said:

There can be no divided democracy, no class government, no half-free county, under the constitution. Therefore, there can be no discrimination, no segregation, no separation of some citizens from the rights which belong to all... We are on our way. But these are frontiers which we must conquer... We must gain full equality in education ...in the franchise... in economic opportunity, and full equality in the abundance of life.

The struggles that Ms. Bethune championed remain with us today. It is good to remember the central role of struggle for equality and economic justice that is central to the experience of African Americans when we consider the rich history and the awesome promise of our community.

Hatred Of Slavery Drove Darwin Ideas

By Mike Collett-White
Reuters
Jan 23, 2009
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSLD55838020090123

LONDON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - A new book on Charles Darwin says a passionate hatred of slavery was fundamental to his theory of evolution, which challenged the assumption held by many at the time that blacks and whites were separate species.

Jena LA Demonstration

Jena Today's Demonstration: Tens of thousands take to the streets

From the article:

"School authorities dismissed the noose episode as a "childish prank",
prompting the boys who would later become known as the Jena Six to
stage a much bigger protest under the tree."

Racist 'pranks' are also a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
Hangman's Nooses are a 'hate crime'. The DA in Jena should be tried under
the 'hate crime' statutes. The historic use of lynching against Balck
People by the United States Governments and extra-legal organization --
like the KK -- is well know and was made famous by the song 'Strange
Fruit'. (See Below article.)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2984795.ece

Sharpton leads huge protest in Louisiana
By Andrew Gumbel
Published: 21 September 2007
It felt like a throwback to the heyday of the 1960s Civil Rights
Movement. In the early hours of yesterday morning, hundreds of cars, buses
and trucks carrying students, black activists and outraged citizens from
halfway across the United States converged on the tiny town of Jena,
deep in the Louisiana backwoods, to demand justice for six black
teenagers put through the legal wringer over a racially tinged schoolyard
fight.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the town, whose
population numbers just over 3,000, to demand the immediate release of one
of the boys, who has been in prison for almost a year, and exoneration
for the other five, who face charges of attempted murder after they
punched a white kid in the face and knocked him out. The kid was up and
about again in a couple of hours.
The case of the "Jena Six" has cast a spotlight on the latent racism of
the Deep South and sparked indignation like nothing since a black man
was picked up at random, tied to the back of a car and dragged to death
by three white men in Jasper, Texas, nine years ago.
To the protesters who converged on Jena yesterday from as far afield as
Detroit and Los Angeles, it felt like a re-enactment of the Freedom
Rides of the early 1960s in which civil rights campaigners, both black
and white, descended on Washington to demand an end to segregation.
Headline speakers at the rally included two former presidential candidates,
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The local authorities declared a state of emergency and asked hundreds
of armed police to come to Jena to maintain order. When the police
slowed down the incoming traffic, hundreds of protesters ? all of them
dressed in black ? simply left their vehicles and walked to the town.
A popular syndicated black radio host, Michael Baisden, has been
instrumental in rallying support for the cause with his broadcasts and an
energetic Internet campaign. He said:

"The protest in Jena is not an attack on white people but is against a
system that has failed us all. It is not about black and white, but
about what is wrong and what is right."
The trouble began a year ago, when a group of black students complained
about a so-called "white tree" on the yard of Jena High School and
chose to sit under it in protest. The next day, three nooses appeared on
the tree ? a clear reference to the lynch-mob anti-black hostility of
the Ku Klux Klan during the segregation era.
School authorities dismissed the noose episode as a "childish prank",
prompting the boys who would later become known as the Jena Six to stage
a much bigger protest under the tree.
The Jena district attorney, Reed Walters, then addressed an emergency
school assembly and warned the protesters that he could "take away your
lives with a stroke of my pen".
The atmosphere at Jena High then turned to pure poison. When one of the
Jena Six turned up at a mostly white party in December, he was punched
in the face, kicked and hit with beer bottles. Nobody was arrested or
disciplined for that attack. The next day, the six were confronted
outside a convenience store by a white assailant with a shotgun. The
assailant was not charged, but the boys. who successfully wrested the gun out
of his hands. were later charged with theft.
Two days after that the six turned on Justin Barker in the school yard.
The district attorney, used the full weight of the law charging them
with second-degree murder as an excuse to prosecute them as adults.
So far, just one of the six, Mychal Bell, has been prosecuted. Jailed
since last December ? he could not afford bail set at $90,000 (£45,000)
? Bell was convicted of aggravated assault in June and was due to be
sentenced yesterday ? hence the choice of date for the protest.
Last week, a federal appeals court threw out his conviction, saying he
should never have been tried as an adult, but the authorities in Jena
have not released him. The district attorney has not yet indicated if he
intends to take the appeal court ruling to a higher court.
Rev Sharpton, speaking from Jena yesterday, described the case as a
"raw disparity of justice".
=======
www.strangefruit.org
Americans look at other countries and deem them immoral for killing
their own people (Germany, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc.) The "ethnic
cleansing" referred to as lynching, took place in US history and is
overlooked by its citizens and history books.

From 1882 - 1998, 4743 murders by lynching occurred in the US 3446 were
African-American (72.7%)
Strange Fruit : A Poem
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Composer Robert Meerpole
Singer Billie Holiday
This email has been sent as a service by
Roland Sheppard
Visit my web site at: http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Thousands demonstrate in support of “Jena Six”
By Joe Kay21 September 2007
Back to screen version Send this link by email Email the author
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the rural Louisiana town of Jena on Thursday to protest the racist prosecution of six black high school students.
The six students face the possibility of over 20 years in prison after a fight that injured one white student, Justin Barker, last December. The incident followed months of racial tension that began when nooses were hung on a tree under which white students usually sat for lunch (the “white tree”). The nooses appeared a day after several black students sat under the tree.
The demonstrations were initially timed to coincide with the sentencing of Mychal Bell, who was found guilty by an all-white jury of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to do the same. His conviction was dismissed earlier this month, however, when a higher court ruled that Bell, who has been in prison since January, should not have been tried as an adult. Bell was 16 at the time of the attack.
District Attorney Reed Walters has pledged to appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court the decision requiring that Bell be tried as a juvenile. If this appeal fails, Bell’s case will be returned to a juvenile court, along with that of another of the “Jena Six,” Jesse Ray Beard. The other four—Robert Bailey, Jr., Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, and Theo Shaw—still face adult charges of second-degree battery and conspiracy.
As the large demonstration in Jena and more than two dozen smaller rallies across the country demonstrate, the case of the Jena Six has become the focus of outrage in the US and internationally over the patently unjust treatment of the young men. The protest is another sign—following mass demonstrations last year for immigrant rights and alongside broad popular opposition to the war in Iraq—of growing disquiet and discontent, which are barely registered in the media and can find no outlet in the parties and institutions of the political establishment.
An article in the Chicago Tribune put the number of demonstrators in Jena in the “tens of thousands,” with estimates as high as 50,000. Most of the demonstrators came by bus from across the country. “A seemingly endless convoy of buses from black colleges and black churches around the country jammed the two two-lane highways leading into the town square,” the Tribune reported, “where they dropped off their passengers in front of the courthouse.”
The size of the demonstration has taken the media and political establishment by surprise. It was organized largely through the Internet and by word-of-mouth.
The background to the case demonstrates the racist character of the prosecution. The events leading up to the arrest of the six students began on August 31, 2006, when a black student asked at a school function whether it was permissible for blacks to sit under the “white tree” during lunch. After being told by the vice principal that they could sit wherever they wanted, several black students decided to sit under the tree.
One day later, three nooses were found hanging from tree—a clear threat recalling the lynching of blacks in the South during the Jim Crow era.
The reaction of the school and the local district attorney, Walters, provoked outrage among the black students and population of Jena. The three students who were determined to have been behind the hanging of the nooses were given a three-day in-school suspension. Jena High School’s principal had recommended expulsion, but the board of education and the superintendent overruled him.
Black students protested the slap-on-the-wrist punishment for what amounted to a death threat by staging a protest and sitting together under the “white tree.” There were several incidents of fights between white and black students following the noose hanging.
An assembly was called to address the issue on September 6, 2001, at which Walters was invited to speak. At one point during his remarks, Walters, flanked by armed police officers, held up a pen, saying, “See this pen? I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.” Walters told the protestors to stop complaining about what he called an “innocent prank.”
In the ensuing weeks, several black students and their parents attempted to address the school board on the issue, but the board refused to place the question on its agenda. On November 1, the main school building was set on fire, in what was believed to have been an arson attack.
On December 1, Bailey, one of the Jena Six, and several of his friends sought entrance to a party that was attended mainly by whites. There was a fight between Bailey and his friends and a group of white men who were not students. When police came, according to Caseptla Bailey, Robert Bailey’s mother, they told her son and his friends to “get back on their side of town.”
The next day, Bailey was involved in another fight during which a white man pulled a gun. Bailey and his friends were able to wrest control of the gun. As a result they were charged with theft of a firearm.
It is within this context of escalating racist provocations, fueled by the actions of the school board and the district attorney, that the December 4 fight took place in the school auditorium. Eyewitnesses report that Justin Barker, a friend of the three students who admitted to hanging the nooses, was taunting Bailey about the fight a few days earlier. A fight ensued between Barker and the black students in which Barker suffered a concussion and other injuries, though he was well enough to attend a school function that evening.
The district attorney originally charged the Jena Six with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy. These charges were later reduced to attempted aggravated second-degree battery. The charge requires the use of a deadly weapon. Walters claimed that in kicking Barker, Bailey and the other black students employed the “deadly weapons” of the tennis shoes they were wearing.
In addition to the extraordinary charges, the six were given high bail amounts—over $100,000 for some.
Bell is the only student to face trial so far, and there were many irregularities in the conduct of the trial itself. The jury that was selected was all-white. Bell’s father has complained that the defense attorney, who is black, hardly put up a defense and did not call any witnesses, even though a coach at the school has said that Bell was not even involved in the fight. The defense attorney instead tried to pressure Bell to agree to a plea bargain and testify against the other students, which he refused to do.
The trial of the Jena Six demonstrates that in the United States, the stoking up of racial animosity and the violation of the civil rights of blacks is hardly a thing of the past. The democratic gains made by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s remain fragile, and by no means irreversible. Just three months ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that race cannot be considered in public school integration plans—an attack on the landmark 1954 decision against racial segregation, Brown v. Board of Education.
Notwithstanding the end of Jim Crow segregation, sections of the American ruling elite, most particularly those connected to the Republican Party, have promoted and cultivated right-wing forces steeped in racism. The promotion of racial antagonisms has a long history in the United States, and has been used to divide workers of different races, pitting them against each other.
After its massive defeat in the presidential elections of 1964, the Republican Party moved consciously to base itself on racist elements in the Southern states—a perspective embodied in Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.” This strategy has remained largely unchanged, if generally unspoken. As recently as 2002, then-Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott expressed regret that Strom Thurmond did not win the presidency in 1948, when he was running on a segregationist platform.
The Bush administration owes its victories in the 2000 and 2004 elections in no small part to discrimination against black voters in states such as Ohio and Florida. Behind the recent US attorney firing scandal lay an attempt to put in place attorneys who would facilitate such machinations and sanction the gutting of civil rights enforcement.
After remaining silent for months on the frame-up of the Jena Six, Bush was obliged to address the issue when he gave a Washington press conference on Thursday, even as the demonstrators were marching in Louisiana. Asked about his reaction to the case, Bush merely said that the “events in Louisiana... have saddened me.” Without indicating his attitude to the trial itself, Bush said, “The Justice Department and the FBI are monitoring the situation down there, and all of us in America want there to be fairness when it comes to justice.”
While the immediate circumstances behind the case of the Jena Six raise most prominently the role of race in American life, both the underlying cause of the injustice and the underlying source of the anger that has provoked mass protest are not fundamentally racial in character.
As the American ruling elite pursues an ever more reactionary and anti-democratic agenda, it will increasingly move to resort once again to racism as an ideological buttress for its rule. It is class interests that are driving the promotion of racial demagogy.
At the same time, the protest in Jena expressed oppositional sentiments building within American society that transcend the specific issues that the demonstration addressed. Mounting opposition to social inequality and war is fueling what will increasingly take the form of mass protest and social struggle.
The officially-sanctified leaders of the demonstration—Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and others—were largely bypassed in the initial plans for demonstrations against the prosecutions. Their role has been to direct the growing anger into the politically safe channels of the Democratic Party. On Thursday, Jackson announced that he was teaming up with Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee and William Jefferson to try to pressure the House Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation.
The issues raised in the Jena Six prosecutions cannot be resolved within the framework of the Democratic Party, which is entirely complicit in perpetuating the social conditions that underlie the resurgence of racism in the United States. The layer of black businessmen and entrepreneurs represented by figures such as Jackson is indifferent to the enormous social problems confronting workers of all races.
All charges against the Jena Six should be immediately dropped. Those who should be brought to justice are the individuals who orchestrated the racially motivated prosecution of the black students.
An end to racism and all forms of discrimination cannot be realized within the framework of a political and economic system based on ever-growing social inequality. It must be based on the development of an independent movement of the working class, uniting workers and youth of all races, religions and nationalities to fight for their common class interests in opposition to the capitalist ruling elite and its two-party system.

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Of 'White Trees', Black Boys and Jena, Louisiana [col. writ. 7/21/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal I you asked me two weeks ago if I've ever heard the name of a little town in Louisiana called 'Jena', I would've drawn a blank. Jena? Never heard of it. It made me think of the ill-fated Palestinian village called Janin, that Israel crushed into oblivion several years ago. I think the incumbent president's daughter has that name (with and additional 'n'). But, that's it. When a friend sent me several internet articles about recent events there, I was, quite frankly, flabbergasted. I was astonished to learn that today, in the first decade of the 21st century, in Jena High School, there is still a 'white tree', called that not because the leaves are white, but because it is a generous giver of shade, and only white students sit under it. In Sept. 2006, a young student named Kenneth Purvis asked the school principal for permission to sit under the 'white tree.' The principal answered that he could sit where he liked. So, they did. The next day, the 'white tree' was festooned with three nooses, in school colors. In the South (or the North, for that matter), nooses have one clear meaning -- they are threats of death. People naturally got riled up, angry, or scared. Jena's High School principal looked into the matter, found the three white students responsible, and recommended that they be expelled. The school superintendent felt otherwise, rescinded the expulsion, and instead recommended a 3 - day suspension. Speaking to the Chicago Tribune, the superintendent said, " Adolescents play pranks. I don't think it was a threat against anybody." (Perhaps he meant anybody important - or white) For Jena's Black community, this was but the latest slap in the face. Black students at the high school decided to resist by holding a sit-in under the 'white tree' to protest the light suspensions given to the 3 white noose-hangers. When word got out about the pending sit-in, the local DA came to a Jena school assembly, with several cops to threaten the students who dared to think they could do what people did some 40 years ago throughout the South (before the so-called 'New South'). He told them if they didn't stop making a fuss about this 'prank' he could be "your worst enemy." To make the point plain, he told the teen gathering, " I can take away your lives with a stroke of a pen." Several days later, a white Jena student, who reportedly made racist taunts, including calling Black students 'niggers', got knocked down, punched and kicked. The boy was taken to the hospital, treated and released. That very night, he was well enough to attend a public event. Within days six Black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were also immediately expelled. The 6 teens were given bails set from $70,000 to $139,000. Bail at these ranges could've just as easily been set at $1 million, for they were at rates that none of the local parents could afford. That meant, of course, that all of the accused were held in jail for months, awaiting trial. And if money for bail was out of reach, what about money for attorneys? Again -- out of the question. That meant that public defenders were appointed by the court. For one of the accused, Mychal Bell, this meant little better than no counsel at all, for his trial was soon decided by an all-white jury, who promptly convicted him of aggravated second degree assault, battery and conspiracy. Bell now awaits sentencing which may put the teenager in prison for the next 22 years. The public defender never challenged the all-white jury pool, put on no evidence, and didn't call a single defense witness. The law of aggravated assault requires the use of a deadly weapon. What was the weapon? Tennis shoes. Families and friends of the Jena 6 are organizing against this case, and are also being threatened by the local establishment. One woman told Louisiana ACLU member, Tory Pegram, "We have to convince more people to come rally with us.....What's the worse that could happen? They fire us from our jobs? We have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our lawns or burn down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We have to keep speaking out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our children will never be safe." To contact the Jena 6 Defense Committee, write: P.O. Box 2798 Jena, Louisiana 71342 Or on the web: jena6defense@gmail.com. --(c) '07 maj [Sources: Quigley, Bill, "Injustice in Jena: Black Nooses Hanging From the 'White' Tree", July 3, '07; Quigley@loyana.edu.; Mangold, Tom, " 'Stealth racism' stalks deep South", BBC News, 5/24/07 online]