Crossposted at Cottonmouth Press
My parents were born and raised in Jena, La. Until very recently, my grandmother lived there (she now lives near my parents in another state), and I still have aunts, uncles and cousins in Jena. I have spent lots of time in Jena over my 41 years, most of them as a child. I even lived there and attended middle school for a short time in the late 70s while my family was moving. So the Jena 6 situation has really hit home for me and my family.
Most of my family are pretty apolitical - I'm the raging lefty in the family. A phone call from my mother today has gotten me concerned. From what she said, there's starting to be a bit of a panic in Jena over the bus rides planned for Mychel Bell's sentencing. Jena has barely over 3,000 people, and my mother said that 40,000 people are expected to come into town for the rally. I can't vouch for that figure, but I know that bus rides are being organized from all over the country (including here in Nashville) and that the Jena Six has become quite the cause celebre on African-American talk radio (as well it should).
Adding to the fear is that anywhere African-Americans gather to support their own, the KKK will also put together a contingent, and my mother said the Klan is planning to rally there too. I haven't seen this reported online anywhere, and I hope it's not true.
But if it IS true, this little town, crappy as it is, is a powder keg, because no matter how peaceful everyone intends to be, all it takes is one or two loose cannons to get something very tragic started. A town the size of Jena simply can't sustain that kind of crowd to start with, let alone a clash between KKK members and pro-civil-rights protestors. (Of course, most white people in Jena, especially the older ones, are laying all of this at the feet of the "outside (black) agitators" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.)
My mother is begging her older sister to leave town and stay with my family for a few days, but my aunt won't budge. I told my mother I don't expect people to rampage the town and burn down homes, but she and I both know that the town is so tiny (as a kid, I would routinely ride my bike from one end of it to the other) that it wouldn't take much for nastiness near the courthouse or in the city park to spill into neighborhoods.
If there IS serious civil unrest, blame for it will lie at the feet of one person - District Attorney Reed Walters. None of us can look inside his heart and know whether he's a racist. But we can all look at his actions and conclude that he is exceedingly stupid, perhaps even more stupid than Mike Nifong in North Carolina. From his threats to the students to "end your life with the stroke of a pen," to his egregious overcharging of the students, to his failure to similarly charge whites who committed similar crimes, to his failure or refusal to explain himself, he has created a vacuum of common sense that has allowed accusations of racism to take hold. Racist or not, he's so arbitary as to have the appearance of a racist.
This is Jena's loss of innocence, its not-so-peaceful introduction to the 21st century where most of the rest of us live. Jena has always been so insular, so small, so white and so segregated that it has been allowed to wallow in its pre-1960 mindset for all this time. Things like this don't happen in Jena, because everyone knows their place, or at least they USED to. (According to my grandmother, the problem is that these kids are Katrina evacuees. She didn't use the word "uppity," but you can read between the lines).
I am hoping against hope that things can remain peaceful in Jena and that justice will somehow be done. I also hope that Jena will emerge from this a town in which its few African-American residents will no longer be content to live "over in the Quarters" if they don't want to or be subjected to a dual system of justice.
I hope for the sake of my mother and the rest of my family that Jena comes out of this a better place.
UPDATE: Good news - the State Court of Appeals has overturned Bell's conviction, saying that Bell should have been tried for assault as a juvenile. Has Jena dodged a bullet? Maybe. Should the DA resign for putting the town through this? Definitely.