Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
This blog post is the result of our well known regular contributor Blouise sending me a link, sent to her by one of our other long time contributors GBK. I thank them for not only the vital information they shared with me, but also for the inspiration it gave me. When people ask me what kind of blog to I write for, I explain to them that it is the creation of the well-known Constitutional Law Professor and Civil Rights Advocate Jonathan Turley. The common thread that links most of us here is our support for Jonathan’s work and our belief in upholding the Constitution. The topic raises is vital to all of those purposes.
On May 4th, 1970 I was twenty-six years old. I worked for NYC’s Department of Social Services (welfare) as a caseworker in Brooklyn. Was active in the Peace Movement and had in the last year lost in my bid for the Presidency of the radical welfare caseworkers union. Long haired, full bearded and habitually wearing shirts open to almost my waist, with tight-fitting bell bottom jeans. I was a happy and carefree imbiber of psychedelics and had a great social life. I had failed my Draft physical four years prior due to high blood pressure, which would later turn into severe heart trouble requiring me to have a transplant, but back then I was just grateful that I didn’t have to make the choice between my ideals and the Selective Service Law. So many young men whose lives were drastically changed for the worse by being drafted into that conflict, were less lucky than I because they were my contemporaries, I felt I needed to help bring them home.
Even with the 60’s decade of assassinations, Civil Rights protests ending in violence, Nixon’s election and the Viet Nam escalation, I was still hopeful that my generation would really change things for the better in this country and that the future would bring great changes in economic freedom and social justice. So hopeful was I, that I was attending my first year of Law School at night and envisioned myself becoming a Legal Aid attorney in the future. Then I heard the news about Kent State, the murder of four students and shooting of nine during what was a relatively peaceful protest. Suddenly, this brought home to me the reality of what we were facing in our country. My optimism for change died that day, but not my commitment to fight for it.
As the news proliferated the story just didn’t add up. Supposedly the young National Guardsmen heard sniper shots and in a panic returned fire. That the students shot were at a distance of at least three hundred feet and the ammunition was armor-piercing rounds. It was claimed that there was no order to fire given and that the young National Guardsmen thought they were firing in self defense. As it turned out these were lies and propaganda foisted to cover the fact that those in power in the administration and their follower, the Republican Governor of Ohio, wanted to send a message to those opposing the War, that we were in mortal danger if we dared to try to thwart their murderous rampage in South East Asia. Continue reading “Murder at Kent State” →
