Jena and the Internet

September 25, 2007, The Democratic Strategist

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2007/09/jena_and_the_internet.php

At the start of school last year, a black freshman at Jena
High School in Louisiana asked his principal if he could sit
beneath a tree, which was reserved by tradition for white
students only. The administrator told the student he could
sit where he pleased, and the freshman and his friends ate
their lunch in the shade. The next day, three nooses hung
from the tree, and ever since, the small town in LaSalle
Parish has been ripped apart.

Things came to a head when six black teenagers were arrested
and charged with assault and then attempted murder after a
fight with a white student. Last week in Jena, more than
10,000 people, some of whom drove throughout the night,
showed up to protest the arrests.

You've probably heard about Jena by now. But when the story
first broke, there was little or no mention of it in the
major precincts of the progressive blogosphere (including,
just to be clear about it, this one). At Facing South (the
blog for the Institute for Southern Studies), Chris Kromm did
a post last Thursday, the day of the Jena march, that notes
the lack of comment. His quick survey looked like this:

    * DailyKos features a handful of posts about injustice in
Iraq today -- but not a single entry on its main page, or
even its user-generated "diaries," about this important case.

    * TalkingPointsMemo, a favorite of the DC wonk set, is
similarly incensed about foreign policy, but apparently not
about racial justice in the South -- nothing there either.

    * Long-time progressive blogger Atrios doesn't have a lot
of posts up, but found time to touch on Paul Krugman, Iraq
and the state of the Euro -- but not this major issue.

    * Surely TalkLeft -- which has positioned itself as the
leading progressive blog about criminal justice issues --
would have something? Think again -- not a single mention,
not even in the quick news briefs!

    * What about another progressive favorite, FireDogLake? A
rant about Republicans being "little bitches," but nothing on
the Jena 6.

    When the Jena 6 does make an appearance on progressive
blogs today, it's little more than a passing nod. Huffington
Post has a blog post buried below the fold; ThinkProgress
gives it a two-sentence news brief.

Now, in the wake of the protests, the bloggers are a bit more
talkative about Jena, and Ezra Klein is one of those who
commented on the late-developing coverage, saying: "[The
silence] is telling as to the tenuous relationship between
the online left and what's more traditionally been the left."

But outside the major blogs, the Internet hasn't been silent
on this issue. On Facebook, there are more than 500 groups,
with thousands of members, which reference Jena. On YouTube,
there are more than 1,600 videos that mention the town,
including this one -- which has been seen more than 1 million
times. A Google Blog Search today yielded nearly 40,000
results. The Wikipedia entry is 2 months old, 3,000 words
long, and contains 39 footnotes. In the progressive Christian
community, the blogs are all over this. Obviously, Jena has
been a lead topic on the African-American blogosphere (on
sites that cover everything from politics to hip-hop) for
months.

So why did the big progressive sites take so long to focus on
Jena? Ezra's take that this was an "issue of the traditional
left" is off-target. The big-name civil rights figures had to
scramble to catch up with Jena. There wasn't a central
planning committee directing yesterday's protests -- the
organization came together from the bottom up. The protests
in Jena were the result of conversation and debate on the
social networks, in blogs, over message boards, through
email, and on African-American radio shows. It looked like a
true, decentralized, "people-powered" movement.

The big progressive blogs missed the story initially for a
variety of reasons, including their and their readership's
demographics, but also because of their focus on developments
in Washington and in electoral politics. As the Jena story
reached a critical point last week, most blogs were
overwhelmingly focused on the Kabuki theater of the Senate
debate on Iraq and MoveOn.

Ten thousand people marching on Jena is pretty substantive
proof that the online left is bigger and more diverse than
readers of Daily Kos. In fact, it extends beyond blogs
altogether, as illustrated by the role of social networks in
creating and channeling energy towards the Jena protests. The
Rev. Al Sharpton said that the protests marked the start of a
21st century civil rights movement. Jena might also mark the
start of a new phase in online progressive politics as well.

Posted by Matt Compton on September 25, 2007 12:53 PM

_____________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]
Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
Account assistance: portside.org/contact
Search the archives: portside.org/archive