www.terryhowcott.com

Shaquanda Cotton is the 14 year old girl in Paris, Texas who African American Opinion reports has been sentenced to seven (7) years in prison for shoving a White hall monitor in school.

Just a few months earlier, a White girl was convicted and sentenced to probation for burning her family's house down to the ground.

That actually would be the appropriate sentence for a child's crime, along with the appropriate social services she would need - which only shines a bright ray of light on the fact that any person who would sentence a 14 year old girl go to prison for a shove is certifiably mentally ill - and should be immediately relieved of his or her duties.

You'll recall we saw similar judiciary hostility manifested in the sentence against Jessica Hall after her ice tossing incident.

In the meantime, Shaquanda who has no criminal record, and has attempted suicide three times as a result of being held in an institution that also houses repeat offenders (along with throngs of political prisoners).

I wonder what if 100,000 justice-seeking folk went down to Texas and just shoved somebody. Would they have enough jail space for all of us? That is moreless a rhetorical question given American Express and other "mainstsream" corporations are so well invested, committed to and benefiting from a culture of widespread prison construction and administration. Truthfully, we all know they could prop a new prison up in a matter of weeks to accomodate us all.

This is Texan "criminal justice" folks, and how things are being run down there - with all of their death "penalty" murders, a Texas connected Presidential hanging of Sadaam Hussein, and now 14 year old Ms. Cotton sits in a prison cell.

The kind of racist, oppressive climate that would convict and sentence this girl to prison for a shove is the same stressful environment that would compel a little sister to want to knock somebody down in the first place.

That landscape would have to be like a bigotry laden pressure cooker, making Texas either a hot breeding ground for Black folk who are unhappy and docile - willing to receive - or "maladjusted" (as Dr. Cornel West so aptly puts it) and resistant."

Here we likely have a future Queen Cotton who may have been just fed up enough (with who knows what) to not accept the status quo as it was dictated to her.

There should be a cut off of all vacations to Texas this Spring and Summer, a call off of all Black and Brown conventions, conferences and business, shopping and any influx of human rights monies until Shaquanda is back home with her Grandmother.

Texas should let that girl out of there immediately AND they should be required to pay for her mental health support upon her release - or we should leave them alone to eat their own Texas Toast.

Until Shaquanda is healthy, happy and with a new puppy, Texas should be made into an island unto itself.

Here is another article regarding Shaquanda that tells of this whole matter being retaliation against her Mother for continually and effectively accusing the school of racist practices. This is said to be "a signal" to Black people in Texas.

GET That Girl Out of There!

Freeshaquandacotton.blogspot.com

Here are a few more suggestions:

Write the Texas Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus
and tell them you're cancelling your vacation to Texas.

Same With Dallas
Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau

Houston, Too
Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau

Student NAACP at Texas A & M

SIXTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LIBRARIANS

Convention August 2-5, Fort Worth, Texas

African American Librarians

Also, why not call on Oprah (and Gayle) at Oprah.com ("Your leading source for information about love, live, self . . . ")

Just to be clear, here is a google search for "racism and texas". This is not at all to separate Texas racism from the rest of the confounded racist, sexist bigoted and-or homophobic nation.

Copyright © Terry Howcott, 2007

UPDATE I:

Accusations now emerge that charges against Shaquanda Cotton relate with her Mother's repeated insistance that handling of her daughter in the school system was racist. Of course repeated warnings during the last Presidential election made it clear: to avoid the packing in of conservative judges across the country it was important to by any means necessary keep George W. Bush out of office. But, many a Black minister across the country were more hyperactive about whether same sex couples might marry, than they were about civil rights.

Now of course, through the courts - all Black folk - regardless of our attractional orientation are being sent stunning and increasing messages that amount to the affect of "The N Word" in ACTION, and will require a movement that transcends smoke and mirror movements to chastize mere speech - or the verbalization of a term to repair the damage.

JUDGE IN SHAQUANDA COTTON'S CASE:

M.C. Superville Jr., Lamar County Judge
119 N. Main
Paris, Texas 75460
PHONE: (903) 737 2411
FAX: (903) 785 3858

Judge_Superville@co.lamar.tx.us

TO SOME IN PARIS, SINISTER PAST IS BACK IN TEXAS

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

Published March 12, 2007

PARIS, Texas -- The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.

There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.

Brenda Cherry, a local civil rights activist, can see the fairgrounds from the front yard of her modest home, in the heart of the "black" side of this starkly segregated town of 26,000. And lately, Cherry says, she's begun to wonder whether the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself "the best small town in Texas."

"Some of the things that happen here would not happen if we were in Dallas or Houston," Cherry said. "They happen because we are in this closed town. I compare it to 1930s."

There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.

The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.

Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.

"All Shaquanda did was grab somebody and she will be in jail for 5 or 6 years?" said Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who is president of the state NAACP branch. "It's like they are sending a signal to black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."

The Tribune generally does not identify criminal suspects younger than age 17, but is doing so in this case because the girl and her family have chosen to go public with their story.

None of the officials involved in Shaquanda's case, including the local prosecutor, the judge and Paris school district administrators, would agree to speak about their handling of it, citing a court appeal under way.

But the teen's defenders assert that long before the September 2005 shoving incident, Paris school officials targeted Shaquanda for scrutiny because her mother had frequently accused school officials of racism.

Retaliation alleged

"Shaquanda started getting written up a lot after her mother became involved in a protest march in front of a school," said Sharon Reynerson, an attorney with Lone Star Legal Aid, who has represented Shaquanda during challenges to several of the disciplinary citations she received. "Some of the write-ups weren't fair to her or accurate, so we felt like we had to challenge each one to get the whole story."

Among the write-ups Shaquanda received, according to Reynerson, were citations for wearing a skirt that was an inch too short, pouring too much paint into a cup during an art class and defacing a desk that school officials later conceded bore no signs of damage.

Shaquanda's mother, Creola Cotton, does not dispute that her daughter can behave impulsively and was sometimes guilty of tardiness or speaking out of turn at school--behaviors that she said were manifestations of Shaquanda's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for which the teen was taking prescription medication.

Nor does Shaquanda herself deny that she pushed the hall monitor after the teacher's aide refused her permission to enter the school before the morning bell--although Shaquanda maintains that she was supposed to have been allowed to visit the school nurse to take her medication, and that the teacher's aide pushed her first.

But Cherry alleges that Shaquanda's frequent disciplinary write-ups, and the insistence of school officials at her trial that she deserved prison rather than probation for the shoving incident, fits in a larger pattern of systemic discrimination against black students in the Paris Independent School District.

In the past five years, black parents have filed at least a dozen discrimination complaints against the school district with the federal Education Department, asserting that their children, who constitute 40 percent of the district's nearly 4,000 students, were singled out for excessive discipline.

UPDATE II

Temple3 Blog makes the important business point that "former Green Bay Packer great, Willie Day should have much to say when he "sits down at the board meeting" at Paris, Texas' Sara Lee company which provides over 600 jobs to residents there. After all, "Nobody Doesn't Like Sara Lee."

UPDATE III

I vow to be more prepared when opportunities such as this come my way. Ms. Shaquanda Cotton and others like her deserve our very best efforts, but here is an interview with the "Connect The Dots" program with host Minister Robert Muhammad, KPFT Radio in Houston that works to "Keep Free Speech Alive." Thank you to Minister Robert Muhammad and to Producer Akua Holt for the opportunity.

Note the opening music to this show says, "women need a strong Black man." Our collective needs are not made clear in that piece. Black men need strong Black women and men, and Black women need strong Black men and women.

The interview is about halfway into the MP3, but I urge you to listen to this whole show as Mr. Muhammad does a great job throughout the show on a variety of important topics.

KPFT Interview Re: Ms. Cotton

UPDATE IV

CONGRATULATIONS to all of us who have written the blogs and the letters, debated, agitated, spread the word, hoped, wished or prayed for the release of Shaquanda Cotton.

TRIBUNE UPDATE

Girl in Texas prison controversy to go free, lawmaker says

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 30, 2007, 1:09 PM CDT

HOUSTON -- Shaquanda Cotton, the teenage black girl in the small east Texas town of Paris who was sent to prison for up to seven years for shoving a teacher's aide, will be freed soon, a senior Texas legislator confirmed today.

"She is going to be freed, I know that for a fact, either today or sometime next week," state Rep. Harold Dutton, chairman of the Texas legislature's juvenile justice committee, told the Tribune. "I told [prison officials] I wanted her out of there immediately. When I learned about this case, I thought, this case just looks so bad and smells so bad it made me hurt."

Shaquanda, now 15, had no prior criminal record when she was incarcerated a year ago at a Texas Youth Commission prison, under an indeterminate sentence that could last until her 21st birthday.

Her case rose to national prominence and became the focus of ongoing civil rights protests following a March 12 Tribune story that detailed how a 14-year-old white girl convicted of the more serious crime of arson was sentenced to probation by the same judge.

Shaquanda's case occurred against a backdrop of persistent allegations of racial discrimination inside the Paris public schools—allegations that are the subject of an ongoing probe by the U.S. Department of Education to determine whether black students in the district are disciplined more harshly than whites.

Two other sources—an official of the Texas Youth Commission and a civil rights lawyer who has taken up Shaquanda's case—also confirmed today that Shaquanda's release from the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex in Brownwood, Texas, was being hastily arranged. Neither source agreed to be identified because the process was still under way.

"I'm beside myself, I really am, anticipating her coming home," said Shaquanda's mother, Creola Cotton. "Dutton's office called me yesterday and said they were fixing to expedite her out. Now I'm just waiting by the phone."

Since she's been in prison, Shaquanda has grown despondent and tried to commit suicide. Her sentence, which ultimately is up to the discretion of prison officials, has twice been extended, first because she would not admit her guilt as required by prison regulations and then because she was found with "contraband" in her cell—an extra pair of socks.

Those sentence extensions drew the attention of Jay Kimbrough, who was confirmed by the Texas Senate on Thursday as conservator of the youth prison system, which has been rocked by a sex scandal over allegations that guards and administrators coerced youthful inmates for sex.

Kimbrough said last week that he was convening a special committee to examine the sentences of all 4,700 youths in Texas juvenile prisons to determine how many might have had their sentences arbitrarily extended by prison authorities—and that Shaquanda's was the first case he intended to review.

Since the Tribune's first story about Shaquanda, her story has been circulated on more than 400 Internet blogs and been featured in newspapers and radio and TV reports across the country. Two protests demanding her release were held in Paris and a third, to be led by Rev. Al Sharpton, was scheduled for next Tuesday.

Even before news of Shaquanda's impending release broke today, the Lamar County District Attorney's office, which prosecuted her and pressed for her to be sent to prison for up to seven years, made an abrupt turnaround and said the youth had served enough time and ought to be freed.

"Let her out of TYC," said Allan Hubbard, spokesman for Lamar County District Atty. Gary Young. "Hell, she's done a year for pushing a teacher. That's too long."

Hubbard also backed away from claims he and Young made earlier this week in numerous media interviews that the judge in the case, Lamar County Judge Chuck Supeville, had had no choice but to send the youth to prison because her mother had testified that she would not cooperate with probation officials had the judge sentenced her to probation.

On Thursday, Young's official Web site contained this assertion: "This juvenile's mother (Creola Cotton) told the judge she would not comply with conditions of probation."

But a review of the full court transcript shows no such testimony. In fact, Creola Cotton repeatedly answered "yes" when asked in court whether she would comply with any conditions of probation that the judge might impose.

Today, after an inquiry about this discrepancy by the Tribune, the district attorney's Web site was altered to read: "Through her actions of non-cooperation, Ms. Cotton told the judge she would not comply with conditions of probation."

hwitt@tribune.com

Story at Chicago Tribune

Creola Cotton Speaks

Creola Cotton With NPR

Creola Cotton With NPR

Al Sharpton and Bill Maher

Shaquanda Cotton Released

Gwen Ifill Calls Out Russert, Brooks Re: Silence On Imus

Gwen Ifill on Imusinuburdination

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Alert: November 11, 2007

Shaquanda Cotton has been released from jail. However, the following alert and website makes clear the fight for what is right and appropriate in Shaquanda's case is not by any means over.

They say in part:

"On July 6, 2007 a court in Texarkana, Texas denied the people’s appeal of her conviction, giving the state the legal right to put her back behind bars.

Part of the fundamental struggle her family and supporters have been making is that Shaquanda is completely exonerated of any charges and her conviction be overturned."

Visit this site dedicated to the absolute exoneration of Shaquanda Cotton at HandsoffShaquanda.org.

Take a moment and lend your great name to the Shaquanda Cotton online petition here at this link.

It's over only after it's over.