Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
Yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the day when time stood still for me. As a freshmen in college at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois, I was stunned to learn of the killing of 4 young people by the Ohio National Guard during protests on the campus of Kent State University. The protestors were using their First Amendment rights to voice their opinion on the United States participation in the Vietnam War and the military’s recent incursion into Cambodia upon orders from then President Richard Nixon. Those events not only scarred me, but they also opened my eyes to the power of the government and more importantly, the power of the people.
When I read fellow Guest Blogger Mike Spindell’s wonderful article titled, “You Say You Want a Revolution”, I started thinking about Kent State and what the country went through and what, if anything the country learned from those tumultuous times. Sadly, the killings at Kent State were shortly followed up by city and State police killing two students and injuring 12 others at Jackson State University, in Jackson, Mississippi on May 15th. Jackson State
The Kent State killings and the Jackson State killings were perpetrated by National Guardsmen and city and State police and the victims were protestors and bystanders alike. The First Amendment was in full bloom in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but the authorities were not happy with the students standing up to the government. When we consider if this country is really ready for or in for another revolution, I submit that we have already experienced a revolution in my lifetime. It was the protests during the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s Rights movement and culminating with the unrest surrounding the Vietnam War.
One author thinks that there is a distinct connection between the 1960’s and today. “The question of why the 1960s matter to me is one thing, but what’s important is, should the events of 50 years ago matter to the rest of us? Is what happened on May 4, 1970 – and in the tumultuous years leading up to it — still relevant on May 4, 2013? OK, I’ve clearly revealed my bias, but I think the answer is undeniably yes — because there is a straight line between the skirmishes people fought then and the all-too-real war for the future of America that is taking place today.
Here’s another question to put that era in perspective: Was what happened on the homefront just a brief time of heightened social upheaval, or was there really a full-blown revolution in this country? Well, before you jump in with what seems like the obvious answer — consider the hallmarks of the other revolutions that you’ve seen. You’d see peaceful protests escalate to street violence, with a mounting death toll and with the military eventually called up. You’d see revolutionary cadres form, and intensifying government efforts to stop them but also legitimate protest. with wiretaps and informants, leading up to targeted killings. There’d be deadly suppression of protests, and daring acts of defiance. Yet in some revolutions, the government is ultimately toppled, its leaders put on trial, its secrets aired in a national reconciliation effort. But the underlying tensions remain.” Philly.com
Think about the last sentence in the above quote. The “underlying tensions remain”. There are tensions in this country between the right and the left and pro-lifers and pro-choice advocates. There are tensions between gun control advocates and the NRA and those who do not want any limitations or controls put on gun ownership. Once again there are wars and various incursions and drone attacks that are dividing the country. There are divisions between those that want austerity to rule the economic day and those that believe that the government must be involved in spending our way out of the recession/depression that we are ever so slowly coming out of.
The above quoted author goes on to claim that although the Kent State killings were a kind of end to a movement and at the same time they are related to the strife we are going through even today. “For a few days after Kent State, the volley of National Guard bullets that inexplicably killed four young people (none of whom were breaking the law, including two bystanders who weren’t involved in the anti-war demonstrations) felt like the start of an even bigger revolution, but in the reality is was the end; campuses closed for the summer and when the students came back in the fall, the active protests were all over but the shouting. Killing people has a way of doing that. We don’t like to admit it, but too often, violent repression works.” Philly.com
I have to admit that I agree that the killings at Kent State and Jackson State did slow or impede the protests. On May 11th and May 12th, 1970, I spent the early morning hours of my 19th birthday in the Jackson County, Illinois jail as I was arrested for “unlawful assembly” because I was in a group of people who numbered greater than 2! You read that correctly. The city ordinance stated that when there was a protest the police could arrest anyone found in groups larger than two people. I was later acquitted of these obviously unconstitutional charges, but they had succeeded in ending the protest and getting students off the streets.
Our campus was closed a day or two later, like many campuses across the country and when we returned in the Fall, our desire to take to the streets and exercise our First Amendment rights were dampened. They were dampened in my case because I could not afford to get arrested again because I was placed on probation by the University, even though I was acquitted of any charges. The protests did aid in getting us out of the Vietnam War, but I do not think they succeeded in stopping government from overstepping its bounds.
The protests of the 60’s and 70’s may have spurred the government into looking for additional ways to spy on its citizens with and without a warrant. Did we learn anything from these protests and from their aftermath? We are still fighting against government aggression overseas. We are still fighting to reduce the numbers of poor and uneducated and we are still battling to end discrimination. We are still in a fight over the extreme financial inequality in our country.
While the arrests and abuses of the Occupy movement protestors were abhorrent, they did not reach the extreme of that warm day in May of 1970, but the police may have learned from Kent State that arresting people and worrying about the legality of those arrests later can be successful. Does that mean that Kent State cannot happen again? Can this country heal its many fractures and divisions and prevent another Kent State or Jackson State episode? If the Occupy police violence and spying episodes are any indication, we have not learned the lessons that Kent State taught us.
While I do not expect or want another revolution, I fear that more will have to suffer in the fight to protect our right to redress our grievances with an ever-expanding secret government. What do you think? What can we do as citizens to make sure that the government actually operates to serve all of us?
Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheurer and William Knox Schroeder lost their lives 43 years ago at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. I do hope their violent deaths have taught us something! Peace.
Bonnie 1, May 5, 2013 at 5:22 pm
I think Kent State is only relevant to those of us who were alive when it happened. There is a whole generation of kids who are voting age who do not even know what Watergate was. They are America’s future.
————————————————————————————-
You were supposed to be America’s future. Did you fail? Why is it the children’s burden?
And OWS has been diminished due to the same tactics by co-ordination at the federal, state and city level, a precursor to these groups working together to install martial law in Boston.
The struggles of the 60s and 70s were put down by government infiltrators that fomented the violence that were used as excuses to use violence against the demonstrators. It was just the anti-war protests. Consider the American Indian Movement and Black Panthers. In both cases the FBI used infiltrators, false evidence, and murder to put these groups out of business. Many of the leaders of these movements were murdered outright or put in prison, mostly due to FBI instigated violence. Leonard Peltier is one political prisoner who was a victim of FBI’s manufactured evidence and a racist judge. Mumia is another political prisoner, victim of corrupt Philadelphia police. And, of course, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X. Leaders that challenge the 1% don’t fair well.
I think Kent State is only relevant to those of us who were alive when it happened. There is a whole generation of kids who are voting age who do not even know what Watergate was. They are America’s future.
Peace. Why do you think you can’t find any ammo?
The human brain doesn’t fully mature until the mid-twenties. That’s why they like to get them young. Some of them don’t have the compunction to not open fire. Give them a little bit of authority, and you’re going to get it.
If you think otherwise, you’re naive.
The antiwar movement was largely upper middle class and professional class young people. Blue collar kids like myself were either against it or just too busy working our way to school to have time for it. I was the latter.
Nick,
As usual you don’t know what you’re talking about, merely exposing your own incorrect pre-judgments, in service of your political views. Like Elaine I’m working class, I was in the movement and I worked full time. I also was an orphan and working my way through school. Difference was I cared and you didn’t seem to care enough.
WIKI shows that you were born in 1961???
Raf,
Synchronicity? 😉
I remember the huge number of students descending on Washington after the massacres and Nixon being quickly removed to Camp David by the Secret Service for his own safety. I believe the 82nd Airborne was stationed in the basement of the executive office building just in case they were needed to quell the rabble. The standard cry from students, “They can’t kill us all!”
“Shortly after the shootings took place, the Urban Institute conducted a national study that concluded the Kent State shooting was the single factor causing the only nationwide student strike in U.S. history; over 4 million students protested and over 900 American colleges and universities closed during the student strikes. The Kent State campus remained closed for six weeks.”
My brother-in-law was a student at Kent and had spent the two nights before the killings on beer runs for the National Guard Troops who had been trucked in from the Teamsters’ Strke in Cleveland. The troops were all excited because the rubber bullets they had been issued for the Teamsters’ Strike had just been replaced with live ammo. They got to kill some kids the next day … Hurrah, hurrah!
Larry,
Excellent job once again.
BK (and everyone else),
Just so you know, the spam filter in general has been “in a bit of a mood” lately. It’s mislabeling an unusually high number of non-spam comments as spam, some that contain no links at all. It happens every so often, but I’m sure WordPress/Askimet are on the maintenance job.
BK,
If you try to post a link to an item from online booksellers such as Amazon, there are so many associated embedded links WordPress’ spam filter will block it.
thanks, raff for this thread. We’ve seen how protesters are treated now, as then.
Thanks bettykath.
Post made it. Guess you’ll have to read the book. Lots of notes. All statements sourced.
ok. Guess wordpress doesn’t like the article. It contains information posted above by OS. It also describes coverup activities by the FBI – guardsmen’s guns being shipped overseas to be used by NATO forces, the informant’s gun being retooled so it would show that it hadn’t been fired, the destruction of the tape recording of the shots.
The book:
Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution and intends to expose the lies of American leadership in order to uncensor the “unhistory” of the Kent State massacre, while also aiming toward justice and healing, as censoring the past impacts American Occupy protesters today.
by Laurel Krause with Mickey Huff
I tried three time to post an excerpt about this on the previous post. All posts went in cyber never-never land. I tried again with a much shorter excerpt (only one link). And it didn’t who up. I wonder if this will make it?
Excellent reminder, I (we?) needed that. In these 43 years we have come so far and yet we are in the same place. We have the power in whom we elect to public office. If we want war, debt, surveillance, keep putting the same people we have into office. If you want change, vote for change, not the person that talks about change, the person that lives that change.
Well said Mike. The cultural evidence passed down from one generation to another is vital to insure that the true history is taught.
Thanks for the link OS. Another good read is the book Kent State How and Why, by James Michener. It was written shortly after the event and provided hard evidence that the protestors and students were not firing on the Guardsmen and were approximately 100 yards away.
“Think about the last sentence in the above quote. The “underlying tensions remain”. There are tensions in this country between the right and the left and pro-lifers and pro-choice advocates. There are tensions between gun control advocates and the NRA and those who do not want any limitations or controls put on gun ownership. Once again there are wars and various incursions and drone attacks that are dividing the country. There are divisions between those that want austerity to rule the economic day and those that believe that the government must be involved in spending our way out of the recession/depression that we are ever so slowly coming out of.”
Larry, Great job and as that quote from you above intimates those “underlying tensions” today are the residue of what you and I participated in in the 60’s. As far as us “losing” that revolution I think that is a mixed bag. To a certain extent we of that 60’s movement succeeded in changing this society in many ways. We opened up the dialog in terms of the rights of those oppressed by racism, sexism and homophobia. We relaxed the way people lives are led. As someone older than you and thus more aware of the 40’s and 50’s those decades represented oppressive/conformist times and in the 60’s we broke that mold.
However, obviously that “Revolution” failed in its goal of ending unneeded foreign wars. That “Revolution” was co-opted by Corporate propaganda sold to us in the guise of advertising that only “appeared” to champion the goals we sought. Think about the ubiquitous today of Jeans and the fact that they are now sold as “designer brands”. What started out as our “generation” disdaining the conformity of clothing and moving to a new model that was more comfortable, ended up as merely another aspect of Fashion. That is a minor illustration of the co-opting of our movement into “lifestyle”. That word itself was a propagandist trick that turned a sincere desire to lead better, more meaningful lives, into a selling feature of commercialism. You are correct that our revolution ended with these murders, as it scared people into understanding that our shouted epithets against our “fascist” State, were not hyperbole but actually true. However, these murders also changed forever our trust in the system that runs our government. That in itself becomes subversive. As we age we need to keep informing those who come after us about the real history that we lived through and retain hope that a new, wiser movement might rise again.
There is new evidence, including sound analysis technology that did not even exist in 1970. Video footage in the files has also been dug out and analyzed. Terry Norman was the FBI agent provocateur.. Sound analysis suggests Norman fired his pistol at least four times in order to justify the claim that National Guard troops were taking “sniper fire.”
Video footage and still photography have recorded the minutes following the “sound of sniper fire,” showing Terry Norman sprinting across the Kent State commons, meeting up with Kent Police and the ONG. In this visual evidence, Norman immediately yet casually hands off his pistol to authorities and the recipients of the pistol show no surprise as Norman hands them his gun.
Source: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/kent-state-was-it-about-civil-rights-or-%E2%80%A8murdering-student-protesters/