Today we remember the horrific repression and mass murder by police which numbers among the most brutal and senseless crimes of state terror in our nation’s history, but also the valiant resistance of students throughout America to a government which was and yet remains an unjust and violent perpetrator of crimes against humanity both at home and abroad.
The national student strike which the massacre unleashed was a turning point for American involvement in Vietnam, and remains a model for mass action today. Its primary lesson is simple; to unite everyone, from all classes and stratum of society, in action against an existential threat said threat must be universal as well as clear and direct. Such a universal mass protest now unfolds in the shadow of the Israel Genocide of the Palestinians and the echoes and reflections of the Kent State Massacre.
A parallel student movement for peace and divestiture now engulfs our nation and our world, a clarion call for solidarity with the oppressed in the genocide of the Palestinians and the deaths of thousands of children and civilians paid for by our taxes, as our government and Genocide Joe abandon our ideas of universal human rights and the historic role of America as their guarantor state, and like university peace movement to end the Vietnam War is met not with celebration of our rights of free speech and the co-ownership of the state by all of its citizens, not with a President who joins the protests as the champion of democracy and our universal human rights, but with police terror and repression of dissent.
Our leaders have betrayed us, and in the abandonment of our human rights and of our rights as citizens Biden and the Democratic Party may have handed the next election to Trump and the Republican Party whose mission is the sabotage of democracy and its replacement by a theocratic tyranny of patriarchal and white supremacist terror. For if you sponsor and authorize genocide, I cannot vote for you, and I will fight you; and in this I am far from alone.
We are caught by the horns of a dilemma in this crucial election year, with liberty or tyranny at stake not merely for our nation but for the whole of humankind and throughout the coming millennia. We must bring our dog to heel through Boycott, Divestiture, and Sanction of Israel until the genocide and the Occupation end, and with it the Netanyahu settler regime of ethnic cleansing and theocratic terror. If we cannot, and choose instead to ally and identify our nation once again with imperial conquest and dominion, state terror and tyranny, and the sacrifice of others lives in service to our own power, those of us who remember what it means to be an American and a human being must refuse to vote for Biden, land Trump wins the Presidency; this is the true motive for Israel’s orchestration of the October 7 tragedy, in dual purpose with creating a casus belli for the Final Solution of the Palestinians and the conquest of the Middle East.
I ask you now, all of us; don’t let complicity in genocide be the reason democracy falls in America.
What lessons can we learn from the Kent State Massacre?
In the words of eyewitness Mike Alewitz writing in Counterpunch; “We were peacefully protesting the US invasion of Cambodia when the Ohio National Guard launched a teargas attack and then opened fire at us.
67 shots in 13 seconds left our campus strewn with dead and wounded. Four dead in Ohio – nine wounded, one paralyzed for life.
Ten days later, 75 Mississippi state police, armed with carbines, shotguns and submachine guns, fired 460 rounds into a dormitory at protesting students at Jackson State. The barrage left two dead and an unknown number of wounded.
And in between, rarely noted, was the largest black uprising in a southern city during the civil rights era.
On May 11, 1970, the black community in Augusta, Georgia rebelled, after the burned and tortured body of an incarcerated 16-year old retarded black youth was dumped by his jailers at a local hospital.
The rebellion left six African-American men dead – all shot in the back.
The invasion of Cambodia and killings at Kent sparked an unprecedented national student strike. Over 400 campuses were shut down and occupied by the students. Millions of people joined street demonstrations demanding an end to the war.
1970 marked a turning point in history as the majority of GIs came to recognize that Washington had knowingly sent them to die in a war that was unwinnable. Our movement became so powerful that, along with the determined resistance of the Vietnamese people, we forced the government to withdraw from Southeast Asia.
Ending the war, on the heels of the civil rights movement, was a tremendous victory for working people. The momentum gave rise to the rebirth of the women’s movement, the gay movement and other social movements that transformed the country.
Today we face an unprecedented medical, ecological, social and economic crisis. We cannot continue to pour trillions of dollars into an insatiable war machine while healthcare workers go begging for masks. While our schools and restaurants are closed. While millions are unemployed. While lines at food pantries stretch for miles.
The finances and resources of society must be changed to go towards healing our planet and ourselves. The memory of the martyrs of Kent and Jackson cries out for us to continue the struggle for which they gave their lives – to demand money for jobs and education, not for war; to put an end to all US wars and occupations and sanctions.”
As described by Steve Early in Jacobin; “In May 1970, 4 million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War. Fifty years later, their rebellion remains an inspiration, as radical student politics is back on the agenda.
Over the course of this unprecedented campus uprising, about two thousand students were arrested. After thirty buildings used by the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) were bombed or set on fire, heavily armed National Guards were deployed on twenty-one campuses in sixteen states.
On May 4, at Kent State University in Ohio, Guard members fresh from policing a Teamster wildcat strike shot and killed four students and wounded nine. Ten days later, Mississippi State Police opened fire on a women’s dormitory at Jackson State University, killing two more students”.
“The strike across campuses revealed the power of collective action. Born out of the shutdown, there was an explosion of activity by hundreds of thousands of students not previously engaged in anti-war activity, creating major political tremors across the country, including helping to curtail military intervention in Southeast Asia.”
“Nixon claimed to have a “secret plan” to bring peace to Vietnam and withdraw the five hundred thousand US troops still deployed there.
Once unveiled, Nixon’s plan turned out to be “Vietnamization” — shifting the combat burden to troops loyal to the US-backed government in Saigon, while conducting massive bombing of targets throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. By April 30, 1970, the United States was sending ground troops into Cambodia as well.
Students at elite private institutions long associated with anti-war agitation were among the first to react. Protest strikes were quickly declared at Columbia, Princeton, Brandeis, and Yale, where many students had already voted to boycott class in support of the Black Panther Party, then on trial in New Haven.
Meanwhile, a Friday night riot outside student bars in downtown Kent, Ohio, was followed by the burning of a Kent State ROTC building over the weekend. Ohio governor James Rhodes ordered a thousand National Guard troops to occupy the campus and prevent rallies of any kind.
The Guard came geared with bayonets, tear gas grenades, shotguns, and M1s, a military rifle with long range and high velocity. Chasing a hostile but unarmed crowd of students across campus on May 4, one unit of weekend warriors suddenly wheeled and fired, killing four students.”
“The deaths of Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder had a powerful impact on hundreds of thousands of students at Kent State and beyond.”
“The resulting calls for campus shutdowns came from every direction. Students at MIT tracked which schools were on strike for a National Strike Information Center operating at Brandeis nearby. Soon the list was ten feet long. Despite its initial association with militant protest, most strike activity was peaceful and legal. It consisted of student assemblies taking strike votes, and then further mass meetings, speeches and lectures, vigils and memorial services, plus endless informal “rapping” about politics and the war.
The strike brought together a wide range of undergraduates, faculty members, and administrators — despite their past disagreements about on-campus protest activity. Thirty-four college and university presidents sent an open letter to Nixon calling for a speedy end to the war. The strike also united students from private and public colleges and local public high schools in working-class communities. On May 8, in Philadelphia, students from many different backgrounds and neighborhoods marched from five different directions to Independence Hall, where a crowd of one hundred thousand gathered outside. City high school attendance that day dropped to 10 percent, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.”
“In a Boston Globe interview on the thirtieth anniversary of this upsurge, Isserman argued that it was “the product of unique circumstances that, not surprisingly, provoked outrage from a generation of students already accustomed to protest and demonstration. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a movement quite like this again.”
“Yet over the past two decades, college and high-school students have walked out again, across the country, in highly visible and coordinated fashion. In March 2003, they poured out of 350 schools to protest the impending US invasion of Iraq. Fifteen years later, about 1 million students at 3,000 schools walked out to join a seventeen-minute vigil organized in response to the mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida. And just last September, hundreds of thousands of students left school to join rallies and marches organized as part of a Global Climate Strike.
Universities and high schools are now experiencing a shutdown of their campuses, albeit of a very different kind. But when these institutions open back up, conditions will require a new set of political demands. A return to normal will not be good enough. When school is back in session, the history of a strike occurring after the shadow of death fell on campuses fifty years ago, thanks to Richard Nixon, may become more relevant to challenging “national policy”.
Crosby Stills Nash & Young – Ohio – (live audio 1970)
Remembering The Kent State Massacre | Morning Joe | MSNBC
National Geographic: Kent State Massacre
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/kent-state-shooting-vietnam-war-protest-student-organizing
49 Years After the Kent State Shootings, New Photos Are Revealed
https://time.com/5583301/kent-state-photos
WHERE THE NINE WOUNDED ARE NOW, Kent State Magazine
https://www.kent.edu/magazine/where-nine-wounded-are-now
After the Kent State Massacre, ‘Ohio’ Spoke to the Country
The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished, by I.F. Stone
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703405.The_Killings_at_Kent_State
Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties, Thomas M. Grace
Echoes of Kent State: News of Repression of the University Divestiture and Gaza Peace Protests and Occupations
We Columbia University students urge you to listen to our voices | Columbia College Student Council and Columbia Engineering Student Council
Crackdowns intensify on pro-Palestine campus protests as hundreds arrested
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/college-campus-palestine-protests-police
Police enter Columbia in apparent bid to break up student occupation
Police arrest more Gaza protesters at University of Texas-Austin
New Orleans police accused of excessive force as Gaza protesters arrested
Columbia University is colluding with the far-right in its attack on students | Moira Donegan
Protesting against slaughter – as students in the US are doing – isn’t antisemitism | Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/23/israel-gaza-campus-protests?CMP=share_btn_url
Stunning police brutality will ignite a student anti-war movement in America | Joan Donovan
Let us remember the last time students occupied Columbia University | Omar Barghouti, Tanaquil Jones, and Barbara Ransby
Student encampments have the potential to strengthen US democracy | Jan-Werner Müller
I teach democracy at Princeton. Student protesters are getting an education like no other | Razia Iqbal
Like a war zone’: Emory University grapples with fallout from police response to protest
UCLA students describe violent attack on Gaza protest encampment: ‘It was terrifying’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/ucla-campus-violence-protests
‘They’re sending a message’: harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns | US campus protests
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/04/police-tactics-us-campus-protest-crackdowns
Arabic
4 مايو 2024 ثمن السلام: ذكرى مذبحة ولاية كينت في ظل الإبادة الجماعية للفلسطينيين
إننا نتذكر اليوم القمع المروع والقتل الجماعي الذي ارتكبته الشرطة والذي يعد من بين أكثر جرائم إرهاب الدولة وحشية وحماقة في تاريخ أمتنا، ولكننا نتذكر أيضًا المقاومة الشجاعة للطلاب في جميع أنحاء أمريكا ضد الحكومة التي كانت ولا تزال مرتكبة ظالمة وعنيفة. الجرائم ضد الإنسانية في الداخل والخارج.
كان الإضراب الطلابي الوطني الذي أطلقته المذبحة بمثابة نقطة تحول في التدخل الأمريكي في فيتنام، ويظل نموذجًا للعمل الجماهيري حتى اليوم. الدرس الأساسي بسيط. لتوحيد الجميع، من جميع طبقات وطبقات المجتمع، في العمل ضد التهديد الوجودي، يجب أن يكون التهديد عالميًا وواضحًا ومباشرًا. إن مثل هذا الاحتجاج الجماهيري العالمي يتكشف الآن في ظل الإبادة الجماعية الإسرائيلية للفلسطينيين وأصداء وانعكاسات مذبحة ولاية كينت.
إن حركة طلابية موازية من أجل السلام وسحب الاستثمارات تجتاح الآن أمتنا وعالمنا، وهي دعوة واضحة للتضامن مع المضطهدين في الإبادة الجماعية للفلسطينيين ومقتل الآلاف من الأطفال والمدنيين الذين تدفع ثمنهم ضرائبنا، كما فعلت حكومتنا والإبادة الجماعية. يتخلى جو عن أفكارنا حول حقوق الإنسان العالمية والدور التاريخي لأمريكا كدولة ضامنة لها، ومثل حركة السلام الجامعية لإنهاء حرب فيتنام لا تقابل بالاحتفال بحقوقنا في حرية التعبير والملكية المشتركة للدولة من قبل الجميع. مواطنيها، ليس مع رئيس ينضم إلى الاحتجاجات باعتباره بطل الديمقراطية وحقوق الإنسان العالمية، ولكن مع إرهاب الشرطة وقمع المعارضة.
لقد خاننا قادتنا، وبالتخلي عن حقوقنا الإنسانية وحقوقنا كمواطنين، ربما يكون بايدن والحزب الديمقراطي قد سلموا الانتخابات المقبلة إلى ترامب والحزب الجمهوري الذي تتمثل مهمته في تخريب الديمقراطية واستبدالها بحكومة ثيوقراطية. طغيان الإرهاب الأبوي والعنصري الأبيض. لأنه إذا كنت ترعى وتأذن بالإبادة الجماعية، فلا أستطيع التصويت لك، وسوف أقاتلك؛ وفي هذا لست وحدي.
إننا نواجه معضلة في هذا العام الانتخابي الحاسم، حيث الحرية أو الاستبداد على المحك ليس فقط بالنسبة لأمتنا ولكن للبشرية جمعاء وعلى مدى آلاف السنين القادمة. يجب علينا أن نخضع كلبنا من خلال المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات على إسرائيل حتى تنتهي الإبادة الجماعية والاحتلال، ومعها نظام نتنياهو الاستيطاني القائم على التطهير العرقي والإرهاب الثيوقراطي. إذا لم نتمكن من ذلك، واخترنا بدلاً من ذلك التحالف وتحديد هوية أمتنا مرة أخرى من خلال الغزو والسيطرة الإمبراطورية، وإرهاب الدولة والطغيان، وتضحيات الآخرين التي تعيش في خدمة قوتنا، فإن أولئك منا الذين يتذكرون ما يعنيه أن تكون دولة يجب على الأميركي والإنساني أن يرفضوا التصويت لبايدن، أرضاً يفوز ترامب بالرئاسة؛ هذا هو الدافع الحقيقي لتدبير إسرائيل لمأساة 7 أكتوبر، بهدف مزدوج مع خلق سبب للحرب من أجل الحل النهائي للفلسطينيين وغزو الشرق الأوسط.
أسألكم الآن جميعاً؛ لا تدع التواطؤ في الإبادة الجماعية يكون السبب وراء سقوط الديمقراطية في أمريكا.
Hebrew
4 במאי 2024 מחיר השלום: יום השנה לטבח במדינת קנט בצל רצח העם של הפלסטינים
היום אנו זוכרים את הדיכוי הנורא והרצח ההמוני על ידי המשטרה, שהם בין הפשעים האכזריים וחסרי ההיגיון של טרור המדינה בתולדות האומה שלנו, אבל גם את ההתנגדות האמיצה של סטודנטים ברחבי אמריקה לממשלה שהיתה ועדיין נותרה עבריין לא צודק ואלים של פשעים נגד האנושות הן בבית והן מחוצה לה.
שביתת הסטודנטים הלאומית שהטבח חולל הייתה נקודת מפנה למעורבות האמריקנית בווייטנאם, והיא נותרה מודל לפעולה המונית כיום. הלקח העיקרי שלה הוא פשוט; כדי לאחד את כולם, מכל המעמדות והשכבות של החברה, בפעולה נגד איום קיומי האיום האמור חייב להיות אוניברסלי וכן ברור וישיר. מחאה המונית אוניברסלית כזו מתרחשת כעת בצל רצח העם הישראלי של הפלסטינים וההדים וההרהורים של הטבח במדינת קנט.
תנועת סטודנטים מקבילה לשלום והסרה בולעת כעת את האומה שלנו ואת העולם שלנו, קריאה מובהקת לסולידריות עם המדוכאים ברצח העם של הפלסטינים ובמותם של אלפי ילדים ואזרחים המשולמים על ידי המסים שלנו, כממשלתנו ורצח העם. ג’ו נוטש את הרעיונות שלנו בדבר זכויות אדם אוניברסליות ותפקידה ההיסטורי של אמריקה כמדינה הערבית שלהם, וכמו תנועת השלום האוניברסיטאית לסיום מלחמת וייטנאם אינה זוכה לחגיגה של זכויות הביטוי שלנו והבעלות המשותפת על המדינה על ידי כולם של אזרחיה, לא עם נשיא שמצטרף להפגנות בתור אלוף הדמוקרטיה וזכויות האדם האוניברסליות שלנו, אלא עם טרור משטרתי ודיכוי התנגדות.
המנהיגים שלנו בגדו בנו, ובנטישת זכויות האדם שלנו וזכויותינו כאזרחים, ייתכן שבידן והמפלגה הדמוקרטית העבירו את הבחירות הבאות לטראמפ ולמפלגה הרפובליקנית שמשימתן היא חבלה בדמוקרטיה והחלפתה בתאוקרטיה. עריצות של טרור פטריארכלי ולבן. כי אם אתה נותן חסות ותאשר רצח עם, אני לא יכול להצביע עבורך, ואני אלחם בך; ובזה אני רחוק מלהיות לבד.
אנו נלכדים בקרנות של דילמה בשנת בחירות מכרעת זו, עם חירות או עריצות על כף המאזניים לא רק עבור האומה שלנו אלא עבור המין האנושי כולו ולאורך אלפי השנים הקרובות. עלינו להביא את הכלב שלנו לעקב באמצעות חרם, ביטול וסנקציה של ישראל עד לסיום רצח העם והכיבוש, ואיתו משטר המתנחלים נתניהו של טיהור אתני וטרור תיאוקרטי. אם איננו יכולים, ובמקום זאת בוחרים ליצור ברית ולזהות את האומה שלנו שוב עם כיבוש ושליטה אימפריאלית, טרור מדינה ועריצות, והקרבת חיים של אחרים בשירות לכוחנו, אלו מאיתנו שזוכרים מה זה אומר להיות אמריקאי ובן אנוש חייבים לסרב להצביע עבור ביידן, קרקע שטראמפ יזכה בנשיאות; זהו המניע האמיתי לתזמור של ישראל את הטרגדיה של 7 באוקטובר, במטרה כפולה עם יצירת קאזוס באלי לפתרון הסופי של הפלסטינים ולכיבוש המזרח התיכון.
אני שואל אתכם עכשיו, כולנו; אל תתנו לשותפות ברצח עם להיות הסיבה שהדמוקרטיה נופלת באמריקה.
Torch of Liberty 
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