Protesters to Converge on Louisiana Town

[struggle4progress]

Black Teens' Case Resonates Nationally

By Darryl Fears and Avis Thomas Lester
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 20, 2007; Page A01

Spurred by the Internet and a nationwide urban radio program by a popular disc jockey, tens of thousands of people are expected to descend on a sleepy rural Louisiana town to protest what they say are excessive criminal charges against six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl.

About 500 tour buses bearing thousands of riders were scheduled to depart from cities across the United States in the wee hours today for Jena, La., about 230 miles northwest of New Orleans. They will join others who will travel by airplane, automobile caravans and motorcycle convoys in what organizers say is a protest reminiscent of the Freedom Rides of the 1960s ...

As of Wednesday, according to the local NAACP and news reports, organizers said they were hoping up to 40,000 people would converge on Jena, a two-lane-highway town of 3,500. Though no one is sure whether the crowd will be that large, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) has ordered the chief of the state police to work with the LaSalle Parish sheriff on crowd control.

Even if the numbers do not reach the organizers' hopes, the march is another example -- the immigration rights protests of last year being another -- of how radio, the Internet and word of mouth can create a buzz and a unity of purpose in one of the country's largest subcultures that takes hold beneath the radar of the mainstream news media ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/19/AR2007091900769.html?hpid=topnews