1300 Arrests and Calls for National Guard to Deal with Palestinian Protests Echo May 1970 Rebellion and Kent State Murders
Whether I submit to it or not, because I’ve just finished writing a book about the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement over 50 years ago, I am now an expert on the era that brought us the Kent State massacre and the first national student strike of May of 1970.
The reports of up to 1300 arrests nation-wide of pro-Palestinian protesters, up to 2 dozen college campuses undergoing protests, numerous building take-overs and encampments, clashes between police and students, threats to bring in the National Guard and now claims of “outside agitators” — all echo what happened during the high-water mark of the decade long movement against the US wars in Southeast Asia. Now, our country is back at the doorstep of our own history.
It’s a history that includes one of the darkest days in our modern American story – the killings of four young students and the wounding of another 9 by National Guard troops at Kent State on May 4, 1970 – during protests against the war on that campus.
It’s been exactly 54 years since.
It had been triggered by President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia — and protests began immediately along with calls for a national student strike. And then the Kent State murders happened and things on campuses just exploded.
When the dust settled a month later, two young Black men had also been murdered by police at Jackson State, two young men burnt themselves alive in protest of the war — including George Winne right here at UC San Diego, thousands were arrested, hundreds injured and wounded, countless building occupations took place, campus buildings burnt down, a hundred violent clashes between law enforcement and striking student protesters, 400 to 500 college campuses shut down and up to 4 million college students out in protest. It was an out and out rebellion — and it brought the country’s higher education system to a standstill and forever changed America.
Looking back at the misty distance of our history of over half a century, it doesn’t appear that we — as a country — learned the lessons of that past.
Which means we’re bound to repeat it.
Get ready to put on a black armband.
This is a good site to check out to get some perspective of the Guardsmen who were deployed that day. Not necessarily the actual Guardsmen who fired their weapons but still worth a look:
https://www.kentguardvoices1970.com/
You can click on individual interviews.
Thank you. Intriguing perspectives worthy of anyone’s time.
Some 0f this is just too comical to be real:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/01/columbia-protests-asking-for-food-humanitarian-aid/
Food for thought. Prior to the pro Israel agitators attacking, a Jewish girl was allegedly beaten unconscious by pro Palestinian protesters. While this does not excuse the actions of the pro Israel group, this shows there’s always two sides to this issue:
https://www.news9live.com/videos/world-videos/ucla-protests-jewish-student-beaten-unconscious-by-pro-palestine-protesters-video-2519144
I would like to know more details of what led to her being attacked.
Plenty of schools nationwide eliminated a lot of volatility by embracing peaceful protests; thus keeping protests peaceful by deploying the novel, cutting edge technology, unheard of in this country, leaders listening.
School leaders that have provided a forum for all of their students, listened and agreed to take measurable action when deemed possible have protected their students safety in the process, go figure… You don’t hear about them, why? Because practicing open dialog and free speech have prevented sensationalized corporate media skewed clickbait conflict footage, designed to induce violence and begetting more, and more violence to ensure better exposure for their corporate advertisers.
That term, outside agitator is used to “other” the activists and divide and conquer the movement. It’s so worn and threadbare that the term now used at University of California is “non affiliate”. Don’t be shocked when the chancellors’ and president of the university accept big fat checks from their “non affiliates”, Moores (cancer center) Geisel (Library), Rady (business school), Wells Fargo (Hall) and Jacobs (Engineering school), just to name a few.
Reminds me of the line from the movie Casa Blanca, when Claude Rains is forced by the Nazis to shut down Humphrey Bogart’s cafe. He says, I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling (non affiliates) is going on here. Your winnings, sir. Oh thank you very much.”
Thank you!
I never will forget that day.
Or the day – in Vermont – whe Nixon was running.
He flew into the Burlington Airport on a helicopter. My small children and I were able to get into the hangar where he spoke.
We were at the back – his supporters were in the front. Armed men ringed the raised walkway around the room.
When he got up and left, someone in the crowd threw a large rock, which just missed his head.
He and Kissinger kept that war going until 1975.
What? Nixon ended American involvement in ’73 and resigned in ’74.
There is a subtle distinction between the Anti-Viet Nam War protests of the 1970s and the current university protests across America today. The United States President and Congress have not authorized a military draft to send young men and women into combat, as had been done in the 197os. No one on the campuses today is threatened with being sent off to fight a civil war in a foreign land against their will. What the university students are protesting is Presidential and Congressional funding of one side of a civil war in which innocent civilians are being decimated by missiles, bombs and other mechanisms of destruction created in American factories. Let me be clear, I have torn feelings between the right to defend and root out evil and am right now having a hard time distinguishing one side from the other.
Well said Ron. You speak for many of us!
I wouldn’t consider this a subtle difference, rather a massive one! To my mind, this is the defacto reason that the pro hamas protesters are 100% in the wrong here. They are not in any way in danger of being shipped off to fight some politician’s war.
No amount of university funding will make even the slightest dent in the funding that goes to Israel every year. They are simply barking up the wrong tree and for that matter are on the wrong side of history on this one. To be pro hamas is to stand for the extermination of all Jews, LGBTQ, Christians, Hindus and on and on. Why has it suddenly become OK to call for the genocide of Jews or any other group of people for that matter. These are dark times.
All of this has reminded me of a 1984 interview of Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB spy, who laid out in great detail how the Russian government laid the foundation to de-stabilize the US through leftist propaganda. I’d say they were quite successful, considering where we are now. Full interview link.
Pro Hamas? Falsely equivocate much?
“Pro Hamas” is a disingenuous characterization and a completely nonfactual statement with no basis in reality.
The narrative on all of he corporate news channels simultaneously changed on a dime yesterday, to ‘The Israel / Hamas War”, from the “Israel / Palestinian war”.
Seems like your trying to pile that on here Sam.
University and college protests taking place all over the nation have NEVER been pro Hamas. More than 98% of the college and university protests have been unremarkably peaceful, and remain peaceful.
There exists a genuine need to make voices heard, protest war crimes and crimes against humanity. And there is a huge distinction between Palestinians and the hateful Hamas ideology.
You cannot kill an ideology. And most Palestinians do not share the Hamas ideology. In fact many Palestinians have publicly renounced Hamas at risk of harm to themselves and their families by Hamas since they strong-armed their way into seizing power.
Netenyahu has forbidden journalists from entering Gaza to report on the war. This includes Israeli journalists.
For the first time in modern history journalists have been forbidden by the leader of a free country, an ally of the United States and NATO, to document war!
According for the international non profit The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
As of May 1, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 35,000 killed since the war began in Gaza on October 7—with more than 34,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 deaths in Israel.
To summarize:
More than 34,000 innocent civilians lay dead, killed in just 7 months of relentless indiscriminate bombing campaigns; not Hamas soldiers, but innocent civilians.
To be clear, most Palestinians are NOT Hamas, pro Hamas and are not Hamas sympathizers and neither are American students protesting for a ceasefire.
Fun Fact: 80% of Israeli citizens recently polled this week want Netenyahu removed from office and consider him a tyrant. Up from 3 polls that had reflected that more than 70% of Israelis want Bibi removed.
My young neighbor, who has some family in Israel, is in agony.
He wants all military aid from the U.S. to Israel stopped.
His grandfather was a Holocaust survivor.
I wonder what his grandfather thinks.
/s/ Chris Kennedy
PRO-HAMAS? That sure sounds like the same crap I heard spewed 50-60 years ago. We were all COMMIES, we supported the USSR, we hated freedom, all the flag-waving nonsense coming out of the same MSM-indoctrinated mouthpieces then as I’m hearing now. The US learned NOTHING from the War on Vietnam seems like.
So yes, shades of the Viet Nam anti-war protests and of course Wbush’s “You’re Either With US or With the Terrorists” just twenty years ago. What, you don’t remember that crap either? How did either one of those debacles turn out, eh? Oh, right, the PROTESTERS WERE RIGHT and the State was completely in the wrong!! Sure seems all too familiar.
This link below was ONLY LUCK that the rest of the armed State thugs didn’t open fire and murder a bunch of protesters ‘by accident.’ Shooting through interior drywall? Bullets go THROUGH buildings built like that! Imagine a few hundred rounds screaming through the building because they ‘were in fear for their lives’ but it was just an accident…or maybe plant a few knives or a throw-away gun or two to justify the murders. Cops do that you know. As I stated elsewhere, when is the new Kent State going to happen? Soon it looks like.
NYPD Officer Opened Fire During Columbia Raid, Local Prosecutor Confirms
https://www.rsn.org/001/nypd-officer-opened-fire-during-columbia-raid-local-prosecutor-confirms.html
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And excuse me, but why the hell have a few people on this thread turned this upside down and made it all about the USA with the nonsense that nobody in the US is being forced to go murder people because of the draft etc etc? That is NOT the problem here; the problem is that the Zionists of Israel’s military/government is murdering unarmed civilians, tens of thousands of WOMEN & CHILDREN being targeted, and using OUR tax dollars to do it with while completely destroying the entire infrastructure of what little land the Palestinians have been imprisoned in. They have NOTHING to go back to, no homes no schools no sewer systems no hospitals no water systems no farms no stores…no nothing. You all don’t have a problem with that?
There are a hell of a lot of Israelis that have a problem with that!!!
HAMAS is NOT a government, it does not have a ‘real’ military. Where is their air force bombers and fighter jets, their satellites systems? How many HAMAS tanks have you counted? Artillery? Ships? Submarines? Where is their million-man army and all their training bases? How many nuclear missiles have they got…like Israel has?
You know something? Thinking about it there IS a parallel here with Viet Nam. They fought the invaders and killers of their people, the French and then when the Japanese army invaded, they fought them from their tunnels, too. And then the US when they invaded. Guerilla warfare against overwhelmingly well-armed armies are when people use whatever is at hand.
And always remember the bottom line; who invaded who in the first place? Who started the killing in Palestine, and when? And how would you act if you were born in the largest open-air prison in the world?
sealintheSelkirks
Great perspective, again Seal.
Protests ended our war in Vietnam.
Peaceful protests have successfully saved lives and staved off Bibi’s bloodbath for the ages, the ground invasion of the city of Rafah; if not completely preventing the impending invasion of Rafah permanently.
Hundreds of tanks, with thousands of IDF soldiers and battle gear had been amassed and lining the southern Gaza border to invade Rafah where 1 million Palestinian refugees have fled with no where else to go.
Then came our protests on U.S. universities and colleges nationwide. American college students, and staff joined, part and parcel, by American Israeli’s to their make voices heard.
In essence Netenyahu has been leading the U.S. around by the nose routinely defied the Biden and the Pentagon.
Netenyahu has committed military acts of aggression in the sovereign nations of Syria, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, unilaterally, and seemingly with no intention of slowing.
Until widespread protesting in the U.S.
All of us seem to lose sight of the constitutional power that we all still possess as individual citizens of this country.
E pluribus unum, “From many we are one” once coalesced, the sheer strength in numbers can and will continue to define our humanity.
This is a perfect example of what really does make America great.
We’ve all been reminded that “We the People” still call the shots.
Like back in the Viet Nam times, it was ‘outside agitators’ causing all the ruckus not the POLICIES of government and the university administration causing the problems that of course had to be brutally put down with massive cop force before ‘it got out of hand.’
This all seems so familiar to us old folks. Or at least to me. My Peace & Freedom Party anti-war activist stepmom would feel right at home on a college campus at the moment. If she’s still alive, I’m guessing she’s re-living some really bad memories of being in her hometown of San Francisco campus cops-started riots…
This is from a person that was there, and as he says, the nightstick PIGS are back doing what they love to do:
Cops on Campus are the Real Outside Agitators
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/09/cops-on-campus-are-the-real-outside-agitators/
sealintheSelkirks
No more false equivalencies! Biden is not a fascist.
Biden Condemned for Ahistorical and ‘Politically Suicidal’ Attack on Campus Protests
“Biden’s claim that ‘dissent must never lead to disorder’ defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-campus-protests
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This is a 30 second clip off a 60 minute segment. I found it chilling as hell especially with what is known about the mass killings of women and children in Palestine. Now starvation. In her own words: Start at 8:26 to 8:48. Full clip = 13 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2u-Y7C7FUU
This is what a teenage survivor of Mengele, who worked sorting belonging in Auschwitz outside the gas chamber, says:
“Man is an animal, all he needs is permission.”
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One of the comments that caught my eye:
@andys8718
6 hours ago
I work in corporate America. I can now see how this happened.
sealintheSelkirks