Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming....

[Coexist]

May 4th - Kent State.
Another time, another war.
A different era in which to fear being called Unpatriotic.
When Freedom of Assembly was frowned upon.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
George Santayana

Please take a moment today to remember.








:patriot:

[Demeter]

1. I Remember the Despair and Desperation

and I'm getting the booster shot now from Dubya, Nixon's protege.

[H2O Man]

2. Thank you.

It's important to remember what happened in America that day.

[saltpoint]

3. You've made a fitting summons to us of a tragic event, FLDem5.

What a horrifying day that was. President Nixon. Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes.

And once again there was Neil Young's art echoing through the air, asking people to be more aware and more compassionate than our elected officials.

A very fitting post. Thank you.

[zeemike]

4. I remember it well

It was a turning point for many Americans because there own troops were shooting down American citizens.

Got to get down to it
Soldiers are shooting us down
Should have been down long ago.

[DiverDave]

5. People don't want to remember...I DO.

Ohio
lyrics by Neil Young

--------

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

6. I've never forgotten the Kent State student who came to my school....

...a few days later to tell us what it was like to be under fire from fellow Americans.

I'll never forget the raw shock and pain in his voice.

I'll never forget that period of time.

Never.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Thanks

We need to remember in order to prevent it from happening again.

[acmejack]

8. I won't ever forget, it was the dawning of a new awareness

for me. I realized what our Government was about, that it would kill people that were doing nothing worse than sticking flowers in their gun barrels. I will never hear the name Kent State and not think of this abominable event.

[annabanana]

9. I remember

(nom)

[nutsnberries]

10. thanks for the brutal reminder.

the pics give me chills. :scared:

yeah- what if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
how can you run when you know?

[Coexist]

12. I chose those instead of the wailing student for that purpose

Not just that people died that day - but that American soldiers fired on unarmed American citizens on American soil for protesting American policies.

http://www.vw.cc.va.us/vwhansd/HIS122/KentState.html

[livetohike]

11. I'm in tears. Allison Krause who died that day

graduated from a neighboring high school that was one of our sports rivals. It was all too close to home.

[Coexist]

13. I am so sorry - now you have me crying.

:cry:

[livetohike]

19. Tears are good = so we don't forget

I am reading the Pgh paper on-line and have seen no mention of that day yet. I was a Senior in High School when this happened. I will never forget it.

[Coexist]

20. For you:

from this site

Allison Krause



Jeffrey Miller



Sandra Scheuer



William Schroeder

[livetohike]

25. Thanks FLDem5

Imagine what these four kids might have accomplished in their lives.........

Nixon couldn't stop us though - the campus demonstrations accelerated after that even on the small state university campus. We had a lot of courage then :-).

[renate]

28. thank you SO much for those pictures

They were more than just the four dead students at Kent State. They were three-dimensional, real people with histories, personalities, hopes, and families and friends.

[kainah]

33. for Jeff

That's Jeff's senior picture from high school. By the time he died, he was a junior in college and he hated his senior picture. (How many of us would say the same?) But that was one of the only pictures his mother had so that's the one she put out. (His parents had divorced shortly before his death and his father kept most of the family pix.)

In any case, shortly after his death, one of Jeff's friends sent his mother the picture below, which was taken on Saturday, May 2, 1970. She held it close for years, fearing that if she went to have a negative and copies made, it might get lost. I finally convinced her to find someone who would do it while she waited and, in the 1980s, she finally did. My reward was a copy of this photo...

[Coexist]

34. wow. thank you for sharing that.

Tell his mom that he is remembered by many.
:hug:

[keith the dem]

14. Life changing for me

As a child in the sixth grade, I remember buying the mainstream line that these "hippies" were bad and had it coming to them. But then my young teacher came in crying, and explained her distress I can't think of any other event that so changed the way I think. She opened my mind to a whole other world. Thank you Ms. Berner wherever you are.

[Cerridwen]

15. I had that song stuck in my head all day yesterday

I couldn't figure out why.

It seems my heart or unconscious mind remembered something my conscious mind didn't.

I used to organize with a woman who as a teen, lived with her solidly middle class parents in a neighborhood not far from Kent State. She remembers these conservative neighbors talking about what a good thing it was that the Guard dealt with those filthy hippy freaks. "Those damned hippies deserved it! Maybe now they'll shut up and quit causing so much trouble."

In some ways, her neighbors' comments are sadder that what happened that day.

In memory of the "Four dead in Ohio"

[sinkingfeeling]

16. I'll always remember that day at Kent. It's the day I turned to the left

forever. I was born and raised in Ohio with two Republican parents. I'd been protesting Nam for several years and arguing with my parents about it. By 1970, I was married to the son of an Air Force Colonel who was in his fourth year of AFROTC. Everybody told me I couldn't be against the US war in Viet Nam. After Kent, I set my course as a liberal, who has distrusted our government, and never looked back.

[Atman]

17. What is so scary is that it may take martyrs of our own to awaken America

...again. I surely hope so much it doesn't get to that. But I remember vividly the Kent State shootings, and how it almost overnight shocked the nation into finally bolting upright and screamin "ENOUGH!" We'd gone from killing Vietnamese women and children, and tens of thousands of our own troops, and now the war and killing had spread to our own shores, perpetrated against our own citizens by our own soldiers. It was as clear an illustration as any that Nixon and his war machine was simply out of control. Bush is out of control now, clearly. But what is it going to take to get America to similarly bolt upright and take to the streets and demand "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH?"

[Jersey Devil]

18. "What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?"

Thirty-six years ago today, May 4, 1970. It seems like only yesterday. A few days later we were marching down Broadway to Foley Square protesting the war and the outrage at Kent State. Neil Young is still here for us. But where are the young people today? Foley Square is empty.

Rest in Peace

Ohio (MP3 - 2.9 MB)
lyrics by Neil Young

--------

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

[Coexist]

32. thank you so much for the link to that audio

it has been running through my head all day - but I cried when I heard it sung.

[lonestarnot]

21. Damn remembering to never surrender!

:patriot:

[Coexist]

22. Link to amazing set of words and photos:

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0005/hr01.htm

[AndyA]

23. I was a little kid in 1970, and I remember seeing this on the news.

I just couldn't fathom that American soldiers were killing American students here in America. I remember asking my parents and my teacher how that could possibly be. It went against everything I believed America was.

Something changed in America that day. I will never forget.

Something is changing in America today as well. The clothes may be different, and the people are different, but there's an odd similarity to the rest.

[bluhoodie]

27. Differences today

Still, in today's Akron Beacon Journal, we have this report:

`May Day' might fade to mellow
But patrols still similar to past years, police say

By Andale Gross
Beacon Journal staff writer

Police in Akron and Kent say they are expecting end-of-semester revelers to behave again this year.

The first Friday in May traditionally has been the day University of Akron students and their friends celebrate the end of spring semester, while the Kent State crowd designates the first Saturday as its big party day.

But with the number of arrests dropping, the alcohol-fueled mayhem of parties past has all but faded.

"We're slowly cutting back on the amount of time we're out there enforcing," Akron Police Capt. Daniel Zampelli said. "Eventually, we're looking forward to the day where it's a normal Friday night and we don't have to close streets and put additional officers on the streets," Zampelli said.

For now, though, Akron police will be sticking to their routine of having more officers on the clock in case things get rowdy. Kent police will do likewise.

Akron saw parties turn riotous during the 1990s, with revelers setting fires, throwing bottles and fighting with police and each other. And in 2000, Kent party-goers became destructive, setting fires and turning over a car.

More at link...

Some things have changed, some not. Same old "strong enforcement activities" that the Repub stronghold of Ohio is known for (IMO). :banghead:
-------------------------------------

EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST ONLY 4 OR 5
PARAGRAPHS FROM THE COPYRIGHTED
NEWS SOURCE PER DU RULES.

[Jack Rabbit]

24. Courage, my people

Demonstration at Kent State, 1970, form a Czech website
Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Eugène Delacroix
From the website of the University of Southern California

[Justpat]

26. The rage I felt that day has not abated through the years.

Time to get off our collective asses and bring it to them one more time.

[Lochloosa]

29. K/R

[LibertyLover]

30. Thank you for reminding me

I was a junior in highschool at the time. One of my classmates had moved from Ohio and knew some of the students who were killed. I remember Jerry walking around with the saddest look on his face. He tried to organize a protest and the principal came down hard and fast - almost suspended him for the rest of the year. But student opinion back Jerry and we indicated we would walk anyway, no matter what. So the principal let us have an assembly hall to remember the dead. I didn't get to go to it as I was leaving for Greece that evening with my mom and another woman, who was going over for their school system to work with their sister schools in Athens for 2 weeks on setting up a library. The other woman we were going with, an elementary school principal in my mom's school system had to stop on the way out to JFK Airport at Columbia University to pick up a training film for her portion of the program. There were NYC police all over the place because the students had taken over the admin building and were demonstrating on the quad. I didn't see them but you could hear the crowd roar, presumbably in response to a speech. Jerry later applied and went to Kent State.

[Blue_In_AK]

31. I remember that day very well...

I was living in San Francisco, high on a hill with a view across the Bay. It seemed like the air above Berkeley was yellow with tear gas. It was one of the most horrible and helpless-feeling days I've ever had. While ordinarily I'm a very peaceful person, that day I felt like destroying something.

[hedgehog]

35. It was such a weird time

The last I heard, the authorities at Kent State built over the entire site so there is no trace of the event except for a memorial at some distance. My understanding is that you can't walk the hill to see what the different groups saw because the hill is no longer there.

[converted_democrat]

36. I was dating this guy in high school, and we were in the same American

History class. We were learning about Kent State, and as we were looking at the pictures, he recognized his father in the picture holding a dead boys head up.. His father had never told him about it, but he knew it was his Dad in the picture, and he knew his father went to Kent State.. When school was out for the day we took our Rand McNally history books with us, and we went to his house to talk to his father. Walt (his dad) told us that it was indeed him, and then he poured himself a drink, and told us his story in graphic detail. He kept saying over and over that it never really crossed their minds that they would really shoot. They thought they were just there for "presence" and that they never thought in a million years that they'd shoot at unarmed kids. He told us that it was one of the most defining moments of his life. We dated for several years, and they would grill out by the pool all the time.. Walt would have a few drinks and listen to the Neil Young CD and cry, sitting in a floating lounger in the pool.. We'd being going somewhere in the car, and the song would start playing, and we knew to shut up and let him have his moment..

[glitch]

37. Such a sad story, thank you for posting. Brings it all home a bit.

We tend to forget these were kids they fired on. Unarmed kids.
So many sad stories, all due to these people with their ossified minds.

[Coexist]

41. What a cool story.

I like painting a real face on events. It makes them hit home more.

[kainah]

45. great story!

Thanks for posting that.

I'm curious whether it was a picture like the one below. I've researched Kent for about 30 years and the only pix I can think of where someone was holding the head of a wounded student were pix of John Cleary (the wounded guy in this picture.) So I'm just curious. If you happen to remember....

[converted_democrat]

47. Yes, I do remember.. The guy with the beard, that's him.. He was almost

my father in law.. I'll PM you with his full name if you like.. That's him, they guy sitting in the middle of the the three guys sitting..

on edit- The picture that I remember is different, it has several people in it too, but Walt is holding is head up.. That guy in the middle of that picture though, is definitely Walt.. Different picture, but the same guy, for sure..

[Coexist]

54. that would be very cool.

Thanks.

[converted_democrat]

56. Check your PM.. I sent it to you.. n/t

[converted_democrat]

55. Check your PM.. I'll ask him for an interview if you like.. He's a nice

guy, and his son and I are still friendly. I'm sure he'd do it, especially if I asked him too..

[suffragette]

38. So young and full of promise

All crushed.

Thank you for reminding us to honor their memory.

[Coexist]

39. I sent this to my dh - he actually forwarded it at work

here is one loving response:

"So its ok to shoot war protestors? We should tell those guys on the white house with machine guns to go to work. Hippies kept messing up traffic around DC to have protests. That's a good enough reason right there."

[suffragette]

42. Some people then and now are so full of venom

that all they can spit out is poisonous hate and destruction.

[Mr_Spock]

40. Fucking Republicans

:(

[OzarkDem]

53. Gov. James Rhodes (R)

He should have been arrested.

At a news conference in Kent, Ohio, Sunday May 3, 1970, the day before the Kent State incident he said of campus protesters, "They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Rhodes

[ms liberty]

43. K&R. Thank you...

I was 10 when it happened and I remember it very clearly. My sister was 19, the same age as many of the students. I was already aware of the political turmoil, my family was always very interested in current affairs and I grew up watching the war on the evening news. I was also a rock music fan even at that age - I was listening to my sister's LP's; Buffalo Springfield and CSN/CSNY were particular favorites of mine. That music is the soundtrack to all my memories, the soundtrack to my life.
It was this event that more than any other made me understand; this on top of all the other horrific events of my childhood - JFK, MLK, RFK, Nam - these things formed me as surely as I am my mother's daughter. And later events proved me right - Watergate, Iran/Contra, you name it, there's plenty more examples.
I do not trust my government, especially the power elite of the GOP; it was proved to me at a young age that the powerful will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to maintain their power. I monitor them and watch them because I must, because to them we are expendable.

[0007]

44. Same thing over & over and we just play follow the leader

Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind: George Orwell

[spanone]

46. Written & sung by Neil Young

Ohio
lyrics by Neil Young

--------

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

[SeattleGirl]

48. I just listened to this song while thinking about what happened

that day. A most ugly, ugly day.

[spanone]

49. I remember that day. It was surreal.

[hedgehog]

51. During the Rodney King riots, my younger brother was very upset.

He couldn't imagine things like that happening here. I wasn't surprised or shocked at all. I'm just enough older than him that I remember all this stuff from the 60's and 70's. The bad news is that all the bad things that happened back then seem to have made us blase about the bad things happening now. Is there such a thing as Power-hungry crazy Constitution shredding dictator-President fatigue?

[hedgehog]

50. Someone at the HS played this song as background to the

daily announcements this morning. My daughters recognized it and told me about this when they got home today. (I'm so proud that I raised them up right!) What I'd really like to know is how that song made it to the microphone since the principal isn't someone I would expect to approve of this.

[bigtree]

52. 4 Dead in Ohio, 2,000+ Dead in Iraq: Can America do the Math?

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0504-35.htm

[kath]

57. Never forget.

I lived in the Cleveland area at the time, and was just a few days shy of 14. I remember people saying "they should've shot more of 'em" - this absolutely flabbergasted me. My first memory of feeling utter political and moral outrage. My parents were outraged as well - said that we as Americans tended to look down on "banana republic" type countries where strikers and protesters were shot by the govt, and here it was happening in our own country.

My best friend from high school attended KSU (class of '78), so I've seen that hill and that parking lot (but not recently). heartbreaking.

In the late 70's I met Alan Canfora in the club car while riding Amtrak between Chicago and Pittsburgh, and we spoke for a while. It was around the time (or within a year or so) of the Tent City protest when the university wanted to build a gym over the site of the massacre. Alan is the student who is waving the black flag in the first photo of the OP. He was wounded by a National guard bullet that day.

[Swamp Rat]

58. kick and recommended n/t

:patriot: