For Whom the Bell Tolls

By James Peterson ---- Somehow the sun was shining brighter this past Saturday morning when I awoke to the news that Mychal Bell’s conviction had been overturned. Bell, one of the Jena 6, was in fact the first of 6 young black men to be ‘tried’ and convicted of second-degree aggravated assault as well as conspiracy to commit this crime.  The Jena 6 situation has been blogged about here and elsewhere so I will not rehearse these unfortunate events in this space.  Mr. Bell’s sentencing hearing was originally scheduled for July 31st and subsequently postponed until later this week (September 20th 2007).  The reversal of Bell’s conviction is a clear victory for the Black Public Sphere whose collective will challenged the ‘Jim Crow’ justice of Jena, LA early and often as this unfortunate story unfolded.  For those folk who love to hate Rev. Al Sharpton and/or Rev. Jesse Jackson we thank you (as well as their courage to endure it) because your unbridled hate for these figures (ironically) helps to invest them with the media-magnetism required to put the spotlight on dark pockets of retrograde INSTITUTIONAL racism. This battle for justice continues and my hope is that the BlackProf community will, with all of its legal and intellectual resources, be integral in the processes and protests designed to ensure that the Jena 6 receive equal and fair treatment under the law. Make no mistake about it though Mychal Bell is a hero.  By most accounts, Mr. Bell should have taken a plea agreement at the time of his trial.  “A plea bargain would have put him back on the streets in a matter of months” (ISR interview with Alan Bean).  He was an emerging High School football star with interest from various college programs.    But Bell opted to be a soldier in the quagmire of the culture wars.  And on this front Bell risked his football career in order to assert his innocence and to highlight the injustices surrounding the racially charged incidents in Jena, LA.  In this sense he is more Jim Brown than (insert your favorite running back here).  He is more like Bill Russell than Shaq; and he is more Ali than Tyson.  He is an athlete who understands that the playing field is often times an extension or reflection of the politics that operate in the public sphere.  Moreover, Mr. Bell understood that whatever his football career might have been or might still become, he couldn’t submit to a ‘justice’ system that required him to co-sign racial injustice with a circumstantially coerced guilty plea.   Bell’s courage set the stage for leaders and activists to fully engage the complex racial conundrum that Jena, LA has become.  His time spent in jail, for a crime that this recent overturning suggests he could not have committed, is part of the heavy lifting required to confront the problems of race and class in our selectively aggressive criminal justice system.  A sad but corollary fact of Bell’s stand is that it unveils the kind of legal environment (racialized and unforgiving) within which too many young black men must make similar decisions about life, innocence, and justice.SOURCE OF THIS STORY