I was thrilled
by the tremendous mobilization surrounding the now infamous
Jena 6 case in Louisiana. Credit
must go to radio personalities such as Michael Baisden and
Tom Joyner, as well as Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton,
in addition to the work of the NAACP, for their successful
efforts to call attention to the travesty of justice that has
been unfolding before us.
In the aftermath
of the mobilization, many people, in near ecstasy, proclaimed
the birth of a new,
energized and in-the-streets Black Freedom Movement. My response: maybe.
Every great
mass upsurge is the product of critical incidents, fury, hope
(for success)
and years of determined organizing. In that sense, a movement
upsurge is not just a mobilization. It is a chain of eruptions
of varying sizes that ultimately join together and shift the
thinking and actions of hundreds of thousands, if not millions
of people. This organizing takes — no surprise here — organizations,
that is, institutions of different shapes and sizes committed
to a long-term project of change. These organizations may
be religious, secular, revolutionary, single-issue, former
gangs, and/or women’s clubs, but whatever they are (or whatever
combination), they become a center for new thought and new action.
The history
of the Black Freedom Movement has seen countless pro-justice
organizations and these
organizations have been critical to the continuation of our
struggle and the building of links between generations. For
this reason, progressive Black organizations have, since the
days of slavery, been targeted by the established order as
potentially incendiary, and always troubling and disruptive.
Movement upsurges,
therefore, cannot be reduced to a mobilization, a specific
rebellion (or
riot), or to collective anger. The anger we feel, for example,
in the case of the Jena 6, must be channeled into a long-term
fight for justice. This means that we not only desperately
need progressive Black grassroots organizations composed of
people who are willing to devote time to the struggle; indeed,
there is no short-cut to victory without them.
In that light,
while we should be inspired by the Jena 6 mobilization and
the thousands of
people who sacrificed their time to travel and demonstrate
against injustice, we cannot let that inspiration delude us
into hoping for miracles. If we want miracles, we need to
make them happen and that means the reconstruction of
organizations of grassroots volunteers, committed to social
change and freedom. Organizing cannot be restricted to a j-o-b that
someone secures; it must be a mission for one’s life. This
is the true legacy of our freedom struggle and one we must
neither abandon nor ignore.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial
Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a labor and international
writer and activist, a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy
Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. Click
here to contact Mr. Fletcher.