Saguaro
11-16-2007, 01:58 PM
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Civil rights leaders were rallying Friday outside Justice Department headquarters in the nation's capital to demand the government crack down harder on hate crimes.
"We're here to say the federal government has a responsibility," the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN. "Since the Justice Department would not come to the people, today we're bringing the people to the Justice Department."
Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and members of Sharpton's National Action Network are leading a midday Friday "March on Hate Crimes" from Freedom Plaza to the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington.
Once they complete the five-block walk, the demonstrators plan to march around the building seven times, in an apparent allusion to the biblical story of the fall of Jericho.
The past year and a half has seen many reports of incidents involving nooses -- hung from the office door of an Ivy League professor, the basement locker room of a Long Island police station, and most notoriously, from a schoolyard tree in Louisiana. Watch nooses hang and a cross burn »
Much of the marchers' frustration stems from the "Jena 6" case in Jena, Louisiana. Nooses were hung from an oak tree at a high school there last year. The federal government did not prosecute the three white teens responsible.
"It was impossible under federal law as written today for us to go after these particular juveniles," Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for western Louisiana, told a congressional panel.
The noose incident at Jena was the beginning of months of racial tension that included the beating of a white student in December, allegedly by six black classmates. Two months ago, 15,000 to 20,000 protesters, including Sharpton and King, descended on Jena -- a town of about 3,000 -- to protest how authorities handled the cases of the six charged in that beating.
"There's Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said Friday. "Which is why you saw thousands of us come to Jena and why you see thousands of us come now.
"No one has the ability to get people to come on a cold day like this if people weren't feeling that they have been disenfranchised and been treated unfairly. Clearly, Jena resonates because people are familiar with the Jenas in their areas."
Prosecutors say that in order to file federal hate-crime charges, they must find that the crime was motivated by race, religion, or ethnicity and that it interfered with a federally protected right.
"There have been many reports of nooses discovered in workplaces and near schools and outside the homes of African-Americans across the country," Lisa Krigsten, counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, acknowledged Wednesday in a conference call.
"The Justice Department is committed to addressing these recent incidents, racially motivated threats and acts of violence," she said. "There is no question that hanging a noose is a powerful symbol of hate and racially motivated violence. It has no place in the great country we live in."
Rep. Artur Davis, D- Alabama, and others involved in Friday's rally say the Department of Justice charged 22 people last year with hate crimes, compared with 76 people 10 years ago.
"The numbers weren't great in the Reno years. They are outright abysmal now," Davis said, referring to the 1993-2001 tenure of Attorney General Janet Reno.
"We either need stronger laws or we need a more aggressive commitment from the Department of Justice," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/16/justice.rally/index.html
"We're here to say the federal government has a responsibility," the Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN. "Since the Justice Department would not come to the people, today we're bringing the people to the Justice Department."
Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and members of Sharpton's National Action Network are leading a midday Friday "March on Hate Crimes" from Freedom Plaza to the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington.
Once they complete the five-block walk, the demonstrators plan to march around the building seven times, in an apparent allusion to the biblical story of the fall of Jericho.
The past year and a half has seen many reports of incidents involving nooses -- hung from the office door of an Ivy League professor, the basement locker room of a Long Island police station, and most notoriously, from a schoolyard tree in Louisiana. Watch nooses hang and a cross burn »
Much of the marchers' frustration stems from the "Jena 6" case in Jena, Louisiana. Nooses were hung from an oak tree at a high school there last year. The federal government did not prosecute the three white teens responsible.
"It was impossible under federal law as written today for us to go after these particular juveniles," Donald Washington, U.S. attorney for western Louisiana, told a congressional panel.
The noose incident at Jena was the beginning of months of racial tension that included the beating of a white student in December, allegedly by six black classmates. Two months ago, 15,000 to 20,000 protesters, including Sharpton and King, descended on Jena -- a town of about 3,000 -- to protest how authorities handled the cases of the six charged in that beating.
"There's Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said Friday. "Which is why you saw thousands of us come to Jena and why you see thousands of us come now.
"No one has the ability to get people to come on a cold day like this if people weren't feeling that they have been disenfranchised and been treated unfairly. Clearly, Jena resonates because people are familiar with the Jenas in their areas."
Prosecutors say that in order to file federal hate-crime charges, they must find that the crime was motivated by race, religion, or ethnicity and that it interfered with a federally protected right.
"There have been many reports of nooses discovered in workplaces and near schools and outside the homes of African-Americans across the country," Lisa Krigsten, counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, acknowledged Wednesday in a conference call.
"The Justice Department is committed to addressing these recent incidents, racially motivated threats and acts of violence," she said. "There is no question that hanging a noose is a powerful symbol of hate and racially motivated violence. It has no place in the great country we live in."
Rep. Artur Davis, D- Alabama, and others involved in Friday's rally say the Department of Justice charged 22 people last year with hate crimes, compared with 76 people 10 years ago.
"The numbers weren't great in the Reno years. They are outright abysmal now," Davis said, referring to the 1993-2001 tenure of Attorney General Janet Reno.
"We either need stronger laws or we need a more aggressive commitment from the Department of Justice," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/16/justice.rally/index.html