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

Mr. WD mister.wd at gmail.com
Sun Sep 23 20:28:21 PDT 2007


On 9/23/07, Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:


> If anything, the Jena mobilization, like the pro-immigration protests,
> show how powerful self-interest can be in mobilizing people quickly and
> exponentially.

That is undoubtedly true. But somehow the outrage about what's going on in Jena managed to be channelled in an extraordinarily effective manner. What happened? There have been plenty of equally appalling instances of blatant discrimination against African Americans in recent years. What's special about Jena? There are two possibilities (neither of which is mutually exclusive) 1) the Jena 6 have touched a nerve that other cases simply have not -- but if so, why?. 2) The Jena organizers just did an incredible job -- did they figure something out that the rest of us need to learn? I'd like to know!
:-)


> 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.

Certainly there are important differences, but they aren't apples and oranges either. I was at the FTAA protests in Miami and I remember them vividly because that was the first time I attended a protest where the cops were seriously beating the shit out of people. (It was an important development in the formation of my political consciousness. After all, it is one thing to understand state violence in theory and quite another to see state violence firsthand.)

Anyway, as far as I am concerned, Miami was a fucking turkey shoot for the cops. The demonstrations accomplished next to nothing -- barely receiving any coverage of any kind in the national media, despite the extraordinary police brutality. Contrast that with Jena, which was also large (with a lot of people traveling in), but far more peaceful, few or no arrests, and very well covered in the national media (and with relative sympathy to boot!).

Sure, racism is far more immediate for many people than trade policy, but what happened in Jena was actually pretty complex and involved several different incidents and confrontations before the fight that resulted in the charges against the Jena 6. This story must have been told in a way that really resonated with folks -- it'd be worthwhile to investigate why.


> 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.

Yep. And this raises the question: what makes African American independent media more effective than other independent media? Maybe it's something that would work in other communities.


> 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.

The Jena protest and the immigration rallies last year were both highly successful -- far more successful than any other mass protests in recent years, IMO. The temptation is to assume that there's little other activists can learn from the Jena protests or the immigration rallies because racism and immigration policy have a far more direct impact on many people's daily lives than, say, the war in Iraq. Maybe, but I doubt it. Self-interest is a (big) part of the story, but there is also clearly some great organizing going on in the African American and Latino communities these days.

-WD

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