Jena 6, no relation to Pasadena?

There is no outrage in Pasadena over the Jena 6.

White folks think: So what? This is a story about criminals.

It is a story about black youth, white supremacy, and the reaction to it in a place far, far away from Pasadena. Why should we care?

A story about High School boys getting in a racially charged fight and imprisoned has no significance here? Here. In California, where we have the largest prison population in the the United States. Where the United States has more people imprisoned than any country in the entire world.

Pasadena has not been completely silent on the issue of race, recently.

We've had our own little uproar over a development project gone south in implementation; A proposal to benefit mainly minority groups resident in Pasadena's North West. Officials say it is because a partner of the winning bidder disassociated themselves from the leader of the project. That would have happened to any project leader if they were not welcomed by city government. The leader was not treated honestly and directly, some think it is because he was African-American.

I think it was trashed because it was a project that would lift up a disenfranchised minority neighborhood.

The project was thwarted by the Pasadena City Council's method of saying no, indirectly, in a passive aggressive way. If the developer or leader of the project had a reason for being rejected, such as a past history of going over budget, that would be a valid. However, the City of Pasadena never gave those grounds. In fact, there was no real, concrete reason for performing an indirect rejection of this project leader. The Council never has to be honest as a body. It has developed a technique.

It is the beauty of committee consensus. No one has to say no directly and give a reason. The Council can simply be mired down in questions, details, and retread discussions. They can always blame the City Staff! Essentially, the have the power to wear everyone down until someone quits. That is what happened in this case. The financial arm of the winning bidder quit -too much red tape, too much uncertainty. Investors are like that. They are keen to the wind, and sensitive to subtlety.

You don't have to be a JPL scientist to see what was going on by watching City Council discussions on the subject. This may be the face of what white supremacy looks like in our modern, politically correct world.

On the local blogs or message boards (comment sections), there has been a rash of anonymous participation. Many of the anonymous seek to inflame by using rhetoric like "black racists", "apologist liberals", etc. This can be dismissible as "kids" but the posts hold more significance than that. For every person that posts a response to a blog, that opinion can represent hundreds-maybe thousands of others that agree with the opinion or plan expressed.

How does this effect you? I think it is helpful for you to know how this particular City Council says no and the effect that it has in our community. It may not be direct. If you have a project before the council, the first indication that you will be unsuccessful, and in for a long obstacle course is they discuss your project until 2 a.m. at every meeting.

An elder civil rights activist once said, "Just because someone is of the same ethnicity or color as you, sex as you, doesn't mean they are of your kind." She was a black woman. I am a white woman. Where is our outrage over the racism in the treatment of the Jena 6? Why do you think the white boys in Jena hung nooses in the tree? They are kids, and they are expressing what is in their world.

The boy in Jena is still in jail, unlawfully. His own attorney does nothing to get him out. Is he keeping him there for the boy's own protection? The chatter from that area is that the white supremacy groups want to rise up and retaliate. They were angry but quiet during the presence of Jesse jackson and Al Sharpton, and now that they're gone they'd like to make a plan.

In our town, the chatter is to make a plan against people of the North West. The idea is to evict residents in two specific apartment buildings, and whole families that are perceived to be evil families. Whole minority families that have lived here for years. Their plan is to give people a $10k relocation fee and incarcerate anyone that can be incarcerated.

Jailing youth has been the suggested answer from those that are not anonymous, and consider themselves Liberal. How is that not related to what is going on in Jena? We are talking about kids, youth that are being used to do the dirty work of others. The white kids in Jena are in trouble! They are being taught the language of hate. Don't you care about that? The black kids are reacting to what is happening to them, and what has happened to them for hundreds of years in this country. The denial of it is palpable.

I think what is going on in Jena is something we have to look at here, in sweet, beautiful Pasadena. We are foolish to ignore the similarities, the timing, and how we have the opportunity to make things better.