[Little32]

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.