Jackson Miller

My sister posted on the Jena 6 over on the blog of the American Constitution Society at William & Mary School of Law (she is in law school at William and Mary). It is a nice post that touches on the legal ramifications of the outcome of the Jena 6 fiasco. She is right you know,

“We must pay attention to the cases of the Jena Six not only to ensure that the rights of these young men are protected, but also to ensure that we, as a nation, make an effort to hold federal officials and U.S. and District Attorneys accountable for making sure that justice is color-blind in the courtroom, as well.”

After reading her post I started reading some of the other posts on there. While I think it would be really fun to drink beer and play pool with a bunch of constitutional law geeks, what really caught my eye was the announcement for a talk on “Secularism and Separation: Past Their Prime or Ready for a Comeback?”. The talk was given by Dr. Jeremy Gunn who is the Director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

All of the sudden that phrase jumped out at me; “Freedom of Religion”. Religion is almost always a set of rules and guidelines. So the constitution grants me the freedom to practice the religion of my choosing; I can pick whatever set of rules I want to follow. What if I don’t want to follow any rules in that way? I don’t need a set of rules to provide my moral compass. For me, if I was to follow a set of rules defined in a religion as a means of obtaining moral fortitude, it would be an indication of weakness and close-mindedness. My right to say that is protected by the constitution. In a way Freedom is my religion, but Freedom is not a recognized religion. I am unclear if the constitution grants me the right to Freedom as a religion.

Religion has nothing to do with the Jena 6, however, Freedom does. Fear has been used to take away people’s freedom as far back as I have read about. The courts in Louisiana, the US District Attorneys, the sitting President, and (the name of) God himself all use fear to try and control our behavior. The nooses on the tree were a not-so-subtle threat to take away the freedom of sitting under a tree. The refusal to punish those threats was designed to make people afraid that they would not be protected. The grossly exaggerated charges we designed to scare an entire community to not challenge the status-quo.

Those are all examples of power being abused to create fear. You know what is really powerful? Tens of thousands of people actively saying that they are not afraid. That is the power of non-violence. As you think back to the most powerful non-violence demonstrations in the past few decades, their power was not in the absence of violence, but rather in the absence of fear.

So anyway, I am not quite sure where that rant came from, but go check out what my sister wrote about the Jena 6.