The three kids who hung nooses in the three were wrong but having six people beating one kid is two different things.


Thousands rally in Jena 'march for justice'

JENA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Thousands of protesters gathered in Jena, Louisiana, on Thursday to show support for the "Jena 6," six black teens charged in the beating of a white classmate.

Thursday was the day Mychal Bell expected to find out his punishment for his alleged role in the beating at Jena High.

"This is a march for justice. This is not a march against whites or against Jena," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and one of the protest organizers.

Sharpton called Jena the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement.

"[The Rev. Martin Luther] King went to Selma. That wasn't the only place you couldn't vote. That was the point of action," Sharpton said. "They went to Birmingham. That wasn't the only place we didn't have public accommodations. It was the point of action.

"Jena is a point of action for the Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said.

"There's a Jena in every state," the Rev. Jesse Jackson told the crowd in Jena on Thursday morning.

JoAnn Scales, who brought her three teenage children on a two-day bus journey from Los Angeles to Jena, made the same point.

"The reason I brought my children is because it could have been one of them" involved in an incident like the one in Jena
"If this can happen to them [the Jena 6] , it can happen to anyone," Scales said.

Ondra Hathaway was on the bus with Scales.

"If this young man (Bell) was railroaded to do time as an adult, how many more people has that happened to?" she said.

At 8 a.m. ET, a Louisiana state patrol officer said five tour buses were being allowed into the town every 12 minutes. That resulted in buses lined up as far as the eye could see in both directions on Route 49.

Bell's mother, Melissa Bell, said her son was watching Thursday's events on the news.

"He was excited. ... He said it is amazing," Melissa Bell said.

"This is good. It's beautiful to see ... these people around here," she said as she walked with Sharpton.

As the crowd grew in Jena, they found most of the local population gone, reported CNN's Tony Harris. The town's businesses had shut down, he said.

The town, about 200 miles northwest of New Orleans, is 85 percent white and 12 percent black.

Demonstrators are protesting what they say are excessive criminal charges and bond amounts for the teens.

Bails for the "Jena 6" were set at between $70,000 and $138,000, and all but Bell have posted bond. Bell, 17, has been in prison since his arrest in December. The judge has refused to lower his $90,000 bail, citing Bell's criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses -- two simple battery charges among them. Watch an interview with one of the Jena 6 and his mom »

"It breaks our heart to see him handcuffed and in leg shackles," Sharpton said. "But his spirit is high. He has said that he is very encouraged to know that thousands are coming to this town to stand up for him and his five friends."

The teens were initially charged with attempted murder after they allegedly knocked out Justin Barker -- a white classmate -- while stomping and kicking him during a school fight on December 4, 2006.

Barker was taken to a hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters urged the world not to forget the victim in the case.

"The injury done to him and threats to his survival have become less than a footnote," Walters said Wednesday.

"This case has not, never has been about race. It's about finding justice for an innocent victim, holding people accountable for their actions. That is what it's about," he said.

Advocates of the Jena 6 said the story actually began three months earlier, when three white students hung nooses from a tree on campus. The white students were suspended from school but didn't face criminal charges. The protesters argue they should have been charged with a hate crime.

Bell was to have been sentenced Thursday after convictions for second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy to do the same, but both charges have been vacated, awaiting further action by the district attorney.

A district judge earlier this month tossed out Bell's conviction for conspiracy to commit second-degree battery, saying the matter should have been handled in juvenile court. Last week, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Lake Charles, Louisiana, did the same with Bell's battery conviction.

But a Louisiana appeals court ruled Tuesday it was too early to consider a motion to free Bell from prison.

Charges for four of the other teens -- Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Theo Shaw and Bryant Purvis -- have been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy.

Charges for the sixth teen, a juvenile, are unknown because his files are closed.

Thursday morning, demonstrators walked to the high school, asking to see the tree where nooses were hung. They couldn't; the tree has been chopped down.

Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney who reviewed investigations into the nooses and the beating said he believes the incidents -- though likely symptoms of racial tension -- were not related.

"A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection," said Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.

"There were three months of high school football in which they all played football together and got along fine, in which there was a homecoming court, in which there was the drill team, in which there were parades," Washington added.

What bugs me about this is they were charged with the wrong crimes and got convictions(how I don't even know...a shoe a deadly weapon, seriously?)when other crimes like simple assault or battery would have been just and gotten a perfectly legal conviction. The jury seemed to be stacked against the defendant as well with a high school friend of the father of the victim on an all caucasian jury. I just don't see how that could have been a fair trial under those circumstances. The DA should have known better and it's obvious there was some motivation there for the harshest sentence possible. Our laws provide for rights such as punishment fitting the crime and fair trials by a jury of out peers. I honestly don't believe these kids are having their rights protected although they should have some legal reprocussions.

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I guess I don't see this as a black and white issue. Six kids beat the snot of of one kid. Why is this not a crime. Doing physical harm to another person with any weapon, be it a shoe or a tire iron can kill them. They were wrong and I think any person black or white that tries to viciously harm another should be sitting their butts in jail.

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The mighty oak started out as a nut that held its ground.

ITA.

I don't think anyone is saying it's not a crime, but that the charges & punishment were way beyond what the crime actually was. If you had a boy in high school who got in a fight & beat up another kid, should he be tried as an adult for attempted murder and put away for 30 years? Or, should a juvenile be charged as a juvenile, for assault or assault and battery? Should a shoe be labelled a deadly weapon? There was no gun, no knife, etc. There are LEVELS to charges, and LEVELS to sentencing. The charge & sentence far outweighed the crime, and I think that is the point of all this. And for the record, I am not one to EVER agree with those wacky reverends who shout racism at every turn. Did you see on cnn.com today about someone down there driving around w/ nooses attached to the back of their pickup & claiming to be KKK? There is an underlying racism in some areas of the country still, and that seems to be the heart of this matter.

The underlying racism isn't just in some parts of this country.It exists in the whole country at different levels.These kids were in the wrong ganging up on one kid but in this day and age nooses should not be allowed to hang from trees(knowing the history)without the participants being punished.I'm sure that this probably wasn't the first incident that occurred and maybe these kids just got to the breaking point.

ITA. He should be charged with battery, not attempted murder. Why wouldn't the nooses be considered a hatecrime and the white boys charged for that, instead of just being suspended for a few days.