Supporting the Jena 6 in Cleveland

We received the following correspondence from a Revolution distributor in Clevelan d:

Last week a young Black woman in our city took the initiative to organize a protest in support of the Jena 6. I went to a meeting to organize a protest on September 20. There were people from the Nation of Islam, a woman from an activist Baptist church, someone from Black on Black Inc, a community organization, and an activist Muslim woman.

In organizing the march, the idea is to have principals and teachers allow the students to come to school late since the march begins at 8 a.m. One principal is already promoting it and so the march will start from that high school. The group is planning on asking high school teachers to have the march be a field trip. At a Labor Day picnic in the Black community, the Jena 6 support group had a table and passed out 1,000 leaflets and through this, got the support of two Black sororities, Deltas and Alphas, and are reaching out to Black fraternities as well. Also, since Mychal Bell is a football player they are trying to get coaches to have their teams come out for the march. Black Studies at Cleveland State will be calling on students to go the march and panel discussion. This issue is really getting out among and mobilizing people broadly—way beyond the usual movement and activist forces. There is a beginning movement around “all out for the Jena 6” and some people are going to try to go Louisiana for the protest on September 20.

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