In Jena 6 case, mass pressure put on district attorney

The Sept. 27 bail release of one of the Jena 6, Mychal Bell, and the decision to no longer try him as an adult, was a hard fought victory won by the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets for the massive and historic demonstration in Jena, La., and in other cities across the country on Sept 20.

With a national spotlight shining directly on his office, Jena District Attorney Reed Walters had no choice but to drop his inexplicable attempt to try Bell as an adult.

In recent weeks, many Black leaders around the country have intensified the call for an investigation of District Attorney Reed Walters for prosecutorial misconduct. The Congressional Black Caucus has called for a probe into Walters’ handling of the Jena 6 case.

In a letter sent to the U.S. attorney general, the CBC wrote that Walters’ handling of the case was an “abuse of prosecutorial discretion” and was an “unbelievable example of the kind of separate and unequal treatment that was once commonplace in the Deep South.”

Activists around the country have also been organizing an innovative form of protest against Walters by urging supporters to mail dirty sneakers to the district attorney’s office—to symbolize Walter’s ludicrous claim that the sneakers worn by the Jena 6 during the schoolyard fight constituted “deadly weapons.”

Walters, whose office already stinks of racism, will now have a new smell to contend with.

Walters has come to symbolize racism in the U.S. criminal injustice system. The Klansman in a lawyer’s suit was so blatantly racist in his attempt to railroad the Jena 6 that it is shocking that an immediate investigation of his office is even a subject of debate.

But it is also very important to stress that the kind of racially motivated prosecution on display in the Jena 6 case is not just the action of one rogue district attorney. Rather, it is a symptom of the systematic racism inherent in the U.S. criminal justice system. It is an example of racist processes that are played out in Black communities across the country every single day.

From a Black youth in New York City sentenced to years in prison for a minor drug offense under the Rockefeller laws, to a group of Black teenagers in Jena being tried for attempted murder when they were simply standing up to racism in the schoolyard, the way Black defendants are prosecuted and sentenced in the U.S. is dramatically different from the treatment received by their white counterparts.

The manner in which the Jena 6 and other Black youths are treated nationwide exposes the notion of “equality under the law” as nothing more than empty rhetoric. The grassroots anti-racist movement that has been galvanized by the recent events in Jena clearly recognizes this fact.

Signs and banners proclaiming “We All Live in Jena” and “We are All Jena,” which have been prevalent at the demonstrations in recent weeks, have signaled that the movement plans on intensifying the fight against racism and national oppression throughout the United States.