Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 6 • December 2007-January 2008

The Jena Six case
"Igniting a civil rights renewal"

by Monica Hill

Protesters march to Jena High School on Sept. 20, 2007. Thousands of chanting demonstrators filled the streets of the Louisiana town. Credit: Frank Franklin / AP

A tremendous outpouring of people - estimated to be as many as 100,000 - marched on Sept. 20 in Jena, La., against racist segregation, the judicial railroading of young African American men, and the chilling revival of a familiar symbol of terror, the lynching noose.

Those tens of thousands of protesters mark a turn toward a new civil rights upsurge that has already spread far beyond Jena and has the potential to revolutionize social relations in this country.

The long shadow of Jim Crow. In the U.S., the meaning of a noose is clear. Following the Civil War, white supremacist mobs hanged and burned alive thousands of Black Americans. Slavery was replaced in the South by forced segregation and a police state; repressive inequality for African Americans was the standard everywhere else in the U.S.

Over the next hundred years, these conditions changed little in Jena, a small, rural, predominantly white town. In September 2006, a challenge to segregation at Jena High School was answered with three nooses hung from a tree near the building. Physical attacks on Blacks brought only misdemeanor charges against white perpetrators. But six Black high school athletes who were accused of assaulting a white youth in a schoolyard fight were charged with attempted murder!

The youths' outraged parents started to organize against the potentially massive prison sentences and preposterous bails set for their children. Said Robert Bailey's mother, Caseptla, in a Democracy Now interview, "You know, when you're backed into a corner, naturally you're going to come out fighting. You're either going to fall and die, or you're going to come out fighting."

Families formed the Jena Six Defense Committee and a hundred of the town's 350 African Americans set up a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. One of the first organizations to help was Friends of Justice, a group founded in 2004 to counter phony drug busts against virtually the entire Black community of Tulia, Tx.

For the first year, most people outside Jena knew nothing of the issue because the corporate press ignored it. Then in June 2007, the first of the youths to be tried, 16-year-old Mychal Bell, was convicted of second-degree aggravated battery and conspiracy - by an all-white jury, with all-white witnesses, and a public defender who called no one to speak in his client's defense.

The alarmed defense committee called for a march and rally on the day scheduled for Bell's sentencing. One community member urged, "We have to convince more people to come rally with us. What's the worst that could happen? They fire us from our job? We have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our lawns or burn down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We have to keep speaking out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our children will never be safe."

Grassroots upsurge. Through Black talk radio, internet blogs and YouTube videos, text messaging among young people, and the work of a few independent journalists, the news finally got out. Syndicated radio hosts Tom Joyner, Steve Harvey and Michael Baisden gave ringing publicity to the Sept. 20 march and rally. Grassroots organizations, including Common Ground from New Orleans, helped spread the word.

When the day came, there were legions of African American demonstrators from most every state. Solidarity marches were held simultaneously in over two dozen cities. Many of the protesters were Black youth, acutely aware they live under a system that promises them lousy jobs and prison cells rather than decent education and good wages.

Intensified protest continues. On October 1, more than 50 colleges and high schools joined in a national student walkout called by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the National Hip Hop Political Convention, and others.

Rightwing backlash. The stunning success of the protest has prodded white supremacists out from under their rocks.

An effigy was hung from a tree near a small African American church in DeBarry, Tx. Nooses were found at a Home Depot Store in South Elgin, Ill., in a police station locker room in Hempstead, N.Y., and at high schools in North and South Carolina. Rightwing columnists and bloggers spew forth regularly. A neo-Nazi web site posted the addresses and phone numbers of Jena Six defendants and urged readers to "drag them out of the house."

In addition, the Nationalist Movement, a fascist white-supremacist group has announced a racist rally in Jena on Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2008. Jena Six supporters are organizing a counter-demonstration. Another giant turnout is needed.

Eyes on the prize. U.S. history and events such as Jena, the post-Hurricane Katrina travesties, police brutality and prisoner abuse prove that capitalism will never provide equality, because racism is essential for the profit system's survival. That is why the civil rights movement must go beyond reforms and challenge the capitalist underpinnings of racism.

It is vitally important for labor and the Left to provide active support for the Jena Six and similar fights. White workers in this country must recognize that violations of civil rights, the mass criminalization of Blacks and other people of color, and the scapegoating of immigrants are aimed at dividing the working class of the world's most powerful capitalist country. If necessary to protect their profits, the bosses will resort to fascism and smashing the entire multi-racial working class. It is everybody's fight to oppose this. And those who are the first to be targeted need defense right now.

In Jena, African Americans led masses of people in a powerful denunciation of the system's deep-rooted injustice. It may be the beginning of a desperately needed new civil rights movement. Everyone can help build it by raising the following demands:

• Drop all charges against the Jena Six! Financial reparations for their legal costs.

• Fire district attorney Reed Walters, who threatened youth protesting segregation and who led the Jena prosecutions.

• Provide accurate education in schools on the history of slavery, post-Civil War Black Reconstruction and civil rights struggles.

• Expose and prosecute anyone harassing the Jena Six and their families and supporters.

• Establish elected civilian review boards to address bigotry in local, state and federal police agencies. End the "war on drugs" and mandatory sentencing laws that further enable a racist judicial system.

To donate money, send checks to the Jena 6 Defense Fund, P.O. Box 2798, Jena, La. 71342, or donate online at https://secure.colorofchange.org/jena_fund/.

For updates, go to www.freethejena6.org and http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com.