Middletown residents and members of the Wesleyan community gathered in Union Park last Thursday as part of a nationwide day of solidarity for the Jena Six, a group of six African-American students who await trial in Jena, La. for attacking a white student after months of racially-charged provocation. If the central focus of the vigil remained on the imminent trial of Mychal Bell, a member of the Jena Six, the issue of how the Jena Six has been covered in the mainstream media was on people’s minds as well.
“Today I looked through the entire New York Times and I didn’t see anything,” said Anna Roberts-Gevalt ’09 on Thursday, pointing out the lack of coverage in that day’s issue regarding planned Jena Six protests across the country.
Admittedly, The New York Times ran articles on both the Jena Six and the movement their case has produced on the day before and the day after the planned protests. Such articles, however, have been a recent phenomenon. Indeed, a search for “Jena Six” in the online archives of The New York Times produces six articles, the earliest of which is dated September 15, 2007. The attack that prompted the arrest of the Jena Six occurred on December 4, 2006.
Instead, much of the public awareness about the Jena Six has come from “new media” sources, most notably e-mail and Internet networking sites. When asked how they knew about the case, many Wesleyan students responded that they had read e-mails over the summer from friends, which had originated from Louisiana anti-racism organization Color of Change. Some had heard through word of mouth.
Some of students also said that they had heard about the case through Facebook groups or through a short video on YouTube, which, uploaded almost three months ago, has been viewed over 290,000 times. Over 400 Jena Six-related Facebook groups currently exist, many of which have memberships of over 1,000 individuals. One group, entitled simply “Free Jena Six,” currently has over 60,000 members. These groups provide information on the history of the Jena Six, and provide ways to show support and take action.
Many of Thursday’s protests and vigils had their organizational roots in such Internet groups. Across the country, supporters of the Jena Six wore black and green to express hope for positive growth and renewal for the Jena community and to draw attention to the racism that remain within American culture. 10,000 supporters of the Jena Six gathered in Jena, La., and thousands of other supporters held vigils and expressed solidarity across the country.
Although the dissemination of information about the Jena Six points to a new trend in methods of perpetuating public awareness, Thursday’s Union Park gathering may be a sign that greater access to information does not automatically translate to action. Fewer than 30 students attended the Union Park event, a source of unrest for both Wesleyan students and Middletown residents alike who were in attendance. Participants in the vigil addressed a multitude of questions, including whether basic information about socially charged issues is becoming more widely targeted to young adult communities through Internet media.
Long-time Middletown resident Bobby James, known throughout the community as “BJ,” spoke at length about being arrested by Middletown police during the 1960s when he attended similar demonstrations against racial inequality. He expressed concern with the short-sightedness of those who choose not to act on the Jena Six issue.
“People don’t realize this is not about those kids, it’s the product of a judicial system gone awry,” James said. “Tomorrow it might be Michigan, next week it might be Middletown.”
Graduate student Stacie Szmonko also saw troubling connections between the Jena Six case and the state of the prison system, particularly after a discussion of this issue at the Union Park vigil.
“So it’s important to ask what [it will] take to free the Jena 6. But it’s also crucial to ask what [it will] take to stop using prisons as an extremely violent form of social control and containment of communities of color,” she wrote in an e-mail.
“It’s easy for us in the Northeast to locate racism in the distant and deep South….What’s more difficult is to examine and criticize the racism in ourselves and in the institutions that permeate us and our daily lives,” she added.
At the end of the evening, the assembled group agreed to meet again on Thursday, September 27th at 5 p.m. in Union Park to continue to discuss the case and to generate potential plans of action.
Meanwhile, efforts to get Bell released from prison were overturned on Friday. Bell remains incarcerated and awaiting trial.