Sunday, May 4

Kent State, 1970


You can read what I wrote here and here about the anniversary. It's today.

And yeah, you know you've been at this blogging thing a while when you can just refer to your own archives.

9 comments:

  1. Furious doesn't begin to describe the way I feel on this anniversary.

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  2. Anonymous2:29 PM

    Thanks, BG; I would have not remembered. I was 21 and back from Nam 5 months; a freshman at ISU in "Normal" Illinois. A friend and I hitched to Madison where a lot of shit was falling out; there was a brick in every greenlight; a supermarket was burned to the ground. The National Guard was everywhere with their gas masks on.

    Is the climate that could spawn such brutality gone today? I don't know. I hope so.

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  3. Bloggers, I am several years older than Blue Gal, live in Ohio, and recall the shock at hearing students had been shot at Kent State.

    James Rhodes, a Republican governor, had ordered the Ohio National Guard to Kent, where they shot unarmed civilians.

    Outcome: 4 dead, 9 wounded, no convictions.

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  4. this isn't "conspiricy theory"..... this is history:

    here and here ..... there is a pattern..... there is always blowback.

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  5. Terry said...
    Is the climate that could spawn such brutality gone today? I don't know. I hope so.


    How could it be gone? That would have required fixing that which went so wrong that day. Because it hasn't boiled over as much, as often or as tragically only means that diffusers are effective at spreading the heat.

    So suitably diffused is the pot in which we are being stewed, that scattered hot spots and eruptions go unnoticed as isolated, not connected, incidents.

    Thanks BG, whether 122 years, 38 years, yesterday or scattered throughout, remind us that today and tomorrow another can happen.

    ...the outrage that spawned the brutality that spawned the outrage that spawned the brutality.

    Aren't we now just discomfortably numb.

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  6. Anonymous12:25 AM

    Tin Soldiers N Nixon's Coming.

    N he, or his spawn, are still comin.

    Halliburton.
    Blackwater.

    Lasers to boil your blood for riot control.

    We've had civil unrest since that day in Ohio.

    Not much has changed that CAUSE that unrest, nor the repression.

    It's all in place.

    And ready to bust out again, methinks.

    We live on, with luck.
    And don't compromise our selves in the process.

    What ELSE can silly hoomans do?

    Best to all, on this day, on that May Day.

    Best to all.

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  7. yes, i always remember tho sometimes i don't comment. i was 18 and a year out of high school.

    it is also the anniversary of my beloved grandfater's death in 78.
    it's a sad day every year.

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  8. I was a senior in high school (in Indiana), getting ready to go to college. That image stuck in my mind. Such a tragedy.

    We had riot police on our campus once, over of all things streaking!! I actually said to my friend that we needed to go, because at that point in time you could never be sure how the police would react ... if you can tell today ...


    BAC

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  9. Anonymous12:30 AM

    I was working in a not much office job, and was in the middle of applying to start university in September, when the national guardsmen opened fire at Kent State, in May. I was shocked by what was done (not "happened") at Kent State and brought the newspaper to work. An older, somewhat embittered woman, said that the students deserved it. I never forgot that. Later I learned about national guardsmen shooting into the windows of the dorms at Jackson State, described as "a black college" and said not to be in the news as much as Kent State, for that reason.

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