LOUISIANA IS BRINGING BACK THE NOOSE
Disgusting
As if the Jena 6 travesty of justice wasn't enough to singlehandedly prove that Jim Crow has returned to -- or, perhaps, remained in -- Louisiana, two white teenagers affiliated with the Klan were arrested last night for driving a truck past civil rights marchers with nooses hanging out the back.
The two men were driving in a red pickup near a crowd of people that traveled to Louisiana to protest the Jena 6 incident, which, as you may recall, involved nooses hanging from trees.
The police report says officers searching the truck found Coors Light, a .22 caliber rifle, brass knuckles, and yellow extension cord made into a hangman's noose. According to the report, "While sitting in the lounge the juvenile said that he had KKK tattooed on his chest and that his parents and kin folk were involved with the KKK."
As if black people in Louisiana didn't already have FEMA, unconscionable insurance companies, redlining, horrendous environmental conditions, inadequate health care, and high crime rates to reckon with, now they can add -- no, reinstate -- the Klan and nooses on their lists of reasons why progress has yet to visit them in Louisiana.
This brings me to my main point: despite tens of thousands of good people participating in a huge civil rights march to protest the unequal treatment of the Jena 6, how is it that an event that took place in 2006 (!!!) still has yet to get on the forefront of most Americans' minds?
News coverage has picked up, but still hasn't reached the covers of any weekly magazines and rarely makes it above the fold in any major newspapers. After labeling local black citizens -- struggling to survive Hurricane Katrina -- as looters, you would think reporters in the Gulf might spotlight the Jena 6 story as a form of penitence.
It's not as if any of the injustices suffered by the Jena 6 have been rectified. 17-year-old Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, who is awaiting a new trial, is still behind bars because he was denied bail!
A less important question about the two red truck-driving rednecks dragging nooses through town: why do all racists drive trucks? Did I miss a national transportation draft where bigots got to pick trucks, while pedophiles and kidnappers chose vans?
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