Mychal Bell Jailed Again — Equal Protection Under the Law — NOT

Just read a diary over at Daily Kos by rico — turns out that Mychal Bell (of the Jena 6) has been jailed again.

From the link (and it’s a short article so I am quoting its entirety – hope that is all right):

JENA, La. (AP) – A Louisiana teen at the center of a civil rights controversy is back in jail.

The father of Mychael Bell says a judge in Jena (JEE’-nuh), Louisiana, has revoked Bell’s probation because of an old drug charge that had never been tried.

Bell and five other black teenagers had been accused of beating a white classmate. He was originally charged with attempted murder and then convicted of battery. An appeals court threw out the conviction, saying the case should have been brought in juvenile court.

Bell was released last month after thousands demonstrated in Jena to protest the severity of the charges against the teens.

Bell’s father says his son was detained after going to juvenile court for what was expected to be another routine hearing.

And Mychal needs to go to JAIL for this?  After he had already served so many months?  Something about this whole thing just plain stinks.

Ok, let’s see.  Be a mercenary and murder all kinds of folks, women, children, in Iraq?  No problem, no jail.  Head a telecommunications corporation and spy on Americans?  Hey, we’ll make sure you are retroactively protected!  Leak information about a covert CIA agent, risking our own national security?  Oh no problemo, a Presidential pardon awaits!

Equal protection under the law has become a joke.

Mychal Bell goes with his father to a routine hearing in juvenile court.  And now he is in jail.  Let’s look at a worst case scenario.  Let’s say he has broken probation.  Let’s say he has had problems with crime.

Let’s look at the picture here.  A white student pulls a gun on black students, they wrestle the gun away from him — the black students are arrested.  The white student doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

This is not about whether Mychal Bell is a saint or a sinner.  He is an American citizen and he is not getting the same treatment by our justice system as either a white person his age or the powerful folks in this country whose damage to America and to folks around the world would warrant they be put away for life.

Why is he in jail?  He reported to the juvenile court.  Is he a danger to someone?  For an old drug charge that was never tried?  There is something wrong here.

We have folks committing crimes against humanity, and I engage in no hyperbole when I write that, who are not only unpunished but allowed to retain power.

And we have a young man who is in jail, and for what?  For what?

I will keep Mychal and his family in my thoughts and in my heart.  I am worried about them for more than just this story.  They are now in the midst of a media circus, they are targeted by racist organizations, and their humanity is being subsumed amid this very worthy cause.  I sure hope they have friends in the community that will help them weather all this madness, keep them from the worst of the media attention, keep Mychal from becoming a poster child for injustice instead of what he really is — a human being, like anyone else, no saint, no villain, just human.

I can’t believe they put him back in jail.  And as rico says, I hope we will not wait for the bloggers of color to shoulder the entire burden of helping Mychal and the cause of social justice.