On the 38th anniversary of the Kent State massacre...

I wanted to post a segment of a letter that I wrote to my parents on May 6, 1970. This letter came back into my possession in 2000 after the death of my mother. I am struck by how little things have changed since I was 23.

"Dear Mom and Dad,

Since I haven't heard from you for a while, I guess maybe it's my turn to write. It's very hard for me to write or do much of anything right now after the tragedy at Kent State and the U.S. involvement in Cambodia and southeast Asia in general. As you know, we have all been involved in the movement for peace abroad and especially here at home, and I can't help but feel that it could've been any one of us as easily as those four students at Kent State. I deplore violence on campus, but then so did Allison Krause, and look where it got her. It is impossible to predict whether a rally will turn violent, but my God! do we have to fear for our lives each time we gather together to voice our dissent? They are trying to frighten us into submission.

Why shouldn't we protest against a war which everyone acknowledges is a big mistake, but in which our brothers have to die every day? You don't see Nixon or Agnew or Mendel Rivers over there fighting and dying. A few more lives may be expendable to them, but they certainly aren't expendable to the wives and families and friends of those who die. The war is ripping this nation apart. It is turning concerned young people into radical revolutionaries -- and more become radicalized with each instance of police or national guard repression.

Cities lie in squalor because of lack of funds while billions of dollars are wasted on the war. I believe the scientists have the technology right now to stop air and water pollution and clean up the environment, but their hands are tied because our national priorities place war before survival. And in such a time of crisis, we come up with a madman for a president.

I really fear for the future of this nation, and it makes me so very, very sad because no one loves this country more than I do. And we must stand by and let our frustration build because all our peaceful protests have fallen on deaf ears, and the violent protests only increase the repression. Innocent students die at the hands of the 'national guard.'

I've always believed in evolution, in the 'dawning of the Age of Aquarius'; I've believed that once we were old enough to govern this country that perhaps we could correct some of the inequities and that this great nation could set a peaceful and benevolent example for the rest of the world. But I am increasingly fearful that we won't survive as a nation long enough to realize these dreams.

I don't want to die, but I would almost rather die than live under a Fascist government. 'It can't happen here,' they say, but recent developments have certainly shaken my faith. I don't believe I could ever take up a weapon against another human being. I don't believe I could even throw a rock through a window, but we are headed toward either a revolution or such massive repression that our democracy will no longer be recognizable as such.

We are all just so perplexed and shocked and practically at the end of our hopes. It is a great blow when you've been taught all your life that America is the greatest, kindest, best country in the world, and then you're confronted with all the realities that they never teach you about. And then Nixon says we're "bums" and the conservatives wail about anarchy and violence on campus, etc. etc. etc. without even stopping to think that the violaence on campus is like a grain of sand compared to the violence being perpetrated by the government in the name of peace and freedom and 'honoring our commitment.'

Are they blind? They pat themselves on the back and rave on about saving three astronauts from destruction in space. Are three astronauts more important than 50,000 dead American soldiers, half a million dead Vietnamese and countless more who risk their lives every day?"



The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Peace.

Thanks for posting. :hi:

I was 17 and a Sr. in High School in May 1970. Allison Kraus had graduated from a rival school just five miles down the road.....

What a time...:hug:.

thank you for sharing, Blue. :hug:

I remember it well, all of it: I was a freshman at Wayne State University in Detroit. The week before had been the first Earth Day. Sunny, beautiful for late April in Detroit. Frisbees flying, dogs in neck kerchiefs, pretty girls everywhere, and a general feeling of happiness about doing the right thing.

The next week was ugly, gray, and we gathered outside the Student Center and demanded the university be closed. It was. There was much more to do, as that horrid war didn't end until 1975.

It's time we cut through the Rev. Wright crap and all like it that is designed to take our eyes off the prize of a better country. Your letter spoke truth then, and it echoes truth through the decades and reaches today.

We can do better than this. We must, whether the environment OR war. Damn.

"do we have to fear for our lives each time we gather together to voice our dissent?"

The regime wants all Americans to fear for their lives should we choose to protest or show any other form of dissent.


Great letter for the time and present.

In the meantime, yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Julie
nine years old on May 4, 1970, and I still remember, too

or do you mean in the form of a "letter to the editor"? I would be happy to share because I just find it so outrageous that we're having to fight these exact same battles over and over and over again.

but perhaps they should.

I agree with you -- we're doing this AGAIN? We didn't learn from the first time?

Julie

This is eloquently written. It IS scary how you could just substitute names and almost have it be printed as a LTTE today. Makes me proud to know you, you've been so long in the struggle. :patriot:

How you doing, girl? We were just talking about you a couple nights ago. :)

usedtobesick and I are in some kind of relationship limbo at present, I'm not sure if we're on or off. He's on meds now and in counseling for his PTSD, never taken care of after the first Gulf War. :(

Meanwhile, I'm applying for f/t jobs in Denver even though he's in Connecticut, so I guess that says a lot right there. Since I only work p/t now, though, I'm really able to get out and enjoy this spring which is in full bloom right now. Taking looong walks with Bear, trying to not take it all so seriously. Thanks for asking. :hug:

then we will have peace, until then, we will have endless war. Not looking like these wars are going to end anytime soon, HUH?

who Mendel Rivers was, this is from Wikipedia:

Rivers was initially skeptical of America's escalation of the Vietnam conflict and the sending of combat troops to Vietnam, but once the war was commenced, he became one of the strongest supporters of the war. He enjoyed referring to himself as "The Granddaddy of the War Hawks."<11> He urged the President to use nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese and to invade and occupy Hanoi.<12>

He criticized Army helicopter pilot and My Lai Massacre CWO Hugh Thompson, Jr. for giving the order to his men to fire upon American soldiers at My Lai if they continued to shoot unarmed Vietnamese civilians, calling him a traitor and saying he should be prosecuted. Rivers was unable to believe that American soldiers would do such a thing and publicly expressed doubt that any massacre ever happened. He attempted to protect the perpetrator of My Lai, Army 2nd Lt. William Calley, by quickly holding hearings of his subcommittee on My Lai, calling every major witness to the event (including Thompson) before the subcommittee, and then refusing to release the transcripts of the testimony, so that military prosecutors would be prohibited from calling those persons as witnesses at Calley's court martial.<13>


Kind of Joe Lieberman/Zell Miller cross, as he was ostensibly a Democrat. :puke: The good thing is that he was dead before the end of 1970, and good riddance.

We should never forget Kent State. It was an event that shaped our generation, one we carry with us for the rest of our lives.

At Jackson State on May 14, 1970, two protestors were killed by the police and twelve others wounded. The police fire 460 rounds into the crowd.

And the protests in Augusta, Georgia of May 9th, 1970, where six black men were killed by the police for protesting the murder and torture of 16 year old mentally retarded Charles Oatman at the hands of the police.

May 9, 1970, sixteen-year-old Charles Oatman was beaten and tortured by the police in the Richmond County jail in Augusta, Georgia. The police initially claimed that the cause of death was a fall from his bunk. The coroner's report concluded the 104 lb. Oatman had died of a "severe beating" and that his body bore cigarette burn marks where he'd been tortured. Two days later, May 11, 1970, six African Americans were shot dead by the police in the demonstrations over Oatman's tragic death.

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:IvOpAuErJQsJ:specc...

"...The day after Agnew's speech, Mrs. Carrie Mays co-operator of a "mom and pop" funeral parlor in Augusta, Ga. was confronted with the remains of yet another black mother's vain hopes and vicarious pain: the body of sixteen-year-old Charles Oatman, just received from the city jail. "He had been beaten something awful," she recounted later, "and there were cigarette burns on his hands and feet and and and, well, there were burns on his buttocks, too."<57> When county medical examiner Dr. Irvine Phinizy learned of the condition of the boy's 104-lb. body, he did an autopsy over the strenuous objections of the local authorities. He concluded that Oatman had died of "pulmonary edema, bilateral; and subdural hemorrhage, moderate, due to severe beatings." He also noted that the corpse was covered with "contusions, abrasions, scratches,, and minor lacerations," as well as "roughly circular lesions that were healing burns that could have been caused by a cigarette pressed against the skin" All the skin lesions were of varying age.<58>

Meanwhile Ms. Mays' less scientific description of the corpse had been circulating through the black community. That evening, about two hundred blacks gathered in the city park and walked over to the jail to confront the police. Sheriff E. F. Atkins informed them that Oatman had died as a result of falling off his cot and hitting his head on the floor. The sheriff retreated on this the next day, announcing that two of the dead boy's cellmates were being charged with murder. It came too late. Black leaders marched on the city-county building to protest while around five hundred of their followers demonstrated outside. They pulled down the American and Georgia flags, and handed the American flag to a black policeman. They burned the Georgia flag.

Backed by twenty of his men with rifles leveled at the crowd, police captain Jim Beck widely detested in the black community, faced them down. The crowd fragmented and started drifting downtown. Some of its members begin throwing things into storefront windows and at passing cars. Black leaders, pleading with police that they be allowed to restore calm, hastened to the scene. But before they could arrive, the police fired tear gas into the crowd. It re-fragmented into smaller packs that lobbed firebombs into and looted white- and Chinese-owned stores, and pulled whites from their cars and beat them. Then the sun went down. It rose again over a burned-out ghetto business district. Six people lay dead in the ashes, all of them black males, all of them shot in the back with the standard police load of 00-buckshot. Three had been bystanders. Two were killed in stores that were being looted. No one has established why the sixth was shot.<59> ..."

Things really were falling apart that May.

Sure shows who won, after all, doesn't it? Repression works.

The rising up needs to begin again, like, immediately.

sw

I remember that day very well -- it seemed like everything was unraveling. It was so incredibly shocking to hear that soldiers had fired into a crowd of unarmed students. A black day.

Sadly, your letter proves that very little has changed.

In memory... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1eyuH1-8A4

After something like that happens, how the hell do you keep fighting?

Peace.

Nobody ever told me about FDR; nobody ever told me about Kent State; nobody ever told me about MLK except for "The Dream Speech" and the assassination; nobody ever told me about my heritage... except telling me about Saint Ronald Reagan.

Why do Americans not give a fuck about heritage?

Thanks for sharing this with me. It creates many questions in my mind. About things I've never been told about.

These are seared into our collective memory as a nation! How did you come to know about FDR, Kent State, MLK?

(How old are you, and where from, may I ask?)

I remember how shocked I was at the lack of coverage of the Vietnam conflict in my oldest daughter's high school history book (she graduated in 1990). It was a very short chapter to begin with, and mention of the protests and opposition was relegated to a couple of paragraphs, basically saying that the antiwar people were just a "fringe" element...no mention of the millions of people who marched, the campus uprisings, the Kent State shootings, any of that.

When I took her to see "Born on the Fourth of July," she was amazed. "Wow, was it really like that? Were there really all those people protesting?" She knew my background and participation, but she had been led to believe that her dear old mom was part of the "lunatic fringe."

I think it's a shame that kids aren't taught the truth.

k&r...

That whole period of time there from about '66 on -- actually, I guess, starting in '63 with the JFK assassination -- was just one shock after another. As a nation, we could have -- and should have -- learned so much from those turbulent years, but here we are, repeating the same old mistakes.

i received the international edition of newsweek in mail call while serving my nation's good in korea. i shook my head sadly staring at the cover photo of that girl and the fallen body of someone's kid killed by the ohio national guard on account of the kid was protesting the war in vietnam. but the kent state massacre was only the first of three lethal retributions for free speech that year. yes, indeed, the more things change the more they stay the same. or as the french would say f*ck you protestors.

first, government forces killed three kids at kent state for protesting nixon's war. three anglo kids.
next, a few days later, government forces killed two kids at jackson state university. two black kids.
finally, on august 29, government forces killed three chicanos, one a 14 year of boy named lyn ward, another young man named angel diaz, and a journalist named ruben salazar.

lesson learned: protest and die. que plus ça change...

as helen thomas said, where are the rest of you guys? don't know if the white house kills journalists today, but back in 1970, one was fair game.

here's a narrative on the east los angeles killings, from http://labloga.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-people-wont-read-give-them-books-on.html, in a story about the postage stamp (42 cents, the article is wrong on its claim of it being 41 center) honoring journalist salazar:

Tuesday, April 22, the US Postal Service issues a 41 cent postage stamp honoring Salazar. Against a brown field and the outline of a water jug the designer has assembled like a ransom note torn from a newspaper pages the words, "during Chicano protest rally in East Los Angeles".

It was a police riot. And he was killed miles from the park rally.

It was August 29, 1970. The Chicano Moratorium had assembled massive numbers to march along Whittier Boulevard to a neighborhood park, where they would be entertained by poets, musicians, and speakers. But as the march reached its destination and gente had begun the rally, the cops, on a pretext (can you say agent provocateur?), went crazy, attacking people mindlessly, chasing mothers with babies in arms into private homes. By day's end, law enfarcement would notch three dead Chicanos: Lyn Ward, a 14-year old boy; Angel Diaz; Ruben Salazar.

Several Chicano novels cite the police riot in East Los Angeles. The earliest is Guy Garcia’s Skin Deep, where the riot marked a turning point in the character's life. Lucha Corpi’s Death of a Brown Angel, opens with her character fleeing the crazed cops. She turns into an alley where she discovers a murdered infant, whose dreadfully abused corpse will lead the woman to solve the mystery. More recently, Stella Pope Duarte's Vietnam war/movimiento novel, Let Their Spirits Dance, recalls the event as a focal point illuminating the contradictions of Chicano activism on one hand, military dedication on another. And I wish I remember the poet who wrote a heart-rending poem about a baby's shoe in the gutter littered with the detritus left in the wake of the panicked crowd fleeing the gas and batons of Laguna Park.

The deaths of those three Chicanos on August 29 was the third time law enforcement killed war protestors in 1970. Three anglo kids were shot by national guardsmen on the Kent State University campus. Ten days later, two black kids were shot by police at Jackson State University. Then came August 29. At Kent State, an iconic image of an anguished girl kneeling over the body of a fallen protestor, hit the cover of Newsweek magazine. The black kids were shot at night in or near their dorm rooms, with no “live” media, so their deaths largely went unmemorialized. The East LA event memorialized the Silver Dollar bar. The Coroner’s Inquest was broadcast live, for all the good that did. (See this satirical piece depicting Nixon’s Tape 231 discussing the Salazar, Diaz, and Ward killings). No police officer or Sheriff’s Deputy was ever brought to account in the shootings of Lyn Ward, a 14-year old Chicano, Angel Diaz, nor La Opinion and LA Times journalist Ruben Salazar. Salazar's murder included a mysterious phone call alerting Sheriff's to a "man with a gun" inside the Silver Dollar. The Deputy fired blind, through a curtain, decapitating Salazar, who was enjoying una chelada miles from the heat of the riot at Laguna Park.

None of this, of course, is in that stamp. Only the ongoing coverup, "during a Chicano protest rally".

As you say, these later incidents are not as well known as Kent State, but they should be. It's important that we never forget these martyrs to free speech.