Revolution #104, October 14, 2007
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John Mellencamp Video: “Jena: Take Your Nooses Down!”
In his three-and-a-half-minute video, “Jena: Take your nooses down!” John Mellencamp takes an important stand on behalf of the Jena 6—the six Black youth in Jena, Louisiana who still face decades in prison for standing up against nooses hung in their schoolyard. In his lyrics and images, Mellencamp captures how the Jena 6 case concentrates the bitter history of generation after generation of Black people terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, beaten by police, and kept “in place” by a white supremacist culture and courts. He doesn’t shy away from or prettify the history of lynchings, the real meaning of nooses with Black men and Black couples hanging limp from trees. And he shows the ugliness of all too many white people—students striking against integration, Klansmen smiling unabashedly, even a sign that reads “God Demands Segregation.” On the flip side, this short video captures the smiling and hopeful faces of Black children, the youth of a generation ago who defied water hoses, and a new generation pumping their fists in the air as tens of thousands flooded into Jena on September 20 to demand justice.
Mellencamp is known for singing about Middle America, people living in the heartland. This makes Mellencamp’s new anthem on Jena even more poignant and refreshing—for how it will challenge his audience, as well as for how it indicates the possibility of much broader alliances against racism and national oppression, way beyond the tens of thousands of Black people who have taken up this case so far.
In times like these—of grave and towering injustices coming on top of generations of horrors as well as new tremors of resistance and upsurge—the people need music to be inspired by. And white people in particular need to be challenged and moved to stand up for the Jena 6 and to join the struggle to put an end to white supremacy once and for all. Mellencamp has put out a song and video that will provide both a window into the hopes and horrors of our times for future generations as well as an anthem for today’s generation in our attempts to forge a better world for those yet to come. Check out the video at: http://relative-way.com/jenastream/
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