From the moment I heard about the Jena 6 story on July 3 when Mychal Bell was convicted (conviction overturned since), I've felt this is a classic case for nationwide progressive mobilization.
It had taken a couple of months, and thanks mostly to Colors of Change, grassroots Black organizations, Democracy Now and other radio stations, and the ACLU, a movement has emerged. (the predominantly-white progressive blogosphere has also played a role, but a secondary one; Jena 6 and racial/social justice issues are still blown out of the water any given day here at DK, by Obama/Hillary/Edwards related posts and headline news).
So some points have been won. But the rural South is still very much an Away game for progressives. The South's blacks and anti-racist whites still need lots of help - because the dormant giant of overt racism there is waking up in response, at least according to this Chicago Tribune story (relayed via truthout.org)
So don't rest on the laurel leaves.
More below...
Here's what it looks like when these maniacs wake up:
First a neo-Nazi Web site posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of some of the six black teenagers and their families at the center of the Jena 6 case and urged followers to find them and "drag them out of the house," prompting an investigation by the FBI.
Then the leader of a white supremacist group in Mississippi published interviews that he conducted with the mayor of Jena and the white teenager who was attacked and beaten, allegedly by the six black youths. In those interviews, the mayor, Murphy McMillin, praised efforts by pro-white groups to organize counter-demonstrations; the teenager, Justin Barker, urged white readers to "realize what is going on, speak up and speak their mind."
The group in question is The Nationalist Movement.
After seeing the PR backlash, both mayor and Barker later claimed they didn't know who it really was that interviewed them. To which the group's leader, who did the interview, replied that
...he explained his group and its beliefs to the Barker family, who then invited him to stay overnight at their home on the eve of last week's protest march.
The mayor is also quoted as saying in the interview:
Your moral support means a lot.
This talking out of both sides of the mouth by Jena's mayor, resonates perfectly with the recent pronouncements of another major player - DA Reed Walters. Last week he published his pious NYT op-ed, with gems such as
I do not question the sincerity or motivation of the 10,000 or more protesters who descended on Jena last week, after riding hundreds of miles on buses.
...
I cannot overemphasize how abhorrent and stupid I find the placing of the nooses on the schoolyard... It was mean-spirited and deserves the condemnation of all decent people.
But it broke no law.
(By the way, a legal opinion debunked on DK and elsewhere)
But speaking "Down South" after the Sep. 20 rally, Walters sounded quite different:
"The only way - let me stress that - the only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community," Walters said.
"I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday [the day of the rally - AO], a disaster would have happened. You can quote me on that."
Ok, Reed, we will gladly quote you. Thanks for speaking your mind (who wrote that NYT piece for you, by the way?)
But, sadly for you, your town's blacks are now all uppity:
The Rev. Donald Sibley, a black Jena pastor, called it a "shame" that Walters credited divine intervention for the protesters acting responsibly.
"What I'm saying is, the Lord Jesus Christ put his influence on those people, and they responded accordingly," Walters responded.
Rev. Sibley, a local, knows to pinpoint exactly what's going on here:
Sibley told CNN that Walters had insulted the protesters by making a false separation between "his Christ and our Christ."
"For him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order - that's not the truth," Sibley said.
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So what's going on here?
I've never been to the South (assuming Atlanta airport stop-overs don't count), but having lived most of my life in an ethnically-racially charged society, a society that is defined by one overarching distinction between a very specific "us" and "them", I can venture an educated guess:
The dominant majority - whites - will still stick to each other when push comes to shove - even the more liberal ones. No matter how much more open and liberal the recent generation has seemed in many areas of the South, if Southern whites feel threatened, they will close ranks.
And the Jena rally has made many, many Southern whites feel threatened.
(Note: a similar dynamic had radically altered Israel's politics, throwing it far to the right almost overnight in fall 2000. Pretty soon I plan to devote a diary to those fateful days)
Don't forget that the court case is still about black high-school kids beating up a white one. Not hard to guess who has more chance to get Southern whites' sympathy, and what they think as they send their kids off to integrated schools ("now blacks have found a way to get away with..."). It is really easy to spin the story that way. And don't be naive: it is already being spun that way.
The overt white-supremacist groups are the surface ripples. Underneath is a huge deep current of ingrained paranoia, prejudice and plain normal greed (wanting to keep the bigger part of the pie instead of sharing it with blacks), that probably still dictates the way things run down South.
When a threat appears imminent, all the racist views and expressions we've thought long banished from civilized discourse may return, big time. And support for policies that reflect them may follow soon after that.
This could be an opportunity to finally deal with that under-current and change it once and for all. Or it could be a huge setback, probably to be visible - among other occasions - during next year's elections when the South may turn even more red (if that is possible).
I have no magic solution, only a heads-up. It won't be easy. It will require dedication and determination from progressives around the country - don't leave blacks to fight this on their own! - but also openness and honesty.
For one thing, institutional racism exists all over the country - especially in education, criminal justice and law enforcement. We have already dropped that ball after Hurricane Katrina. Now is the time to pick it up and deal with the problem as a whole, instead of singling out the South and generating a backlash.