“Do you know what lynching means?”

The Jena 6 are still facing decades in jail. The system is determined to punish the Black students at Jena High School for first daring to sit under the “whites-only tree” in the schoolyard, and then daring to stand under the tree in protest when lynching nooses were hung from the tree.
Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, had his original conviction overturned as the movement to Free the Jena 6 grew. After the historic outpouring of protest in Jena itself, and in school walkouts in cities around the country, he was released from jail for a brief period. But on October 11, he was locked up again, by a system determined to deliver again the message that you cannot stand up to white supremacy.
Among protests on October 16 against the re-imprisonment of Mychal Bell, students at Watsonville High School in California, where the majority of students are Latino, wore black in support of the Jena 6. Revolution correspondent Alice Woodward interviewed an organizer of the protest in Watsonville:
Tell me about spreading the word about the Jena 6 and building for an action on October 16.
I thought it was going to be kind of hard because it’s homecoming week and everyone wears different things because of that, but I didn’t want to give up. Once I told them what Jena 6 was, a lot of them were shocked and thought it was completely unfair. Ones who already knew, they didn’t really need me to explain anything—they just freaked out as soon as they heard Mychal Bell was back in prison. I was just like, hey did you guys know? And they were like, oh my god, are you serious, what happened? I explained it to them and then I told them I was asking them to wear black in support of him and they said that they would.
People didn’t know about lynching?
No, they didn’t know what a noose was. I had to tell them, I mentioned lynching, and they’re like, “What’s that?”—they didn’t really know. I think it’s because nobody talks about that, because we don’t have that many African American students, but it’s part of our history, but then our history books don’t mention that. I was talking to them and I would mention noose, and right after I mentioned a noose and I would say, do you know what a noose is? They would say no, and I would say a noose is a rope that’s already prepared to lynch someone, and I would kind of get a blank expression from them, and I would ask, do you know what lynching means? They’d say no. And I would be like, lynching is hanging someone. And their jaw would drop. I would tell them, ya know it’s not just Black people that were being lynched, it was people here in Watsonville, Mexicans were lynched. I brought it back home, while emphasizing what was going on in Louisiana with the Jena 6.
How did you find out about the history of lynchings and the oppression of black people?
I kind of did research on my own because in our history classes, we learned about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and they showed us a movie about one of the big marches that Martin Luther King did in the South, but that’s pretty much it. I wanted to know, what were the consequences of people doing that? Also my government teacher showed us a video about voting rights and how police would beat up people who tried to fight for their rights, and I was like if beatings happened then what happened to every other person of color? But I kind of found out from my own research.
Since you got involved in this, what are you thinking about how the world could be changed? What do you think about revolution?
Revolution? I love the thought of it. I would love a big revolution to happen. I constantly think about it. I would love to be in it. I think we need it, but for some reason we don’t have enough people involved and aware to make a dramatic change in our society as I would hope for. We have a movement, a good movement, a big movement, but I think that movement needs to grow, more people need to act and release anger in order to have a change.
I don’t know what kind of world is possible. I would like to believe that we can live in a world where you don’t get stared down for any reason. For example, in Watsonville, being a mostly Mexican Catholic community you get looked down at if you have colored hair (not browns but bright colors), for having ink on your body or holes all over it. If you’re too dark and short you are made less than someone with light skin. When I go to San Francisco I don’t feel those judgmental looks. I know we can do that all over the world. It will take time, but I hope it happens. I would like a world where money doesn’t have authority. Where celebrities aren’t worshiped, but true leaders are admired.

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