My novelist friend Alex Sokoloff forwarded me a plea to help the Jena Six this morning. In case you aren't familiar with the story (I wasn't), six black youths age 16-18 are on trial in Louisiana for attempted murder. The story begins when black students at a Jena high school sit under the "white tree" on campus. Later, white students hang nooses from the tree in warning. Black students protest; there are several incidents of white violence against black students in the town, none of which are prosecuted. But when black students eventually retaliate against a white student in an on-campus scuffle from which the white student walked away relatively unscathed, the black students are charged with, incredibly, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. An all-white jury has already convicted one of the boys of a somewhat lesser charge of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit battery, the others are still awaiting trial. I joined colorofchange.org and contributed to the defense fund. You can read the full story and add your own voice here.

It truly sounds like an incident from 1961. But we've become used to watching our social and cultural clock move backward. This morning's L.A. Times details the Democratic congress' fight to overturn the Bush Administration ban on supporting overseas family planning clinics that counsel on abortion. I couldn't help noticing that on the next page, the Times notes that suicide among teenage girls is on the rise for the first time since the last Republican adminstration. Apparently, not happy with ruining the lives of young people in our country with false 1950s moralism, our President wishes to ruin the lives of those overseas as well. Kudos to Senator Barbara Boxer for leading the fight to rescind the "global gag rule."

Tags: politics, race, abortion