Lost on the Road to Jena--with some Ques.
 

That was actually a really interesting article. I have heard from some attendees of the march that they were disappointed by the tone of the event, that the attendees did not seem to have a sense of the seriousness of the purpose.

Of course, I have also heard memories of events like the March on Washington (and other events that we memorialize as somber), that remember them as festive as well.

Another critique that I have heard since the march is that there did not seem to be a goal in mind. The goal was to "get to Jena," without any vision of what should happen next or how to build on the momentum of this event to achieve some more substantive change. I asked in the Delta forum, a few days after the march, what's next; I think this article poses the same questions.

guess there wasn't anything positive on the trip

I think the whole march was blown out of proportion. I mean folx were likening it to the MMM and the civil rights marches.

But even if the march was blown out of proportion, I don't think the events that necessitated it were. What was happening to those young men was a serious miscarriage of justice, and similar incidents take place every day across this nation.

This march, this moment, had potential to really mobilize a new generation around these issues and the question becomes was that potential maximized.

It doesn't appear it was.

Exactly. So what needed to happen for this event/action to have the staying power?

The stereotypical "black people" stuff:
The fish fry and electric slide component needed to be downplayed and the social action component needed a larger role. People thought they were traveling for a big family reunion or Tom Joyner Skyshow. As much as I love Frankie Beverly (:o), keeping that large of a crowd entertained should never be more important than keeping them informed and active.

Some people were relatively clueless about the Jena 6 and the more general issue. I personally don't care about the Jena 6, themselves, but think that everyone should know about this and other incidents throughout history. Not just incidents where blacks were on the losing end but incidents that involve inequality, in general. Not to compare oppressions and inequalities or rank them, but to see how this all shapes the disparities in our world. Only after folks are informed can they form their OWN opinion (not a "black person's" opinion) to say yay or nay about a topic.

The new generation shouldn't need a road trip to Jena to be mobilized. Mobilization is a process and adults in the communities need to lead by example. The March in Washington didn't begin or end anything and neither did the MMM. The "add water and stir" approach to social action is annoying. That's how you get 2 of the Jena 6 to show up on the BET red carpet throwing up "Jena 6" handsigns like they did something. And looking like they think they're rockstars. :rolleyes:

I agree that awareness is central to continued action, and I guess that this is where I see the mobilizing potential of this event. This is one of the more egregious examples of injustice that has received significant national coverage in recent years (Katrina aside, because I think that it raises an entirely different set of issues). However, there are other similar incidents happening all of the time, but these things are seen as isolated incidents and not as evidence of a continued and systematic oppression of black people (and I say black people here, because I am specifically speaking to black experiences, not because we are the only ones who have been oppressed). And while it is the responsibility of the adults in the community to educate their children, these national events have some leverage too. (The Montgomery bus boycott, the smaller marches, and the sit-ins did as much to motivate and mobilize folks across the country as did their activism in their own backyards.)

This event and the actions around it had the potential to raise awareness nationally, to put other events into a larger context, and in a way I think that it has. I know that my community continues to have discussions about not only the situation in Jena but also about the lessons that this generation should take from this event (along with more local issues and incidents that need attention); however, I wonder how widespread that is.

Of course, there is also the question of how useful and effective marching actually is as a tool of social change in this day and age. I do think that there were some interesting factors to the way that this event unfolded. For instance, I first heard about the situation in Jena on Facebook, and there were a lot of pages devoted to the topic at its peak. There is also this idea of satellite events, simulteneous action in multiple spaces. I am not sure what to do with that yet, but there is something there.

It's 100% the responsibility of adults. We should never wait for the media to tell us when to get up off our asses. That's not its responsibility. Community action is what our churches and organizations such as NPHC and the Urban League were founded on. Then we can rightfully protest social injustices and inaccurate media portrayals of us. But continued interest and action on our part comes first.

Because of responsible adults who were too informed and adament to let these protests and boycotts turn into social events.

I don't mean the media coverage is important, but our participation in these national protests is important. Something must be said for media coverage too, and the way that it impacted the course of the Civil Rights movement.

Also, there was a good deal of youth led social protest in the sixties that did not necessarily stem from the guidance of adults in their communities (who in some cases had been subjected to intimidation and threats of violence for so long that they did not know how to seek change--and this is also my assessment of the climate in Jena), but rather was brought about through their interaction with 'outside agitators' and their understanding of their role in the larger context of the movement.

"Youth" as in kids or "youth" as in young adults, mostly college students.
It was mostly the latter, who I consider to be adults.

People under the age of 18 weren't doing too many of the protests then or now. And the organized protests that were started weren't started because a group of kids got together and were outraged to action.

By youth I mean college-aged, most of whom are technically adults but still young people (such as the members of SNCC and the voter registration workers who traveled South to get folks to register). Those are actually the people that I mostly saw protesting here as well (I work with college students), and those are the ones who have formed a group to continue the discussions that have begun from this incident.

Sometimes adults can not offer the kind of guidance that will affect future change, because what has worked in the past may not work now. Don't underestimate the ingenuity and the commitment of the youth once motivated (and that motivation could stem from a variety of sources.)

I think that we agree on the key issues.

Then we agree. Those are adults to me. Youth are often categorized as 15-20ish year olders so that was why I didn't know what you meant.

I agree that older adults can't always mobilize and that's why the college aged crowd as been instrumental in civil rights. But when speaking of the "new generation," this would be people younger than college aged. So I'm thinking of ways that college aged adults and older adults can get the younger blacks conscious and mobilized.

So we argue semantics, because for me this new generation really ranges from highschool-aged through college-aged (roughly 14-21). I had students who were freshman in college and had just made 16, 17 is pretty average.

Not at all. "Discuss" so we can get to the meat of the topic. If you and I are beginning from two different premises, our message of who needs to be mobilized will be different. :)

So without my going on my speech about what "generation" really constitutes, suffice it to say that I am talking about mobilizing people who are not legally adults. And I charge those who are legally adults with doing this, as well as older generations with mobilizing the younger generations of adults.

One thing that I see as working on the local level is social action forums. What do you see as working on a local level?

I beg to differ. Those protest were led by young adults--many in college. And they did receive guidance from adult community activists of which there were many in those days. Also our institutions were more involved then and served as catalysts for these protests.

@DSTCHAOS
I am not sure what can work in the long term for young people. I guess that one of the reasons that I think of the next generation as so young, age-wise, is because I am on the young side myself (under 30). This is one of the things that has continually frustrated me in my experience with activism is the sort of flash in the pan character it takes on not only with this younger generation, but with folks in my own generation. I have not seen much of an enduring commitment to social activism in the broader population, and that in part is due to the prevailing perspective on the state of union so to speak.

I think that involvement in certain organizations is a good way to support sustained involvement with a myriad of issues. The work of our organizations is important to that end. I am interested in seeing how our group, formed as a result of our participation in a march in support of justice for the young men in Jena, fares, whether the intensity of interest continues as this moment recedes into the background. As an educator, of course, I am always in favor of using the classroom environment as a space to develop social consciousness in my students (which is not to say that I am on a soapbox in my classrooms (in fact, just the opposite, I rarely share my own opinions), but that I attempt to create a space where they can question and I hope that they carry that critical engagement with them into their everyday lives).

@LadyGreek There were some semantics issues that we had to hash out there.

It's funny seeing my type of wordiness in someone else's writing. ;)

Well, there's stuff going on all over the place but a lot of people need to see rallies to think that the community is protesting and change is going to happen. I would rather not see rallies and public protests because those aren't indicative of large scale and longterm change. The Jim Crow and Civil Rights Eras were times of more overt inequalities. There are now more institutional and covert inequalities that require less overt methods. If we can maintain conciousness and activity without needing the public spectacle, we will be able to reach the community through education and so forth. We need to continue to challenge one another to do better without feeling that such a challenge is an insult to our community.

I'm not talking about the Bill Cosby speech type of challenge. I'm talking about a similar in-your-face approach that doesn't need the cameras and that pressures us to continue combating inequality through information and action rather than complaints.

Its called academic-ese. :D

And I agree with much of what you have said here, but a lot of what I have seen with this next generation (and here I mean college students in the past 5 years of so) is apathy. We can have all of the social action forums that we want, but if we are the only ones attending, we are preaching to the choir. The most recent classes of freshman (2006 and 2007) seem more social engaged, so that gives me hope.

Instructors need to offer extra credit for all students to attend and write social action reports. NPHC chapters need to coordinate these events with other stuff they are doing. Interested members go to other NPHC events so why not social action forums? The options are endless and I'm way too "annoying" to leave black folk the hell alone about this. :p I just change my approach based on the particular needs of the group.