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Jena 6
By Dawn Williams and Berkeley Academy of TechNology
The city is crowded. You’re pretty much wall-to-wall with people. You really can’t move too far. Young people that were here definitely support the amount of adults that were here. Of course, many of them were led by a lot of adults.
I saw a young child. He was three years old, named Darion from Baton Rouge, and he was here with his parents. He knew why he was here. He was saying, “Oh, I am here because of the injustice and I am here because of the Jena 6.” He had a valid understanding of why he was here and he wasn’t just going on a road trip.
You could also see here in Jena, all the local businesses were closed. You could see a few citizens of Jena that were in support. Two young ladies, Caucasian, they were actually holding up a sign that said, “We are not racist” and they were actually embraced by many of the protesters. Many people got off the bus and took pictures with them. It gave a welcoming feeling to know that not all people may have certain feelings about different races or different things like that.
The mood is pretty much just to make sure that injustice is not done so people are ready to fight. People are pretty much falling down, having heatstroke. I saw a lady, she fell out, got some more water, stood right back up, and said she wasn’t going to move. So I would say the mood is very, very persistent.
One of the things that was really prevalent, they were saying, “Free Mychal Bell now!” You know most of the time you might hear protestors say, “do this, do that,” but they were stressing the “now” part, saying that they want it done now.
And actually, sometimes, when different people would get up on stage to speak, the mics would get cut off during certain segments when they would say different things. They were surrounded by state troopers. It was a very, very, very aggressive scene. People were getting mad, shouting, people were actually in the trees, and when I actually saw that I thought of the song by Billie Holiday, when they was talking about Strange Fruit, and it was just so many people just in trees, just so they could see on top of people on top of people.
Many times, you would see the crowd get kind of rowdy, so you kind of brace yourself and hope that nothing will happen or that you won’t have to run, because there was nowhere to run. People were behind you, in front of you, on top of you, over your head in the trees pretty much. I was very, very afraid for my safety. However, I knew that this was a monumental experience, and also a historical experience that I needed to experience for myself and not be told by others.
I actually heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson speak, also the Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin speak. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was more of a spiritual type speech, more of a prayer. He asked the audience to hold hands a lot and just to bow their heads, and he gave a few words of encouragement. He also explained the story to the audience, you know, how some people may have misconceptions about what happened. He broke it down from the day that it started like the shoe that Mychal Bell was using, that they used it as a sign of a weapon, and it was just like different loopholes that you may have not known. The Rev. Jesse Jackson definitely provided that.
The Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, he definitely spoke about different injustices in Louisiana. He brought up Katrina of course and just spoke about how we as individuals in America need to stand together to support different things and to help everyone out regardless if it’s black, white, red, Hispanic, Asian, or anything, like just mainly just sticking together to fight any cause regardless of their race. I think the thing that really struck me the most is that it’s not just African Americans that are out here. There are Asians, there are Vietnamese, there are, you know, Caucasians. There are so many people from so many different races and ethnic backgrounds, that it’s not just a black fight as many would say. It’s so many people and I think it will have an effect.
I think that any person who does something wrong needs to be punished. However, the severity of the punishment also needs to fit the crime. I don’t think that a fistfight needs to be attempted murder. I think that some people, all parties involved, should definitely pay for what they have done. However, I think that it should go according to what act they did.
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