Not Complicit…Not Complacent…We Need MORE of that 40 Years after Kent State!

Around noon, forty years ago today [May 4], 4 students were shot dead, and 9 wounded when Ohio National Guardsmen shot into a protest 0f 2,000 at Kent State University.  KSU officials had banned the protest, and the Ohio governor called in the Guard after students at Kent State, like those all around the world, reacted to news that the U.S. was secretly bombing Cambodia.

These killings led almost immediately to a student strike of four million on 900 campuses.  450 campuses closed for the year, without exams.  100,000 of us went to Washington DC that weekend to protest the war and the killings. 

 

Richard Nixon was sent to Camp David "for his own safety" and the 82nd Airborne wore combat gear inside the White House.  The government was worried, and we students were emboldened.  We were outraged, and scared, we had right on our side, and we felt, in the words of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, "how could you run when you know?"

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Ten days later, 2 students were killed by state police at Jackson State in Mississippi. For millions of us, the idea that determined street protest would ever be viewed as tolerable to the powers that be — much less insignificant or meaningless — was over.  The repression of Kent State showed how afraid the Nixon government was of the youth, and of the truth about the Vietnam war.  The opposition to the war grew.

 

Four dead in Ohio, forty years ago.  I am proud to be part of a generation that helped stop an illegitimate war.  We need that kind of response now.  The world can’t wait for it!   Students called for protests on 100 campuses today against Obama’s wars, and Michael Moore and others are sponsoring a 40th Anniversary Kent State Truth Tribunal.