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America's Little Warlings

“We’ve worn handmade peace shirts every Thursday since the first week of school, without fail,” Skylar said.

But what started out as a light-hearted gesture soon started to be taken out of context.

Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.

“People just turned on us like that,” she said. “At least 10 boys stood up and yelled things at me at once, and we couldn’t even walk through the halls without a harsh comment being made.”

The heckling began early in the school year, according to group members. They said they were putting small posters promoting peace on friends’ lockers with their permission.

They thought it was OK, because the cheerleaders and football players had signs on theirs. Eventually, though, group members said they were told by the school’s administration they could no longer hang up the posters.

“People tore them down and drew swastikas and ‘white power’ stuff on them,” Lauren said.

Skylar had similar things written on her posters.

“Someone taped an ‘I Love Bush’ sign over my ‘Wage Peace’ sign,” she said. “So I tore it down, threw it away, and the whole commons starting booing. I walk by later and find that someone has completely tore my sign down and placed an ‘I Love America, Because America Loves War’ sign up.”

—Students Wear Confederate Flag Shirts To Oppose Peace-Shirt Group, commondreams.org | sombrero tip to C&L

IT SAYS SOMETHING very revealing that there are young people who think that symbols made immortal by Adolf Hitler are a valid response to a peace sign today. Who see the confederate flag (and it is not being used here to represent "heritage," if you don't mind) as a sane response to a peace symbol. Who feel that White Supremacy is the counter-argument to those who ask to live without war between nations. And maybe those pundits who entertain the notion that the USA is engaged in wars of "Liberation" and such should look to the children, who so often lead the way. When we care to pay attention, that is. Because clearly, the kids are not misled. Not by our equivocating fairNBalanced frenzies. When they go crazy it is because of the binds we provide, a series of traps to which we've often long been blind. But those newer, more naive, less compromised and cluttered minds always suss out the truth behind our apathy-weighted sighs and rationalized diatribes. And they know what these wars are about. No, not about Freedom, or Peace, or Liberty, or Democracy, of course. Those are soundbytes for Fox-Watchers, para-citizens on brain vacation. The wars of our dear United States of America are about that dark desire that moves mobs to cheer a lynching; they are about about colonialism and imperialism and genocidal impulse and an all-too-human lust for dominance and violence and power at any cost.

The Jena Six Case or why justice is not served when we need to ask for permission to be black

Imagine your son coming from school and telling you that he had to ask permission to the school principal to sit during recess under the "white's only" tree, which happens to be the only tree in the schoolyard. Then imagine your son coming back from school telling you that he could sit under that tree but now there were lynching nooses covering it.

Then imagine that word spreads. People of all ages and races talk about the incident. Some white and black kids get into an altercation and the rumble. One of the white kids draw a gun on 6 of the brawlers, but they're able to rumble harder with one of the white guy's friends.

Now, imagine you are the mother of one of those guys. The white kid that got his ass kick luckily is fine. He even goes to school and to an event the next day.

Now imagine being the mother of one of the 6 brawlers. While the white instigators threatened to kill the black teenagers with a gun, there's a police officer knocking on your door with a warrant for your son's arrest. The crime? Attempted murder. Not disorderly conduct or assault and battery, which would have been possible valid reasons to take your son to the police station. No. Your son is going to jail for attempted murder of a guy who walked away with some cuts and bruises.

That's what The Jena Six Case is all about.