LaBOR aRT & MuRAL PRoJECT
AGITPROP NEWS: 5.4.3
The Kent State Massacre -
May 4, 1970
"I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage,
about the ability of people to organize against
all odds, and to resist against all odds."
-Rachel CorrieRachel Corrie was 23 years old. She was killed on March 16, 2003 by the Israeli army. She was trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in a refugee camp in Gaza. Rachel was an artist and peace activist - a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
When I look at her image, I can't help but see Sandy Scheur and Allison Krause.
Thomas Hurndall was 21 years old. He was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers as he stood between them and a group of Palestinian children on April 11. He was a British peace activist. When I look at the photo of a grief-stricken activist kneeling over him, I am reminded of another well-known photo.
Thomas Hurndall could be Jeffrey Miller or Bill Schroeder.
Rachel and Thomas have joined a long list of those who have given their lives in the struggle for peace and justice. Sandy Scheur, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller and Bill Schroeder are on that list. They were gunned downed by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970 for protesting against the war in Vietnam. These young people represent the best of their respective generations. They are joined by the Iraqi protesters gunned down by US troops for opposing the occupation - and countless others around the globe.
A Bloody History
The US invasion and occupation of Iraq has added yet another chapter to the bloody history of US military action. Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea and dozens of other countries have tasted American liberation.
Over 37000 bombs were dropped during this one-sided war. More than 2200 Iraqis and 174 US soldiers were killed directly. But the real weapons of mass destruction was not the ones invented by the Bush Gang, but the very real weapon of economic sanctions - which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Vietnam
The story of the Kent Massacre begins in an earlier war.
2,500,000 men and women of my generation were forced to serve in Vietnam. Of those, 58,135 were killed; 2500 were missing and likely dead; 303,616 were wounded and 33,000 were paralyzed. In addition, there were 110,000 war related vet deaths and 35,000 civilian dead.
Those figures pale in comparison to the losses suffered by the Vietnamese. There were 1,921,000 Vietnamese deaths. 200,000 Kampucheans were killed. 100,000 Laotians. A total of 3,200,000 Asians were wounded. 14,305,000 people were made into refugees.
The United States intervention left fully 1 in 30 total dead and 1 in 12
wounded. Washington created 300,000 orphans.
15,500,000 tons of bombs were dropped. Millions of gallons of poisons were dumped. The US succeeded in defoliating fully 10% of the land of Vietnam. Between 1966 - 1972, the US dumped more than 12 million gallons of Agent Orange (a dioxin-powered herbicide) over about 4.5 million acres of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The government of Vietnam estimates the civilian casualties from Agent Orange at more than 500,000. The legacy continues with high levels of birth defects in areas that were saturated with the chemical. Tens of thousands of US soldiers were also the victims of Agent Orange.
100s of billions dollars were pumped into the death machine...dollars which did not go to schools and medicines and social services.
Despite the horrific punishment inflicted on the people of Southeast Asia, the United States was eventually forced to withdraw - defeated by the combined power of the Vietnamese liberation struggle and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
The Anti-War Movement
From the very beginning of US intervention, opposition began not only on the campus, but in working-class communities, and of critical importance, within the army itself.
One of the great unsung, heroic actions of the north American working class was the fight against the war in Vietnam, led by active-duty GIs, many of them black and Latino. Combined with the militant student anti-war movement, it spelled the doom of two Presidents and direct American military involvement in SE Asia.
Throughout the late 60's and early 70's there were a series of increasingly large anti-war mobilizations that began to reach out to the great mass of the American people. Combined with the ferment taking place in African-American and Latino communities, the radicalization began to challenge all our fundamental political, social and cultural beliefs.
Nixon Invades Cambodia
When President Richard Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia, and the widening of the war, on April 30, 1970, it was met with universal outrage. Student protests began to erupt all across the country.
At Kent State, a series of protests took place from May 1-3, including graduate students symbolically burying the Constitution, black students rallying against the war, unrest in downtown Kent, and students burning down the ROTC building, a dilapidated old wooden structure.
Kent was no stranger to protests. Although largely written out of the history of the Kent events, the May actions were preceded by years of mass mobilizations against the war, which involved thousands of students in street demonstrations.
On May 3, the Ohio National Guard was called out against the students by Governor James Rhodes - a Nixon crony - after a series of calls to the White House. Rhodes echoed the words of Nixon, who called the student protesters "bums."
At a press conference that day, Rhodes said of the students: "They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people we harbor in America. I think we are up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group in America."
The basis was laid for the murders - all that remained was to pull the triggers.
May 4, 1970
On May 4, students formed on the Commons, a traditional free speech area, in a peaceful protest against the war and the military occupation of the campus. The Guard ordered us to leave. After we refused to relinquish our right to protest, we were barraged with tear gas. At this point the protest was essentially over.
The guardsmen continued to march over Blanket Hill, to a practice field on the other side. They crouched and aimed at us. They got up and began to walk back over the hill. But as they neared the pagoda, without provocation, they turned and fired at the unarmed students.
The students shot were from 71 to 495 feet away. Most were shot in the back or sides as they attempted to flee. Four students lay dying: my friend Sandy Scheur, SMC activist Allison Krause, Jeffry Miller and Bill Schroeder.
On May 14, ten days later, 75 Mississippi state cops, armed with carbines, shotguns and submachine guns, fired 460 rounds into a dormitory at protesting students at Jackson State. They killed James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, and left 12 wounded.
National Student Strike
Fueled by hatred of the war, the shootings at Kent and Jackson triggered what became the largest political demonstration in US history, a national student strike which shut down most major universities. On campus after campus, students began to meet and discuss how to turn their universities into real institutions of learning, and how to build a movement to end the war. We patterned our strike on the actions of students in other countries, most notably in France. There, in May-June of 1968, students engaged in massive political struggles that involved the working class in a massive general strike.
The student anti-war movement was instrumental in supporting the anti-war soldiers. The army began to collapse in Vietnam. Eventually, in April of 1975, the US was forced to completely withdraw. The military defeat opened the door for the next stage of US involvement ion Vietnam: an economic war which continued for years.
The governments in Washington and Ohio attempted to destroy the memory of what happened at Kent by building over the site and covering up the truth of what happened there. There has never been a full accounting the murders, the role of the armed FBI agent who was photographed in the crowd or the involvement of Nixon and Rhodes.
And, to this day, in any official or radical commemoration, has the role of the mass anti-war movement at Kent been acknowledged. The demonstrations and moratoriums that mobilized thousands of KSU students remains only in the consciousness of those who participated.
Permanent War
There can, and will, be more martyrs. The same government that brings so much death and destruction to the world is just as willing to use violence at home when it suits their aims. It would be naive to think otherwise. The vast military machine of the US is now prepared to pre-empt any movement which challenges it's authority. The US has military intervened in over 70 countries, including Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Korea, Haiti, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
There are a half-million troops stationed at over 395 major military bases and hundreds of minor installations in thirty-five foreign countries. The US Navy fleet is larger in total tonnage and firepower than all the other navies of the world combined, consisting of missile cruisers, nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, destroyers, and spy ships that sail every ocean and make port on every continent.
U.S. bomber squadrons and long-range missiles can reach any target, carrying enough explosive force to destroy entire continents - with an overkill capacity of more than 8,000 strategic nuclear weapons and 22,000 tactical ones. The US also possesses 12,000 chemical warheads - and has been willing to use such weapons on numerous occasions since it first began giving smallpox-infested blankets to indigenous peoples.
The US has been willing to work with any butcher - Pinochet, Noriega, Somoza and Pol Pot and many others have enjoyed Washington's backing. That includes Saddam Hussein. This last war was just a falling-out among pals.
The New World Order
US corporate greed knows no bounds, and it will ruthlessly defend it's profits.
Those corporate profits have a human cost. Just look at the plight of the world's children: Every year, 12 million children under five years of age -33,000 per day - die from lack of proper nutrition. 500,000 are left blind every year for lack of a simple vitamin. 200 million children under five years of age are undernourished. 250 million children and adolescents are child laborers. 110 million do not attend primary school and 275 million fail to attend secondary school. Two million girls become prostitutes each year.
All of these problems could be eliminated with a small portion of the military budget. Instead of addressing the genuine problems of the world, the US is preparing more military adventures to protect its oil and other economic interests.
The US war budget equals the next 25 nations combined. It is twice the combined total net worth of the entire populations of the 40 poorest nations on earth - 600 million people.
The Future
It all might get depressing - but then something like February 15 comes along. On that day, millions of people throughout the world - many in defiance of their governments and political parties - took to the streets in an unprecedented action. They organized, from the ground up, the largest demonstration in the history of the world - against a war that had not yet begun.
There is a new global rebellion against the permanent US war. Cities and states throughout the US and the world are voicing their opposition to war. Enormous mobilizations are taking place throughout the Arab world against those backward and timid regimes.
World public opinion is solidly ranged against America. Vocal opponents of the war included the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Nelson Mandela and the Dixie Chicks. Artists, musicians, actors and poets opposed the US invasion in unprecedented measure - far greater than even at the height of the anti-VietnamWar movement.
For the first time in decades, major US labor unions came out forcefully against the war. There were instances of workers in Italy and England refusing to move war goods - pointing toward a future where working people begin to exercise their potential power.
George Bush has managed to unite us all!
For every one of the creepy-crawly Bush Gang there are hundreds of thousands of us. Let them strut like the old aristocracy - history is on our side.
For every de-humanized Bush or Rumsfeld there are a thousand people like Rachel Corrie - whose short life contained more dignity and honesty than exist in a thousand corporate board rooms. For every one of the students murdered at Kent and Jackson, there are tens of thousands marching in their place.
We will not forget our martyrs - whether on a mid-west college campus or in occupied Palestine. Their legacy is this great new movement that is being born. Some may think that the war is over - but really the struggle has just begun.
_________________________
Mike Alewitz was the founder and chairman of the Kent Student Mobilization Committee Against the War. He was an eyewitness to the massacre of May 4, 1970, and a leader of the national student strike that followed.
