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NOTE: I followed the coverage of the Jena demonstrations--very inspiring! Even CNN
couldn't ignore it and gave extensive coverage. I am, however, deeply disappointed that
white activists appear to have ignored this call for action. The "wars AT HOME"
on people of color and the poor are just as REAL and DEVASTATING as is the US
war/occupation on Iraq. In fact, the thee are all linked and its overdue for white
progressives to recognize that and take action. The counter-military recruitment
movement---which TARGETS youth of color and low income youth to be killers and casualties
for Empire would be one way to link all these wars. Lydia Howell
Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine , a journal of grassroots resistance. His May 9, 2007 article from Jena was one of the first to bring the case to a national audience.
*Jena Ignites a Movement*
By Jordan Flaherty
Six courageous families in the small Louisiana town of Jena sent out a
call for justice that has now been amplified around the world.
Yesterday's mass protests in Jena were unlike anything I have seen in
my life, a beautiful and enormous outpouring of energy and outrage that
may have the potential to ignite a movement.
The basic facts of the case are by now widely known. In this *85% white*
town, where the high *school yard was segregated by race*, a Black student
asked to sit under a tree that had been reserved for white students
only. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree. The white
students who hung the nooses received only a mnor punishment, and more
importantly, no one in the white power structure of LaSalle Parish,
where Jena is located, seemed to take the nooses seriously as racial
incident. * There were no lectures to the students on the meaning of the
nooses, or the legacy of racism,*_ slavery and Jim Crow in the rural
south._* Instead, *_the Parish's district attorney told protesting Black
students that he could take away their lives, "with a stroke of my
pen."_ _He then proceeded to attempt to do just that,_* charging six
students with attempted murder after a schoolyard fight later that year.*
*In the nine months since their children were charged with attempted
murder, the family members of the Jena Six organized* meetings, hosted
rallies, sent out press releases and letters and made phone calls --
whatever they could think of. They were determined to not let this
stand. For months, they stood nearly alone, accompanied by solidarity
visits from activists from nearby towns and cities in Louisiana and
Texas. Many of their* friends and neighbors were afraid to speak out,
and some reported having their jobs threatened*. *One white couple who
spoke out said they felt pressured to leave town.* But, in the face of
what seemed like overwhelming obstacles, and with no organizing
experience or friends in high places, the people of Jena continued to
struggle. After months of silence from the media and from mainstream
civil rights organizations, the first media stories began appearing,
which were widely forwarded by mail, and amplified by homemade videos.
After Mychal Bell's conviction at the end of June, and stories on
Democracy Now and in the Final Call newspaper, support started growing
exponentially, with hundreds of letters bringing tens of thousands of
dollars in donations. By September, it became a movement that even the
corporate media could not ignore.
At 5:00am, the buses were already arriving. A *full bus from Chicago*
emptied out, some people brushing their teeth as they stepped into the
slightly cold pre-dawn air. They seemed exhausted, but also charged
and energized. Next came buses from *Baton Rouge, Los Angeles and
Philadelphia. * By 7:00am, reports were coming in that *hundreds of buses
were lined up outside of town, *some having been briefly prevented by
State police from entering. Meanwhile, hundreds of people, from c*ars
and buses and motorcycles*, were pouring into Jena, while many thousands
more were gathering in the streets outside the Jena courthouse. As
simultaneous rallies began in the two locations, thousands of more
people streamed into the city. *By 9:00am, there were, by some
estimates, up to 50,000 people in this town of 2,500.* Almost every
business in town was shut down, many roads were closed by police
checkpoints, and a sea of protest filled the city for miles.
This demonstration was not initiated by any one national organization,
and there was little coordination between some of the major
organizations involved. * The initial call came from the families*
themselves, and most people had heard about the demonstration through
*local Black radio stations*, _especially on syndicated shows like the
Michael Baisden and Steve Harvey shows, as well as through blogs and
youtube _(one activist-made youtube video, recommended by Baisden, has
already been seen well over a million times) as well as on social
networking sites like myspace. As Howard Witt has pointed out in the
Chicago Tribune, "Jackson, *Sharpton and other big-name civil rights
figures, far from leading this movement, have had to scramble to catch
up. So, too, has the national media,* which has only recently noticed a
story that has been agitating many black Americans for months."
This decentralization was beautiful, although sometimes chaotic. As
thousands gathered at the rally at the ball field, which was sponsored
by the NAACP, thousands more demonstrators marched from the courthouse
to the Jena High School, and tens of thousands continued to arrive and
fill the streets around downtown Jena. Because this movement was
without central leadership, there were many agendas, and also some
confusion, as people were unsure when the march began, or if there was
a march, and also unsure about parallel events, such as an afternoon
hiphop concert at the ball field, which was mostly attended by people
from the local community. People seemed unconcerned about the lack of
clarity, however, and marched on their own schedule, which led to a
more democratic feel to the day, *unlike the more controlled, and
sometimes disempowering, marches that some mainstream groups have
organized in the past.*
The t-shirts on display reflected the lack of central control -- every
community had made their own t-shirt, literally hundreds of variations
on the theme of Free The Jena Six, many personalized to reflect their
school or community. Hours of speakers delivered messages of
solidarity and calls to action, from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to
performers such as Mos Def and Sunni Patterson, while the enormous
crowds marched and chanted, and also simply basked in a truly historic
outpouring of activism. * Participants varied from children and teens at
their first demonstration to civil rights movement veterans. * Many
people who had never before been to a demonstration ended up organizing
a delegation or booking a bus for this journey.
While the vast majority of the white community of Jena chose to stay
either indoors or out of town, hundreds of Black Jena residents proudly
displayed their "Free The Jena Six" shirts, and continued to gather in
the ball field hours after most out of town visitors had left. *White
activists from across the US also largely stayed away from this
historic event -- perhaps 1 to 3 percent of the crowd was white*, *in what
amounts to a disturbing silence from the white left and liberals.* *This
silence indicates that the US Left is divided by race in many of the
same ways this country is.*
*Yesterday's march, however, was not about division. It was a
generational moment -- the kind of watershed event that could signal a
turning point in our movements*. But what does the gigantic crowd in
Jena mean? For some supporters, it felt like a fulfillment of those
months that the families stood alone -- a moment where the world stood
with them, and the power structure backed down. In the last week
Mychal Bell's convictions have been overturned, and most of the other
students saw their charges lessened. Yesterday was also a moment for
grassroots independent media, who built this story, and kept it alive
until the 24 hour news channels could no longer ignore it. It was a
moment for historically black colleges and universities to shine -
*Student activists organized bus convoys* -- five or more buses arrived
from many southern schools - which were quickly filled by a broad range
of students.
Yesterday was a* moment for the unaffiliated left,* for people everywhere
concerned about a criminal justice system that has locked up two
million and keeps growing. *It was a moment for those* concerned about
school systems in the US, and especially the policing of our schools,
what activists have called the School to Prison Pipeline. * It was a
moment for those* that feel that the US has still not dealt with our
history of slavery and Jim Crow, and our present realities of white
supremacy. Perhaps that is where the power in yesterday's
demonstration lies;* if this* undirected and uncontrolled outrage can be
directed towards real societal change, *if outrages* like Jena can
finally bring about the conversation on race in this country that we
were promised after Katrina,* if this *united movement to support these
six kids can show that we can unite for justice and win, then Jena will
truly have been a victory.
As writer Andre Banks asked yesterday,* "What* would happen if every
person who wore a t-shirt today or handed out a flyer or wrote a blog
post woke up tomorrow and looked for the Mychal Bell in their own
backyard? He, or she, won't be hard to find. *What *if our outrage,
today directed at the small Louisiana town of Jena, extended to
parallel injustices in Detroit or Cincinnati or Sacramento or Miami?
*What* if we viewed this mobilization not as the end of a successful,
innovative campaign, but as the moment that catalyzes us into broader
and deeper action in every place where we are?"* If this happens, we can
say that it all began with six families in Jena, Louisiana, who refused
to stay silent.*
[Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine , a journal of
grassroots resistance. His May 9, 2007 article from Jena was one of
the first to bring the case to a national audience. His previous
articles from Jena are online at http://www.leftturn.org. To contact
Jordan, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/secondlines. ]
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