What to say? That words were powerful, and poets our conscience, and a happy future a possibility.

People are sad, nostalgic and they write articles that leave oh so much missing.

Remember “Hombre preso que mira a su hijo” (video, or the poem)

uno no siempre hace lo que quiere
pero tiene el derecho de no hacer
lo que no quiere

llorá nomás botija
son macanas
que los hombres no lloran
aquí lloramos todos

gritamos berreamos moqueamos chillamos
maldecimos
porque es mejor llorar que traicionar
porque es mejor llorar que traicionarse

llorá
pero no olvides

More poems here. Be sure to check Tactica y Estrategia.

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With no evidence of attempted murder, the district attorney lessened the charges against Bell to aggravated battery. In Louisiana, this charge requires the use of a dangerous weapon in the underlying attack. The prosecution claimed that the students—he called them the “gang of Black boys”—used their sneakers as a dangerous weapon. The court allowed this spurious argument.

Huffington Post has an article on the Jena 6, and has this damning quote:

But the story of Jena is not an outsider/insider story. It’s a story about the worst tradition of what is known as Southern Justice. And like in the days of Jim Crow, it’s a story where any shades of grey matter far less than black and white… Two black students were beaten by a white student while another group of black students were threatened with a shotgun by a former classmate. Surprisingly, none of the white students or former students were punished in any way for these incidents.

The Jena 6 can be supported in six ways: you can help with money, by blogging, by calling your local politician, supporting yuour local juvenile justice coallition, and basically, spreading the word and raising awareness about racial injustice and inequality in this country.

By now, the news are all over the place, and while most Americans ponder their latest bread and circus, others rally in Jena to confront the reactivation of Jim Crow laws and open racism in the South.

Do we need another song about strange fruit?

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The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday issued a 5-4 ruling against voluntary-integration plans in K-12 public-school districts in Louisville, Ky. and Seattle, Wash. that use race as a factor to prevent segregation in student assignments. These cases were among the most publicly watched of the court’s 2006-2007 term and were the final decisions the court rendered before taking recess until Oct. 1.

and quotes Judge Stephen Breyer

“In doing so, it distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to effectively deal with the growing re-segregation of public schools … and it undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality. This cannot be justified in the name of the Equal Protection Clause… And what of law’s concern to diminish and peacefully settle conflict among the Nation’s people? Instead of accommodating different good-faith visions of our country and our Constitution, today’s holding upsets settled expectations, creates legal uncertainty, and threatens to produce considerable further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict.”

And the WaPo has as well an article about it, simply describing the procedures and pointing to Breyer’s dissent:

Segregationist policies, Breyer said, didn’t simply tell black children where they could go to school but “perpetuated a caste system rooted in the institutions of slavery and 80 years of legalized subordination.”

And the NYTimes chimes in as well:

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Justice Breyer said. In his written opinion, Justice Breyer said the decision was a “radical” step away from settled law and would strip local communities of the tools they need, and have used for many years, to prevent resegregation of their public schools. Predicting that the ruling would “substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation,” he said, “This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret.”

Judge Breyer, in his dissent (PDF), points out the motivation for the school practices:

They do not impose burdens unfairly upon members of one race alone but instead seek benefits for members of all races alike. The context here is one of racial limits that seek, not to keep the races apart, but to bring them together.

He finishes his dissent with

Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? For much of this Nation’s history, the races remained divided.It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. In this Court’s finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. For Brown held out a promise. It was a promise embodied in three Amendments designed tomake citizens of slaves. It was the promise of true racialequality—not as a matter of fine words on paper, but as amatter of everyday life in the Nation’s cities and schools.It was about the nature of a democracy that must work forall Americans. It sought one law, one Nation, one people,not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms ofhow we actually live.
68
PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.
SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1
BREYER, J., dissenting
Not everyone welcomed this Court’s decision in Brown. Three years after that decision was handed down, the Governor of Arkansas ordered state militia to block the doors of a white schoolhouse so that black children could not enter. The President of the United States dispatchedthe 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 (1958). Today,almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nationhave changed dramatically. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities anddifficulties they have faced. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their handsthe instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. The plurality would decline their modest request.
The plurality is wrong to do so. The last half-centuryhas witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but wehave not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality’s position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.
I must dissent.

Finally, in Democracy Now,

Well, first of all, Thurgood Marshall would be turning in his grave if he could read the opinions of the court that were handed down yesterday by the five justices in the majority.

I don’t express this well, but there was an article (check this newspiece), that expressed this the best: The SCOTUS decision mirrors a country that denies the fact that inequality exists, that racial discrimination is rampant and hurtful, and points slightly to a new America, where social divisions occur both on wealth, knowledge and race. Quoting Judge Breyer, it is a decision that America will regret.

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The actual moment,
Of Exile,
Is like an illness.
You are ill,
With rage.

To each family,
It means closing the door,
On friends, culture, your native country.

I do have mixed feelings about this day. On one hand, yes, by all mean raise awareness about the fact that 40 million people have lost their homes and their culture, and have been forced to flee just to be alive. On the other hand, it is taken too lightly by media and politics. What are those stateless people doing here, seems to be the world motto:

Given the role of the United States in creating this mess, these numbers should cause some hard thinking in Washington. The United States admitted a whopping 202 Iraqis for resettlement during 2006, and though plans are in place to take in 7,000 this year, compare that to the 850,000 Vietnamese who were given asylum in the U.S. during and after that war. It’s pretty weak.

as the FP says. But unlike what they say, the total figure is not 10 million – it is, officially, 33 million people, according to the report on from the UN Refugee Agency: this figure includes the refugees, the asylum seekers, the internally displaced persons, the returnees and the stateless persons. In 2006, the IDP number was driven by Iraq’s war: there are people doing their work to alleviate this:
Oftentimes we have senseless figures, like the three million IDP from Colombia, or the 2.2 million Iraqis that have been displaced thanks to this recent oil war. What does it mean for us? Seriously, how is the world changed to your eyes on that ongoing tragedy? No one is a refugee by choice:

In a world, whose focus has become security, the Refugee Highway has become even more challenging. The rights of refugees to seek protection can be subtly discouraged, disregarded even, by perception and process. Yet, they persevere. Hope lingers as their search for a durable solution, for a life lived in peace and productivity continues.

How to deal with the worst year on record for refugees? Antonio Gutierres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees , said

Let’s be honest, in many cases their governments are part of the problem, and in many cases the international community does not have the capacity to help them.

How true.
Again with the Sudanese poet, I feel anger. Anger at the indifference, at the palliative phrases, at the empty “how sad” commentaries, all the pregnant silences after explaining loss and anger, all the impossible resignation to slowly losing identity, culture and family. The exile of a refugee is a slow, painful death fow which we al are responsible.
You could send a donation to the UN (tip of hat to devious diva).

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