By now you probably know by heart the details of the Jena 6 case. If not, there are many, many good stories about the absurd miscarriage of justice in this isolated, now-infamous town. The best stories always comes from the people on the ground, though. Who better to capture the essence of a demonstration than a demonstrator?

Fortunately, FPL Board President Rev. Meg Riley and her remarkably articulate 11-year-old daughter Jie have sent us some notes from a march in Jena they took part in on Thursday. Jie sets the stage, and Rev. Riley's insights after the jump.

A dark parking lot is home to action, to a protest finally happening, Jena 6. I am in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is 4 o’clock, the air is fresh and the sky reflects black on the trees. I’ve boarded a bus with people, all with the same mission.

Jena is a dusty, barbecue smelling place. We pulled to a stop in front of two old ball parks. We had passed little businesses and woods. The bus pulled away leaving us on a sandy gravel road.

We wandered a bit and then went to bleachers. The sun blazed down on my face, my sunglasses were sweaty. Static metallic voices boomed out from left field. I’ve met and am meeting many new people. Good music. Many different hairstyles and dos. Different t-shirts and Red Cross handing out free chips, Gatorade, water, cookies, rice crispies, etc.

Rev. Meg Riley:

The march is going two miles to the Jena courthouse, in 90 degree full sun, and then back again. Our row includes Bob and Diana Doroh from Baton Rouge—Bob the courage behind the decision to charter a bus, our bus Captain—and also a family of African American residents of Jena. I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk to them. It is two sisters, their mother, and a son Demetrius who, like Jie is in fifth grade. Unlike Jie, Demetrius is not skipping school today—Jena has closed its schools. Demetrius tells me the school was on ‘lockdown’ the day before, and kids were unable to go down the halls to the bathrooms.

Closed along with the schools are Jena businesses, ranging from McDonalds’ and Popeye’s to local stores. They are eerily surrounded with yellow police tape and orange plastic fencing. We are incredulous; all the money these vendors will lose! But we are delighted to see the entrepreneurial spirit of African American vendors, who sell a wide variety of food and rally paraphernalia. We wonder what the residents of this 85% white town expect to happen today.

I ask Demetrius and his family the questions which have been on my mind as I have made this journey to Jena: Are they worried about white violence after all the ‘outsiders’ have gone home? This extended family (which extends into the entire row behind us, more folks of all ages from Jena) is delighted that we are there. They say some folks they know are worried about ensuing violence, but they’re just happy. I ask them if they see any white folks from Jena in the crowd, and they shake their heads sadly. “No, says the family matriarch, and I been LOOKIN’!”

A man named Timothy who is the ninth member of our row, a slim young man with a battered Bible in his hand, who says “Bless you” to each person he encounters, tells me, “Even if the whites aren’t here, they’re thinking about this. It’s a good thing to bring these kinds of wounds out in the open, so they don’t fester.” Timothy is from another town fifteen miles away. He says life there is very similar to Jena, with whites believing racism is over, all healed, and the people of color holding all the pain of it. Later Jim VanderWeele tells me he did meet one white woman from Jena whose father was a KKK member.

It is a delight to run into one more unexpected colleague, Rev. Forrest Gilmore of Princeton New Jersey, whose black “Free the Jena Six” t-shirt also says “Philly bus.” He tells me that that he is joined by several UUs from Princeton, and that the busride down took 27 hours!

Dozens more NAA buses are held up by sheriffs and never make it. News reports say “tens of thousands of people” were in Jena. In town, there are more speakers, allegedly including families of the young African American men, but the sound system makes it impossible to understand a word they say. Someone tells me it has been announced that the $90,000 bail has been raised to release Mychall Ball.

As the day winds up and we wait for our bus to pick us up, rumors begin to circulate. A young woman walking by says that the third circuit Court of Appeals has stated that Mychall Bell must be released within seventy-two hours. We all cheer wildly. This is the same court of appeals who had said a week earlier that it was illegal to try him as an adult and threw the case out. (Why that decision did not result in his being immediately freed has been the matter of bitter speculation all day.)

Soon someone else walks by and says that Louisiana Supreme Court has dropped all charges against all six young men, and they are now home. We all look like we want to believe it but the cheering is less enthusiastic. Three other people come by and say exuberantly that Mychall Ball is home. On the bus home, those with electronic equipment are desperately seeking corroboration of these great rumors, and when I get back to the Baton Rouge hotel room I do the same. All that an extensive search nets me is that the first statement is true: Within seventy two hours, Mychall Ball must be released.

I report this to Jie,saying happily, YES! At least we know for sure that they have to release Mychall within 72 hours! We can hope that our coming here helped that decision to get made! “Sure it did,” she replies with wisdom which makes me wonder if it can really be that she’s only turning eleven, not fifty, on Sunday, “No one down here wants this kind of fuss.”