Lose the Label
A Student Activist Community

posted by jakethorn on January 21, 2008 - 6:16pm

Tags:

• human rights
• Racism

You can't make this stuff up.

About 30 members of a reputed white supremacists' group marched through the streets of Jena, La., Monday, expressing disdain for the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as for six black Jena teenagers charged with beating a white classmate.

The group, which included two men who came armed, was followed closely for a while by about 100 counterprotesters who exchanged barbed comments with the group. They later backed off at police request.

"No to King! No the Jena Six!" shouted the group members, who belong to the Nationalist Movement.

Luckily, they were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters who chanted "Down with the Klan!" A white supremacist spokesman responded, "Up with America!"

Up with America, riiight.

(more~)

Close to 100 people opposing the Nationalist Movement's presence arrived at just before 11 a.m. at the LaSalle Parish Courthouse, shouting "No more nooses! We want justice!" as law enforcement tried to route them to behind the courthouse.

As the counterprotesters attempted to march toward the front of the courthouse, they were met by a line of law enforcement officers who physically tried to hold them back. At the same time, supporters of the Nationalists who had assembled in front of the courthouse waved their Confederate flags in the direction of the marchers.

"We ain't stopping! We ain't stopping!" the counterprotesters shouted as law enforcement threatened to arrest them if they did not go to the back of the courthouse.

"We're under threat of arrest if we keep marching. What do you want to do?" one of the counter-protesters shouted to that group with a megaphone. "Keep marching!" shouted the crowd. The crowd backed down once police asked.

Kudos to the counterprotesters for staying peaceful. It's a shame they even have to come out for things like this at all, but a great credit to our society that they always do. For every group of thirty idiots pushing racism and Confederate flags, a group of a hundred somehow materializes to drown them out.