Kent State May 4th, 1970

The Kent State shootings were a terrible thing. I don't think the guardsman were actually ordered to shoot people; the most likely explanation is that they just panicked for whatever reason, and opened-fire.

This whole incident was primarily the fault of Jimmy Rhodes. He wanted to show the voters of Ohio that he was tough, so he needlessly sent the National Guard in to the protest when the local police were perfectly capable of handling the situation on their own. While the protest was slightly violent the day BEFORE the shootings, there is no evidence that any of the victims were acting violent toward the guardsmen.

 

There was very little media coverage of the 35th anniversary, even in Ohio. CSPAN covered the meeting at Kent Tuesday evening May 3rd but I haven't seen it on their netork. It was an unscheduled event for CSPAN. They might replay it this weekend. I don't even know which of their channels it was supposed to be on, CSPAN 1, 2, or 3.

CSPAN has a video of their coverage of the 25th anniversary but it's expensive, $70.

CNN has streaming video of previous Kent commemorations and interviews for free on their website. CNN also aired a one-hour special on the 30th anniverary in 2000. All nine of the students who were shot were at the 30th.

Dr. Daniel Miller of Oregon has released a documentary film about Kent State. The title is "Fire in the Heartland - A History of Dissent at Kent State University". I'll try to find out where it will be available. They showed it at one of the auditoriums at Kent this past weekend.

There's also a book just released by Caputo which includes a DVD with footage of the rally at Kent in 1970.

A website with streaming video and audio of the Kent incident:

http://kent.state.tripod.com/

.

 

who cares. people are getting killed today.

 

That was one of the themes at this year's commoration. The Arlington West which travels around the country was set up in the field across from the commemoration to honor troops who have been killed in Iraq.

http://kent.state.tripod.com/bj43005.html

 

from the Akron Beacon:

"Peace activists to set up 1,000 crosses

Veterans group moved by Iraq war will bring display to KSU as part of tour of U.S. colleges

By Carol Biliczky

Beacon Journal staff writer

Sometimes the human costs of war can get lost in the hubbub of life.

So the Los Angeles chapter of Veterans for Peace will offer a strong visual reminder at the 35th annual commemoration of the May 4 shootings at Kent State.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the group will showcase 1,000 white wooden crosses in the field next to the Prentice Hall parking lot.

This is one of 10 stops the exhibition is making at colleges around the country to remind people that a war is going on.

``It's disturbing for some people, and at the same time, they can't look away,'' said April Fitzsimmons, an Air Force veteran and a coordinator of the exhibit. ``It's definitely raising awareness, which is our goal.''

The Los Angeles group got the idea for the Arlington National Cemetery-style display from the Santa Barbara, Calif., Veterans for Peace group, which began erecting crosses on the beach when U.S. deaths in the Iraq war were 300 to 400; the toll is now more than 1,500.

The Los Angeles chapter followed suit at the Santa Monica pier every Sunday starting in February 2004, when 540 U.S. troops had died.

This year, the group made a duplicate set of the stark crosses and took the tour on the road, starting with the University of Arizona the first week in April; it's to end at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in the middle of May.

This takes Fitzsimmons away from her careers as an actor and writer, but she gets a lot of fulfillment from reaching out to veterans and raising their profile in the public eye, she said.

The group provides literature and counsels veterans it meets along the way. There are many to meet: She estimates that 1 million U.S. troops have rotated through the theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years.

``It's an amazing way to dialogue with them, to make them feel welcome,'' she said. ``What we learned from the Vietnam War was that the men and women weren't welcomed home. We think it's OK to start acknowledging the troops now.''

Erecting all those crosses with measuring tapes and stakes is no small feat, though, and volunteers are welcome to help. Just show up at the Prentice Hall parking lot at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Information about the exhibit also is posted at www.topangaonline.com/wboard/messages/3138.html.

"

 

May 4 1970 bears a direct connection to May 2005.

Like a hot wire.

(I was not at Kent State that day. But I grew up in a small town near Kent. And my brother was teaching there at the time. I was a freshman in college in Evanston Illinois when it hapened. Kent State from the time it took place was always a big deal to me. Soon afterwards when I came home for summer vacation -- May 4 that year was pretty much the end of school at many campuses across the nation -- I visited Kent. It was like a fortress you had to go through checkpoints to even get in.)

How so a connection?

There were many people back then who said the kids got what they deserved.

Many of them are still around.

(And many who say the same thing have been born since.)

They are the same people who put lethaly armed guardsmen there in the first place.

The same people who never apologized.

The same people who supported the Vietnam war.

The same people who still think the Vietnam war was right and would have sent thousands more to die there.

The same people who beat blacks in Selma Alabama until they turned chicken when federal troops arrived.

The same people who vote for George Bush and the Republican Party.

The people with short hair and white shirts. The Karl Roves and Ralph Reids. The squeaky cleans. The killer nerds. The murderous moralists.

The same hypocrites who talk about democracy and don't count votes.

The same people who now control the federal government, the congress and the White House.

The same people who preferentially attend church on Sundays.

The same bigots for whom gays are the New Niggers.

The same people who don't care about anyone older than a fetus. Unless they're brain dead.

The same people who say this is one nation under god.

The blessed. The saved. The ones better than you and me who will go to heaven while we rot in hell.

The ones who only think of themselves and "their kind". Me, my, mine.

The same people who take us to war based on nothing.

The same people who incarcerate without legal defense, send prisoners to third world gulags and support torture and capital punishment.

The same people who will not foreswear first use of nuclear weapons.

The same people who sport American flags and yellow ribbons.

The backbone of Focus on the Family and the NRA.

The same fools who make sure your SUV gets 2 mpg while we have trade and budget deficits out the wazoo. The Greenhouse Gas Gods and Godesses. And the Soccer (Sucker) Moms and Pops who drive them.

The same people who don't want universal healthcare or a living minimum wage.

The same heathens who put the mentaly ill on the streets and in prison.

The same people who don't want to pay taxes to help their fellow man, just to wage war.

The same people who control AMERIKA today.

They are not the same people who attend the May 4 Commemorations.

Because those kids got what they deserved.

Remember that when you hear them talk about "responsibility" and "accountability" and "morals".

 

The things is though, the National Gueardsmen were less than a block away from safety. They should have had no reason to panic. An crummyrummy to answer you. JUst because more people are being killed in one place than in another, I don't think that it makes those lives any less valuable. And the fact that they would kill their own people is just sickening. I in now way condome the killing of Iraqui civilians, but I think you must be really sick to kill your own people. In Iraqu they at least think they have a noble cause(which they don't) but in this case, how could they justify those killings to themselves. Also I just thought I'd bring the subject up because the anniversery was a few days ago, and I wanted to commemorate it.

 

SDS....I just got the shivers reading your post. Because it's so true, and people are so blind.

 

Probably not...but panic, by its very nature, is usually unreasonable. That's not excusing their actions, I'm just saying that panic is a more likely explanation than being ordered to open fire.

 

Hell, I don't think anybody questions that.

I saw a cop shoot and kill an unarmed kid (20ish) that wasn't actively threatening the cop - the kid was trying to run away. The whole point of the police force's defense is that the cop THOUGHT he was in danger. Whether the cop really was in danger or not was irrelevant. Now does that make sense? But, it's a good explanation why he shot the kid dead.

And SDS, what a post! Talk about being blunt.

 

Yeah you're probably right. People do some wierd shit when they think they're in danger.

 

I don't buy the panic argument based on the circumstances, especially the way a number of the guard turned together without warning and fired. The guard shot students most of whom where hundreds of feet away while they ignored a much larger crowd of students right next to them at Taylor.

I've always felt that a few of the members of troop G got humiliated and frustrated by the students in the parking lot and were simply retaliating. There may have been a few other guard members who joined in thinking that they might be in some sort of danger when they heard the shots going off.

One student, James Russell was shot 375 feet away at a 90 degree angle to the direction of most of the shots. That was obviously a decision by a guard member to aim at someone who didn't pose a threat. I listened to Russell's talk at this year's commemoration and he said he deliberately stayed away on that part of the practice field to stay out of trouble. He saw one of the guard members turn and aim and fire at him.

Joseph Lewis was also at the commemoration and said was shot in the abdomen while showing the middle finger at the guard and shot a second time in the leg while on the ground.

According to the wounded students at the commemoration, the guard also tear gas bombed the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was dead.

 

...that's so horrible! I didn't know!...I think I'm gonna go cry now...

 

No it was not primarily the fault of little Jimmy Rhodes.

It was then and it is now, in an advanced phase as I reference in my post above, a systemic disease that is destroying the nation.

***

Hey does anyone know the name of the metal sculpture? Does it have a name? The one with, you know, the bullet hole right through its half inch thick steel plate.

 

Thoughts of former Kent students on the 30th:

http://chronicle.com/free/v46/i36/36b00201.htm

The immediate effects of Kent:

http://chronicle.com/free/v04/i31/31a00101.htm
.

 

Kent State was the start of the War on "white" americans by the U.S. Gov't.Up to that point,the Gov't had only waged war on American minorities,but with Kent State, the Gov't no longer discriminated as to who it wanted to shoot- whenever.We all became fair game!
~peace

 

Tin Soldier's and Nixon's coming, were finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in ohio..


Man, when I was first taught about this in school, I was taught that "The protesters shouldn't have been unruly." Then again, I grew up in hicktown.

 

The Kent protestors have been labelled all types of derogatory names. William Schroeder who was killed was actually a member of the ROTC and an honor student. He was just standing in the parking lot and watching the demonstration when he was shot. Many have said the protestors were outside agitators, but all 13 who were shot were fulltime students at Kent.

Schroeder's sister was at this year's event. She said she was upset for decades about his death but has learned to accept it. She said when she meets people from other countries they know what she is talking about when she mentions the word 'Kent'.

Schroeder's sister:



.

 

learned to accept it? Live with the pain maybe, but I don't think the nature of the death is at all acceptable. Perhaps she misspoke...or maybe not...but...

 

I don't know if the sculpture has a name. It was erected by Don Drumm about 5 years before the shooting. I haven't seen any name on it. It was made to be abstract.

Here's a photo I took while standing near the top of blanket hill near the pagoda where the guard were standing looking down toward the parking lot. You can see the bullet hole in the sculpture near the lower right. The Prentice Hall parking lot is in the background and is where most of the protestors were shot. The handrail in the lower left is part of the entrance to Taylor Hall.



Here's photos I took on the inlet and outlet side of the hole. The inlet side faces toward where the guard was. It has a jagged edge. You might think that the jaggedness would mean that it was the outlet side but it's actually the inlet. The outlet side has a smoother appearance. The inside of the hole is still smooth and fairly shiny after 35 years.

Inlet side:



Outlet side: