March On The Justice Department

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November 16, 2007 -   Wow!”   That’s the expressive look and comment on the face of radio talk show host, Tom Joyner as he peered at a sea of people from the stage at Freedom Plaza, the location that rallied the largest civil rights march in Washington, DC of our era.

 

For as far as the eye could see, there was a sea of African American people who came to the Nation's Capital to declare enough is enough. 

 

And indeed enough truly is enough.   Enough of the hate crimes. Enough of unfair sentencing. Enough of unfair treatment.

 

Simply enough, already!

 

Cases in point:  In Jena, Louisiana six high school students after a school yard fight involving white students are given sentences of 22 years.  Twenty-two years in prison for a school yard fight while treats against the six African American students with a noose hanging go unpunished and is treated as a prank by Louisiana law.  Unequal, unfair, unjust. This unfair, unequal, and unjust treatment prompted a nation to descend upon Jena, Louisiana in their defense.

 

While many of the students, now coined the Jena 6,

were released from prison, one,

Mychal Bell remains in jail for a prior offense.

 

If the over fifty thousand African American people, and others, tired of the insidious and unfair treatment had not acted, those six students might well still be in the jail cells of Louisiana, home to one of the most notorious criminal institutions in history, the Angola prison.  Home of a prosecuting attorney that boasts, and brags to students, babies, not even twenty-one years old, “

With  a stroke of a pen, I can make your lives disappear.”

 

Then there’s the case in West, Virginia where six whites held hostage a young African American woman named Megan Williams against her will for over a week while they repeatedly stabbed her, poured hot wax on her and pulled out her hair,  raped her, and made her eat human feces and drink the urine of her terrorists.   The perpetrators, all with previous criminal records, have not been charged with a hate crime.

 

“You tell me that when you’re told – this is what we do to ni***rs in West Virginia, and you’re repeated called n***er over and over again, that’s not a hate crime?” asked Malik Shabazz attorney for Megan Williams.

Countless other incidents of hate crimes, and unfair sentencing have since cropped up around the nation.  Noose sightings on personal property, on college campuses, in places of work.   

 

“We’re not going to take this s**t any more”, said Shabazz as he held a noose in his hand, protesting the rash of noose hangings around the country. 

 

Reverend Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, along with talk show host Warren Ballentine of the nationally syndicated Warren Ballentine Show know too well of the stories of hate crimes around the nation as phone lines on their shows have been inundated with hordes of callers giving their own disparaging, personal accounts.

 

“A noose was hung, three stories on the construction sight where I work.  When I told my boss, he just shrugged it off’, says a caller.

 

Then there’s the shootings of youth and young adults by police. A youth in New York City, thought to have a gun, shot twenty times, only to find he had a hair brush. 

 

Sean Bell, shot outside an establishment a day before he was to be married. Deante Rollins, of the District, shot twenty times by D.C. police. 

 

As this article was being published, an African American youth with a hearing problem, tasered by police in Frederick, Maryland died. 

 

And the list goes on.

 

While at the march, a father held a picket sign that read "Hampton, Virginia next! Please help my son."  He tells DC Urban LifeStyle Magazine how his son, a Navy shipman, is jailed for the alleged kidnapping and assault of a white female fellow shipman.  (Listen to audio link below).

 

"They have video cameras showing this young woman buying cigarettes with her ATM card at the time they claim my son kidnapped her," the father said.

 

Says Judge Greg Mathis, “I’m here to make sure we hold the justice department’s foot to the fire in making sure they hold law enforcement officers all throughout the country accountable for their actions.  We see all throughout the country race-based injustice being administered by law enforcement officers.”

 

“We’re here to make sure that the justice department, as they did in the 60s, make a difference in the discrimination of race-based injustice that we see,” said Mathis.

 

"In the 1960s we had government intervention when Black kids where being spat on, and beaten just for trying to go to school,”  said Reverend Sharpton.

 

"Now, with all that’s been going on: the hangman’s nooses, the case of Genarlow Wilson, the case with Megan Willams, and not one word from the U.S. Justice Department,” Sharpton said.

 

“So, if the U.S. Justice Department won’t come to the people, we’re bringing the people to the U.S. Justice Department.”

 

And by the thousands people came, and took that march around the Justice Department.  Seven times around, as in the days of old when Joshua marched around the city of Jericho.

 

"The walls of racism and injustice must come down!", said Detroit Congresswoman Carolyn Cheek Kilpatrick.

 

 ###

 

How effective was the march on D.C.?  

 

"They heard us in Jena.  They heard us in the case of Genarlow Wilson. Don’t tell us that prayer and marching don’t work”, said one protestor.

 

Related.  View images leading up to the march.
 
 
 

Photos of Northern Virginia rally

 

Photos of D.C. Jena 6 Rally

 

####

 

Worth mentioning: 
 
While the march on D.C. focused on hate crimes against African Americans, protestors also rallied against Black-on-Black crime.  Protest signs at the march asking why nothing has been said about the rape of a African American woman and assault of her son in Florida by ten African American males suggest individual and community accountability as well.  Read about the case.
 
Sidebar:
 
If you noticed that DC's mayor Adrian Fenty was absent, please note that DC Urban LifeStyle Magazine spoke with Mayor Fenty and he tells us that he "had a busy morning with DC public schools." And adds, "We worked really hard getting the permits and everything needed for the march."
 
 
Listen to the audio conversation  with Hampton, Virginia father.

 
 
 
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