Congress condemns Move-On, ignores Iraq War and Jena, La racism

Chris Dodd provided a an outstanding quote today in response to the Congressional condemnation of MoveOn.org's anti-Petreaus advertisement:

"It is a sad day in the Senate when we spend hours debating an ad while our young people are dying in Iraq. Now that the Senate has twice voted on this ad, it is time to move on and vote to end the war."

But what has Congress done about the obviously racist use of the justice system in Jena, La. to oppress Black teenagers while letting White teenagers guilty of similar or worse things avoid any condemnation?

Throughout the South and in Texas there are two justice systems. There is one for White kids that recognizes that teenagers occasionally step out of line and corrects but does not destroy those kids. Then there is the justice system in Paris, TX. that sent a teenager (who shoved a substitute teacher) to state juvenile school (jail for teenagers) for an indeterminate period of up to 7 years. When her case was finally reviewed after the new media got hold of it, she was released along with 150 other Black teenagers whose offenses were similarly minor. She had spent a year in jail and had no prospects of being released.

Cotton, who is 15, had no prior criminal record when she was incarcerated a year ago under an indeterminate sentence that could have lasted until her 21st birthday. Her case rose to national prominence and became the focus of ongoing civil rights protests after a March 12 Tribune story detailed how a 14-year-old white girl convicted of the more serious crime of arson was sentenced to probation by the same judge.

Cotton's case occurred against a backdrop of persistent allegations of racial discrimination inside the Paris public schools -- allegations that are the subject of a continuing probe by the U.S. Department of Education to determine whether black students in the district are disciplined more harshly than whites.

Paris, TX is only 327 miles from Jena, LA according to Mapquest. Such racism permeates the entire route between those two towns, as well as much of the rest of the South and Texas.

Congress seemed trapped between the old do-nothing status quo and the extremist wing of the authoritarian and theocratic Republican Party. It looks like just taking the federal government back from the Republicans, giving it to the Democrats, and stopping the militarist fantasies of the Republicans and Dick Cheney is not going to be enough. It is time to considered rebuilding an activist Democratic Party while destroying the remainder of the conservative and theocratic Republican Party.

Nothing less than that is going to take American back to the dream built into the U.S. Constitution by the founding fathers.