I’m slowly catching up on writing after 5 days with no power.  Sit tight, responses and new posts to come over the next few days.

Yesterday, I landed on the planet Durham, NC where I’ll hang my hat for the next few days.  While running around town yesterday (Friday), I was listening to the Michael Baisden show on the radio (107.1) talk about the Jena 6 “anniversary” (sounds like the wrong word in this context) and his role in organizing the demonstrations a year ago, what it did for his show, etc.  I also saw a small group gather in downtown Durham, NC last night to remember the events from the year before.

In my adult years, I have not participated, kind of surprising to even myself, in such major historical protests so it was interesting to hear the lasting affect it had on people.  That’s good news.  My mom is very much an activist type and I remember her excusing me for school one day to participate in the rally at The Mall in DC to get Martin Luther King’s birthday recognized as a national holiday.  That’s the day that Stevie Wonder sang his infamous “Happy Birthday” song.  Thanks, Mom, for allowing me to participate in history.

Did any of you participate in the Jena 6 protests last year?  What’s your feelings a year later?  Do you think we have moved on to the next shiny thing, especially with the current elections underway?

Here are some links to read more about Jena 6 a year later…

BLACK SPIN- JENA SIX ANNIVERSARY:  HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED

BLOG: EVERYONE NEEDS THERAPY- THE JENA 6 OVER A YEAR LATER

some older articles of interest…

COLOR OF CHANGE- FALSE ALLEGATIONS ON MICHAEL BAISDEN SHOW

WASHINGTON POST- DRIVE TIME FOR ‘JENA 6′

* * * * *

I swear I thought up my post title before I ran into this picture, but it just sums up my initial reaction so well. Kudos to the photographer (source- http://flickr.com/photos/35237093608@N01/1528508443).

Well, at least he got jail time, right??

Just pasting the image above (from the article I found here- http://a.abcnews.com/TheLaw/BlackHistory/story?id=4184706&page=1) brings tears to my eyes. I guess it’s just the reality of it all. Right in your face.

Do you think 4 months is adequate? Just curious. I’m not sure if putting time on a sentence “cancels out” the crime or the depth of the impact, but you could say that for a lot of crimes.

Associated Press ALEXANDRIA, La. — A Louisiana teenager who used nooses to intimidate black civil rights demonstrators was sentenced Friday to four months in federal prison.

Jeremiah Munsen, 19, of Colfax, had nooses hanging from the back of his pickup truck when he drove past people who had attended a massive civil rights march in Jena last September, according to federal prosecutors.

Munsen had faced up to a year in prison after he pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor charge of interfering with the marchers’ federally protected right to travel.

U.S. District Judge Dee Drell in Alexandria also sentenced Munsen to 125 hours of community service and one year of supervised release following his prison term, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney William Flanagan.

Munsen was sentenced on the same day that an anti-noose law took effect in Louisiana. The new law makes it a state crime, punishable by up to one year in prison, to try to intimidate someone with a hangman’s noose, a Deep South symbol of racial hatred.

The marchers were waiting in Alexandria for a bus home to Tennessee after protesting the criminal cases against six black teenagers charged with beating a white student at Jena High School in 2006.

A 16-year-old passenger in Munsen’s truck also was arrested, but Flanagan said he couldn’t comment on juvenile proceedings.

In a court filing last month, prosecutors said Munsen cooperated with investigators and asked Drell to impose a sentence that reflected his “substantial assistance.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize the march in Jena, said in a statement earlier this year that he applauded federal prosecutors for charging Munsen with a hate crime.

Munsen’s attorney, Billy Guin Jr., did not immediately return a call for comment.