Kent State

[TBF]

TBF note: Students re Kent State era described as "worse than brown shirts and the communist element ...". Sound familiar, Bernie Bros.? The establishment has always been the same - looking out for themselves and their profits. In the case of Kent State it was the profits made off their war-mongering.

Kent State: After 45 Years We Need a Serious Look at What Happened and Why?
By Murray Polner 5/4/16

It’s been 45 years since draft-deferred Ohio National Guardsmen aimed their M-1 rifles and .45 pistols at unarmed Kent State College students, killing four and wounding nine on May 4, 1970. You have to be well into middle age now to remember that day. My memory is stirred whenever I look at three photos: John Filo’s striking shot of teenager Mary Ann Vecchio on her knees weeping as she bends over student Jeffrey Miller’s body, a photo I took of Jeffrey’s grieving mother for a magazine my son Alex once edited, and a picture of two of the forever crippled in wheelchairs, KSU student Dean Kahler and wounded Marine Vietnam vet Ron Kovic of ‘Born on the Fourth of July” fame.

On the 41st anniversary of the shootings in 2011, the state’s largest newspaper, concluded, “There has never been a completely satisfactory explanation for why the Guard fired.” In fact, it went on, “The central unresolved question in the Kent State affair has been why several dozen Ohio Guardsmen pivoted in unison and fired” and for 13 agonizing seconds killed and wounded so many of their peers. The previous year the paper had reported the finding of an audio recording where a Guard office was said to shout, “All right, prepare to fire.” This led to an editorial urging the state to take another look “and give full account of that tragic day.”

“That tragic day” followed Nixon’s announcement that the U.S. had invaded Cambodia and expanded the war, causing antiwar college students throughout the nation to go on strike. It was a time when the President called antiwar students “bums” and Ohio’s Republican Governor James Rhodes, in a tight and ultimately losing race, described students against the war as “worse than brown shirts and the communist element and also night riders and vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America.” ...

More here: http://www.dsausa.org/kent_state_after_45_years_dl

This photo taken by John Filo of runaway Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling by Jeffrey Miller's body. This photo won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971:

[Melurkyoulongtime]

1. One minor correction and I'll shut up

The actual date is May 4, 1970 - 46 years ago today. I know because it's also my actual b-day. No one ever spoke of it until Linda Ellerbee had the balls to write about it May 4, 1991. I read her article about it in our local paper here in Houston that morning. Those poor kids were shot down like dogs by our own damn military in cold blood, AFAIC And I say this as the child of an ex-National Guardsman. I was devastated when I learned of it and still say a little prayer for them every year on this day. RIP Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer. And Linda, too