Article by Amy Goodman
http://www.truthdig.com/report…..louisiana/

Mychal Bell was convicted by an all-white jury. His court-appointed defense attorney called no witnesses. Bell will be sentenced on July 31; he faces a possible 22 years. The remaining five teens, several of whom were jailed for months, unable to make bail, still face second-degree attempted murder charges and a hundred years each in prison.

Flaherty, who grew up in New Orleans, sums up the case of the Jena Six: “I don’t think there is anyone around that would doubt that if this had been a fight between black students or a fight of white students beating up a black student, you would never be seeing this. It’s completely about race. It’s completely about two systems of justice.”

Two Americas!

Rich and everybody else.
Government & Corporations and everybody else.
Insured and not insured.
Good schools and poor schools.

John Edwards for President — because He Gets It!

Racisam is insidious. Whether it’s here (the U.S.), or in Palestine (”Palestine: Not Apartheid”) or Iraq.

AP – Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary.

Our government hired them, they should be regulated by our Law and should apparently be indicted for murder.

As Sam Bennett said, it’s beneath us to accept that behavior!

Kathleen @ 61

uhh… what’s wrong with trailer parks, hunting knives or rifle racks? And Farmer is an insult?

Your right Will Nothing at all wrong with trailer parks, hunting knives and rifle racks

And I guess your right we should ignore the kids who shared their feelings about the use of “rednecks” and what they felt about it. And how they felt other kids in that high school used the term

I get it there is just no possible way that “rednecks” could be used in a negative way. My bad.

I link to your post and Scarecrow’s there, as I think the two of you really made the point well!

gawd knows I’m only a lowly peon around here but I’m so tired of getting interested in a discussion only to have it cut off by that eternally spinning circle.”

haaaaaaaaaaaa! that’s why i’m always behind on the threads………

i raised that up a few months ago, for people to stay in a thread, it takes a while for comments to build up in the new one anyway……..

uhh… what’s wrong with trailer parks, hunting knives or rifle racks? And Farmer is an insult?

gawd knows I’m only a lowly peon around here but I’m so tired of getting interested in a discussion only to have it cut off by that eternally spinning circle.

you love to get snide don’t you? how come?

no kathleen it is you who has such a hard time when someone has a different experience and brings up a different aspect of something that you didn’t intend when you brought it up……

i don’t have a hard time imagining it, i just have not seen or heard of that in regards to the word ‘redneck’. not here where i live……now, if you want to talk about the city, yeah, it goes on there a lot.

and i like how you put ‘talked’ with in quotes, cuz that’s the experience i was drawing on, not something i read on the internet.

it’s gettin’ hard to have a conversation around here lately.

The term “redneck” comes from the culture of the Borderlands between England and Scotland. For 500 years or so neither country controlled the area, so the inhabitants developed a culture featuring dependence on family and clan, distrust of outside authority and legal procedure, tolerance of physical violence, enthusiasm for sports and military activity, personal pride and stoicism in the face of poverty. Sound like anybody we know?

One group of religious dissenters signed a resolution in blood and wore a red cloth around their neck to commemorate their defiance, hence the term. The Borderlands folk came here in 3 big waves of migration in the 18th Cent and settled first in the mountains of western Virginia and the Carolinas, hence “hillbillies”. Some of them moved first to Northern Ireland (”Scots-Irish”). There are instances of the term “redneck” in Ireland and colonial Virginia.

As far as pejorative use goes, it depends on how and where it’s used, and the tone of voice. It’s one of the few ethnic slang terms that isn’t an automatic insult. In fact, a certain pride in redneckery is part of the package.

So much that a woman from Pochahontus Illinois calls herself one.

RevDeb @ 74

Spent 4 years in the middle of that corn field. Never went to a game. No regrets.

Born in Mercy Hospital, lived in veterans housing next to the stadium when I was a baby. I love Illini sports win or lose.

Of course now that the greedy Big 10 has there own network I had to watch a “game cast” online that is nothing more than someone typing what’s happening with some graphics.