FYI Rod Hay on Decatur, Jesse Jackson

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/muwakkil2402.html

In These Times

December 26, 1999 (Volume 24, Number 2)

Action Jackson Takes on Decatur

By Salim Muwakkil <salim4x@xxxxxxx>

When members of the Decatur chapter of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition asked
the Rev. Jesse Jackson to help them deal with a controversy at a local
high school, it seemed like just another of the many brushfires he is
summoned to help extinguish.

After all, it appeared to be an easy enough issue: Seven African-American
students at a local high school were expelled for two years for brawling
at a football game last September. One student subsequently dropped out;
since there were no provisions for alternative education, it was highly
unlikely the expelled students would return to complete their secondary
education. In effect, they were permanently kicked out of school for a
fistfight.

Local leaders thought the punishment was wildly disproportionate, but for
nearly two months their protests fell on deaf ears at the Decatur School
Board. The city's black leaders were sure the board would quickly rescind
the draconian punishment it had imposed once they were caught in the glare
of the public spotlight that followed Jackson.

Indeed, the initial stages of Jackson's efforts seemed to bear fruit.
Illinois Gov. George Ryan, just back from a controversial trip to Cuba,
traveled to Decatur on Nov. 8 and helped broker an agreement that reduced
the expulsions from two years to one year and allowed the teens to attend
a school for troubled youth. But Jackson rejected those penalties as
excessive, and his intervention has turned the issue into a national
controversy.

Jackson is being roundly condemned for misapplying tactics from his civil
rights past to the complex issue of post-Columbine school violence. And
since the media have portrayed the Decatur protest as Jackson's crusade,
the stand-off has acquired dimensions of pride and stature. The School
Board cannot appear to cave in, and the combative reverend also has dug in
his heels. The issue has moved into the courts and has yet to be resolved.

Jackson clearly denounced the fight that prompted the punishments, but he
condemned the School Board for committing the greater crime. Sentencing
the students to days of unproductive time and futures without education
would increase their chances of joining record numbers of their peers in a
criminal justice system with a ravenous appetite for black youth. "The
board's action was an educational death sentence for these students,"
Jackson said. "If there's hell in them, then let's educate the hell out of
them. We must not see the jail system as the back-up of our school
system."

The harsh penalties were meted out as part of Decatur's "zero tolerance"
policy. This kind of policy--mandatory minimum punishment uniformly
enforced--has caught on like wildfire in the wake of a series of recent
school shootings. Jackson's mediation brought attention to the crude
uniformity and disparate racial effects of these policies. "This isn't
about black and white," Jackson has insisted. "It's about wrong and
right."

There are clear racial effects in the school district's patterns of
punishment. Of 1,700 students suspended last year, 1,038 were
African-American in a district that is about 40 percent black. Of six
students expelled last year, five were black.

Illinois School Superintendent Glenn McGee also visited Decatur, and
although he proposed solutions that were in direct accord with Jackson's,
few media accounts note their agreement. Both said that the six students
should not face identical punishments, since they all had varying degrees
of involvement in the brawl, and that they should be allowed back into
their regular high schools if they maintain at least a C average and good
attendance in the alternative program.

The day after the School Board rejected this option, the Macon County
state's attorney filed criminal charges against the students. These
charges came nearly two months after the brawl and were clearly intended
to intimidate the youths' supporters. Jackson mobilized a Nov. 14 march
that attracted at least 5,000 demonstrators; on Nov. 16, he was arrested
for attempting to enter school property and charged with felony mob action
and two misdemeanors.

He has been excoriated in the local and national media for interfering in
local concerns and for acting out of a sense of racial allegiance. In one
typical mainstream editorial, the Chicago Sun-Times fumed that Jackson's
demonstration had "none of the honor of the civil rights movement and all
of the shame of a fight."

But, as usual, Jackson is on to something. These school policies are akin
to absolutist policies like New York's "broken windows" style of law
enforcement, where no offense is too petty to be prosecuted. These
policies implement punishment that explicitly excludes mercy. There are no
opportunities for judicial discretion or mitigation.

Born of cultural anxiety about youth crime, the concept rationalizes a
dynamic that tracks undereducated black youth into a criminal justice
system where many are tried as adults and subjected to mandatory minimum
sentences. This web of biased presumptions severely limits the horizons of
black youth. Jackson is right to be on the case.


Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times.

Copyright (c) 1999 In These Times. All Rights Reserved.


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