CBC Discusses Schip and the Jena Six

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlelady for her very gracious remarks and kind words. To the gentlelady who remarked that I first knew her when I was Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I must say to her that it gave me special personal pride to see her elected to the Congress, much more to see her become the first African American woman on the Ways and Means Committee, and she just did us proud again.

The gentlelady from Ohio has applied her distinguished career in the law to reminding the prosecutor what his first obligation is, and that is to do justice. That's why the prosecutor is given such discretion. He often doesn't prosecute, or he thinks of other things that should be done. The onus is on him.

And I found your remarks especially important in light of the fact that after what we've seen in Jena has left us to just get to one side or the other, and that's not solving the problem either.

I want to thank the gentlelady from Michigan, who is the Chair of our caucus, for delegating to you this responsibility and for her great leadership, especially in this week of the Congressional Black Caucus events where we will be discussing public policy and trying, as a group of African Americans, to contribute not only to the Congress, but to our Nation.

If the lady will, I would like to comment on both issues. I decided that the issue, the consciousness on the issue, had been raised and no words that I could say could further raise them.

But my consciousness was raised when 50,000 people went to Jena, led by young people. Now understand, yes, there were civil rights leaders here, but not since I was a kid in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee did I see a demonstration that was generally led by young people. The organized Civil Rights Movement played its part. But nobody who looked at those television pictures can have any doubt about who organized this extraordinary demonstration. And look what it was. It was a peaceful protest in the tradition of the peaceful nonviolent protests of the 1960s and '70s.

These kids, mostly college and high school youngsters, who identified clearly with the Jena Six of their age, came to Louisiana essentially to say that adults had lost control of their town and of their society. I went and looked for what has happened, and I want to say a few words about what has happened that makes me say that adults lost control.

This event that we all know about under the tree began almost a year ago. Well, in August. Well, August 2006, as a matter of fact. Now we're already in, so that's more than a year ago. Where, interestingly, these students went and asked permission to sit under a tree. Everything thereafter, it seems to me, falls squarely on the shoulders of the adults. Here the children are asking for permission. What do kids usually do when they see a shady spot? And that's what it was, apparently, one of the few shady spots close to the school has been preempted by people of a certain color. Well, you know, the way in which children go to school and college today, tragically, in separate groups, instead of going over and simply starting a fight or simply sitting under the tree, they asked permission.

Mr. Speaker, the noose, one can argue about whether the three nooses should have resulted in expulsion or not. For myself, particularly if there's only one high school, I'm not for expelling anybody. I'm for using the good offices of the adults to try to keep from doing that. And I doubt if there was more than one high school in Jena.

But the fact is that, whether or not the kids knew what the three nooses meant, once that word reached adults, white and black, they knew for sure. And without recounting all of the events, it appears that many opportunities to try to solve this issue were lost because those in charge of the town refused to listen.

How could a prosecutor, the prosecutor of which the gentlelady spoke, have essentially used the threatening language about the stroke of a pen and making your lives disappear after a school assembly? The school assembly was the right thing to do.

But I say to the Chair of tonight's event, where is the civil rights unit of the Justice Department?

After more than a year with this thing heating up, they still have, so far as I know, this unit that does not engage in law enforcement but does help troubled communities. This is a small town. They perhaps don't have the resources or the expertise to know what to do. But this school has gone through four lockdowns over this event; the local newspaper suggesting that the parents who tried to raise the issue at a school board meeting soon thereafter and were denied were the cause of the unrest. And there has been unrest.

The expulsion hearing for hanging the nooses becomes an issue not simply because that was not considered enough of a punishment. That's arguable. I don't want to stand here and say what was the proper punishment. It's because people look at the fact that that was mitigated to a few days and compare it to the almost instant expulsion of the black kids following a fight.

I don't regard these two things as the same. But I say to you that the reason that this appearance of unequal justice heated up is because after the expulsion was overturned to a few days' suspension, the adults did not, in fact, react to the mounting tension in the school, and it has mounted for over a year.

When the parents of the black students weren't allowed to speak at the school board meeting, they apparently went a second time and were allowed to speak, but, quote, not about the noose issue. There's nobody in Jena, and I can forgive them that, they're small-town folks, who understood that this was mounting, and if you don't get to talk it out, if you don't have small groups, if you don't have somebody helping you, it's just going to continue to mount.

Disciplinary issues continue all around this separate incident. We have incidents of young blacks being attacked by whites in the town, all around this incident without anybody, months later, heating up, incident after incident, all going back to the nooses; gun pulled on some black kids, not because they were involved with the whites who pulled the gun, but in retaliation for a prior incident. So here you have retaliation going and people going after whoever is not of their color.

And the teachers begging for somebody to do something over and over again. The recounting of what happened for a full year says the teachers are saying, for goodness sakes, help us out. We see mounting tension in this school. We had, a few months ago, a dozen teachers threatening a ``sick out'' if discipline was not restored in the school. And that's when the prosecutor comes forward and ups the charges of the six boys to attempted second-degree murder. That was his response to mounting racial tension in a school.

The prosecutor, I want to suggest to the gentlelady from Ohio, I believe, is in violation of Louisiana rules of professional conduct, just as the prosecutor was in violation of the North Carolina rules in the infamous case involving the woman who accused the Duke players of rape. This prosecutor has done the very same thing. He has gone before the press and spoken in such a way that I believe he should be investigated by his own under Louisiana rules of professional conduct. And I believe and call upon the Louisiana Bar Association to do so.

But above all, I'm calling this evening on the Justice Department to lend its mediation resources to this poor little town where both the blacks and the whites are greatly in need of outside assistance. This kind of racial tension has built up over time, not only in this community, but I think young people around the country see Jena as emblematic of the abuses, overcharging in the criminal justice system.

Just as this young man who's being held in jail without bail may have been, and indeed did, if, in fact, he is found guilty now, and I do not know if he has yet been found guilty as a juvenile. The matter was thrown out when they wanted to prosecute him as adult.

If he has engaged in that violence, you will not find anybody in the Congressional Black Caucus or in this Congress saying violence was the appropriate response, given the fact that you have not been appropriately responded to on the three nooses. That, you won't find us saying.

What you'll find us saying is that every adult knew what maybe kids do not know, what three nooses have to have meant to these kids' parents and to these kids. And, Mr. Speaker, the adults in Jena allowed this to build up; beyond the adults, the Justice Department, who would have been in touch with these incidents.

They are charged to be in touch with these incidents over the last year. They did not move in and I call upon them to do so now.

Ms. NORTON. Just to respond to that and just say a few words about SCHIP, what you say is so important. Also, the power of the prosecutor, we have seen him send Members of Congress to jail. You don't need to tell him much. But above all, what the prosecutor needs to know is this is not decades ago when a prosecutor approaching black people got them to fear and trembling. These are kids. This is 2007. That was seen as a threat, and it didn't do the job. In fact, it upped the ante, and it was irresponsible conduct because he should have been aware of how his words would have been perceived. And if anything, he needed to cool it down, perhaps to say the law is here to do his job if you don't do yours, but certainly that kind of threat had the opposite effect on teens.

Maybe on you and me, we might have said, well, wait a minute, we had better stop here. But these are kids who had spent a full year fighting each other anyway. And, again, where is it going to come to an end? The youngster who remains in jail remains there. We don't know what is going to happen to him. It seems to me the only way to bring it to an end is to bring in outside forces to try to mediate this situation.

I want to say a word about SCHIP in light of the allegation that many of us simply want to give high earners access to this bill to provide health benefits for children above the normal poverty line. And the figure has been cited in some jurisdictions you can make $60,000 or $80,000 a year. This needs to be explained to the American people. Yes, there may be some of us who see it as a way to get universal health care, but I will tell you most of us don't see it that way. The reason we have gone to children is because we have failed utterly and know we will continue to fail in the foreseeable future to get universal child care. And so the whole point of the State health bill was to say at least let's do it for children. And the notion of doing it for people with high income needs to be explained.

Poverty benefits are not adjusted for the cost of living in particular places. That has enormous hardship. But its hardship when it comes to health costs cannot be overemphasized because of differences in the cost of living and inflationary rise of health care in particular. Health care inflation is far greater than any other kind of inflation in the society. So you are faced in large cities, for example, with people who can't possibly afford even health care provided by their employer because the cost of living in the high-cost place where they live is such that they can barely afford to live there. So what is $61,000 in one place is not nearly what it is in a small town someplace else.

I want to point that out because these high-cost-of-living regions are faced with a terrible dilemma, that those children who will be without health care are in a large number and the salaries as seen nationwide do not explain why.

I looked at what were these places. These places in order of highest, the top three, to lowest are Hawaii, number one; California, number two; and the District of Columbia region, the national capital region, number three.

Is anybody surprised? People can't even afford to live in the District of Columbia anymore because of the cost of living.

New York must be here coming up. I am just looking down the list.

But essentially when you consider, yes, there is some enhanced benefit from the Federal Government, but what these jurisdictions have said is that the situation has become so bad after our investigations for certain people who are, yes, above the Federal limit that we believe that hundreds of thousands of children will, in fact, be without health care unless we move. And I am astounded by the number of States that believe this, and I am chagrinned that we see a preemptive strike by the Bush administration to, in fact, despite what we have passed, keep States from bringing in, up to a certain limit, certain families who have been priced out of health care in their communities.

So I call upon Americans, as they read about what we are trying to do here, to understand what we are really trying to do here, to make sure that when we say we are covering all children who need health care and could not otherwise get it, we mean that and no more.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

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