[NYTr] Thoughts on the Jena 6 Mobilization and New Movements

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl

The Black Commentator Issue 252 - Nov 8, 2007
http://www.blackcommentator.com/252/252_african_world_jena_6_mobilization_new_movements.html

OR: http://tinyurl.com/228tsk

The African World

Thoughts on the Jena 6 Mobilization and New Movements

By Bill Fletcher, Jr., 
BC Editorial Board


I was thrilled by the tremendous mobilization surrounding the now
infamous Jena 6 case in Louisiana.  Credit must go to radio
personalities such as Michael Baisden and Tom Joyner, as well as
Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, in addition to the work of the
NAACP, for their successful efforts to call attention to the travesty
of justice that has been unfolding before us.

In the aftermath of the mobilization, many people, in near ecstasy,
proclaimed the birth of a new, energized and in-the-streets Black
Freedom Movement.  My response:  maybe.

Every great mass upsurge is the product of critical incidents, fury,
hope (for success) and years of determined organizing.  In that sense,
a movement upsurge is not just a mobilization.  It is a chain of
eruptions of varying sizes that ultimately join together and shift the
thinking and actions of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
people.  This organizing takes — no surprise here — organizations, that
is, institutions of different shapes and sizes committed to a long-term
project of change.  These organizations may be religious, secular,
revolutionary, single-issue, former gangs, and/or women’s clubs, but
whatever they are (or whatever combination), they become a center for
new thought and new action.

The history of the Black Freedom Movement has seen countless
pro-justice organizations and these organizations have been critical to
the continuation of our struggle and the building of links between
generations.  For this reason, progressive Black organizations have,
since the days of slavery, been targeted by the established order as
potentially incendiary, and always troubling and disruptive.

Movement upsurges, therefore, cannot be reduced to a mobilization, a
specific rebellion (or riot), or to collective anger.  The anger we
feel, for example, in the case of the Jena 6, must be channeled into a
long-term fight for justice.  This means that we not only desperately
need progressive Black grassroots organizations composed of people who
are willing to devote time to the struggle; indeed, there is no
short-cut to victory without them.

In that light, while we should be inspired by the Jena 6 mobilization
and the thousands of people who sacrificed their time to travel and
demonstrate against injustice, we cannot let that inspiration delude us
into hoping for miracles.  If we want miracles, we need to make them
happen and that means the reconstruction of organizations of grassroots
volunteers, committed to social change and freedom.  Organizing cannot
be restricted to a j-o-b that someone secures; it must be a mission for
one’s life.  This is the true legacy of our freedom struggle and one we
must neither abandon nor ignore.


[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a
labor and international writer and activist, a Senior Scholar with the
Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of
TransAfrica Forum. ]