[lbo-talk] [Fwd: Jena Ignites a Movement: Report from Yesterday's Demonstration in Jena, Louisiana]

[Chuck]

Mr. WD wrote:
> On 9/22/07, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>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."
> 
> 
> I first heard about Jena at an NLG meeting in New Orleans in mid-July.
>  Since then, this story has exploded.  The success of the largely
> African American demonstrations in Jena (which were far more
> successful, IMO, than, e.g., the bloody, largely white FTAA protests
> in Miami in 2003) is great news because it shows that a decentralized
> network can produce something really huge in a relatively short period
> of time.
> 
> We would do well to study the Jena organizers' example carefully:
> their organizing strategy sounds similar to what the organizers of the
> immigrants' rights rallies did last year.  My understanding is that
> radio played a key role in the immigrants' rights rallies, and it
> sounds like it did w/ Jena too.
> 
> Has anyone done a study on exactly how these organizers work?  If not,
> it seems to me someone needs to.

If anything, the Jena mobilization, like the pro-immigration protests, 
show how powerful self-interest can be in mobilizing people quickly and 
exponentially. Comparing Jena to the anti-FTAA protests in Miami is a 
bit unfair, since the FTAA is a more abstract economic issue for most 
Americans whereas racism is a day-to-day problem for many people. I 
didn't attend the Miami protests, bt I think they were pretty successful 
given the level of police repression and the fact that Miami is far away 
from where the anti-corporate left lives in the U.S.

A few hours ago I talked with a friend who is still in Jena, or at least 
walking on some highway outside of Jena. She told me that the number of 
people in Jena for the protest overwhelmed the town. The protesters were 
overwhelmingly African-American--she says that is was very easy for her 
to find a white friend from NOLA in the crowd.

She says that the feeling in the crowd, especially among the speakers, 
was that the mobilization was well organized and depended heavily on 
African-American independent media to get the word out.

It is remarkable that the Jena mobilization was so decentralized. WD 
asks a good question about how this group of organizers worked. I 
suspect that some of it had to do with being able to organize buses 
quickly. It would be interesting to know how the organizers used their 
own networks and tied that in with what local media were doing to 
publicize the situation.

On a more disgusting note, I'm really bummed that neo-fascist asshat 
Bill White is using this situation to gain national publicity for his 
ugly racist views. He may not get a visit from the FBI, but I suspect 
that the people in Roanoke, VA will make life difficult for him.

Chuck