White Supremacists Urge Followers to Hang Nooses in Their Communities

This post, written by Brklyngrl, originally appeared on Open Left

Although I've been extremely negligent in my Jena blogging, I assume most of our readers are acquainted with the basic outlines of the situation. If not, Color of Change is a great place to start. I was moderately hopeful that some good would eventually come out of this - but so far it seems to have kicked off a series of copycat noose incidents. The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting organized online efforts by white supremacist groups to encourage followers to hang nooses in their communities, among other things.

First, there was an incident in Alexandria, LA (about 40 miles from Jena) where an unnamed 16 year old and 18 year old Jeremy Munsen were arrested with two nooses hanging from the back of Munsen's pickup truck. The 16 year old told police his family was in the KKK, and that brass knuckles and unloaded rifle found in the car belonged to him. Then, 4 nooses were found at a high school in High Point, North Carolina. The nooses were found hung from the main flagpole, in a parking lot, and (two) hung in a tree at the front of the school. Also, there were the two nooses at the Coast Guard Academy. One was left in the bag of a black cadet in July, the other in the office of an officer who conducted a race relations training.

Up here in the North, it's a similar story. Outside of Chicago, an unidentified student drove to Warren Township High School with a noose hanging from his rearview mirror. Worse yet, people are trying to excuse it, using a variation on the same ludicrous excuses we're hearing from those down South.

"A child who lives in Chicago may not understand the real implications of what they're carrying around, like a [Confederate] flag or a noose," said Peggy Riehl, an early childhood development expert with the Chicago Metro Association for the Education of Young Children. "They may not have the real experience that children in other communities that may have seen what that means."