Kent State, Ohio, 52 Years Ago today

[Revoltingest]

Don't forget the rise in communism from the left wing.

They haven't gone that far.
Not attacking owning personal property....yet.

 

[Twilight Hue]

They haven't gone that far.
Not attacking owning personal property....yet.

Except for banning gas stoves, forcing evs, etc.

 

[Revoltingest]

Except for banning gas stoves, forcing evs, etc.

That's not communist.
It's just regulation intended to solve environmental problems.
You still get to own personal property.

 

[Copernicus]

Not a deep thinker are you? So I will simplify it for you. Elements (that means people) within the ongoing demonstrations at Kent State (that means protest, destruction, violence that went on over several days before the National Guard was called in) wanted a violent response by the government for their own political gain (that means they could use the response to promote their agenda).


I inserted the red arrow (the one that's colored red) so you can see my point:

Wiki

Friday, May 1​

At Kent State University, a demonstration with about 500 students[12] was held on May 1 on the Commons (a grassy knoll in the center of campus traditionally used as a gathering place for rallies or protests). As the crowd dispersed to attend classes by 1 p.m., another rally was planned for May 4 to continue the protest of the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. There was widespread anger, and many protesters called to "bring the war home". A group of history students buried a copy of the United States Constitution to symbolize that Nixon had killed it.[12] A sign was put on a tree asking: "Why is the ROTC building still standing?"[13]

Trouble exploded in town around midnight when people left a bar and began throwing beer bottles at police cars and breaking windows in downtown storefronts. In the process, they broke a bank window, setting off an alarm. The news spread quickly, and several bars closed early to avoid trouble. Before long, more people had joined the vandalism.[citation needed]

By the time police arrived, a crowd of 120 had already gathered. Some people from the crowd lit a small bonfire in the street. The crowd appeared to be a mix of bikers, students, and transient people. A few crowd members threw beer bottles at the police and then started yelling obscenities at them.[citation needed] The entire Kent police force was called to duty, as well as officers from the county and surrounding communities. Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom declared a state of emergency, called the office of Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes to seek assistance, and ordered all of the bars to be closed. The decision to close the bars early only increased tensions in the area. Police eventually succeeded in using tear gas to disperse the crowd from downtown, forcing them to move several blocks back to the campus.[9]

Saturday, May 2​

City officials and downtown businesses received threats, and rumors proliferated that radical revolutionaries were in Kent to destroy the city and university. Several merchants reported they were told that their businesses would be burned down if they did not display anti-war slogans. Kent's police chief told the mayor that according to a reliable informant, the ROTC building, the local army recruiting station, and the post office had been targeted for destruction that night.[14] There were unconfirmed rumors of students with caches of arms, plots to spike the local water supply with LSD, and of students building tunnels to blow up the town's main store.[15] Satrom met with Kent city officials and a representative of the Ohio Army National Guard. Because of the rumors and threats, Satrom feared that local officials would not be able to handle future disturbances.[9] Following the meeting, Satrom decided to call Rhodes and request that the National Guard be sent to Kent, a request granted immediately.

The decision to call in the National Guard was made at 5:00 p.m., but the guard did not arrive in town that evening until around 10 p.m. By this time, a large demonstration was underway on the campus, and the campus Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) building was burning.[16] The arsonists were never apprehended, and no one was injured in the fire. According to the report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest:

You weren't there at the time and have no idea what you are talking about. We all saw those absurd paranoid news stories and took them with the huge grain of salt that they deserved. There was a major effort on the part of authorities--administrators, police, conservative politicians--to always blame demonstrations on "outside agitators", and that is reflected in your news articles. At Ohio State, I ran a draft counseling center and was part of the antiwar coalition, so I had a front row seat to all of the "outside agitators" that visited us. (For example, I got to meet Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22. He gave a talk about his book and the then current protest movement. Also, scary figures like Norman Mailer, who was criticized by students for chain smoking while giving his talk.) There were no outside agitators stirring up or organizing the protests. Radical groups like the SDS and Communists were marginalized players, although any protest movement served as a magnet for them. And none of that ever justified the use of deadly force against crowds of people.

 

[Colt]

You weren't there at the time and have no idea what you are talking about. We all saw those absurd paranoid news stories and took them with the huge grain of salt that they deserved. There was a major effort on the part of authorities--administrators, police, conservative politicians--to always blame demonstrations on "outside agitators", and that is reflected in your news articles. At Ohio State, I ran a draft counseling center and was part of the antiwar coalition, so I had a front row seat to all of the "outside agitators" that visited us. (For example, I got to meet Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22. He gave a talk about his book and the then current protest movement. Also, scary figures like Norman Mailer, who was criticized by students for chain smoking while giving his talk.) There were no outside agitators stirring up or organizing the protests. Radical groups like the SDS and Communists were marginalized players, although any protest movement served as a magnet for them. And none of that ever justified the use of deadly force against crowds of people.

That’s not what the investigation concluded.

What I remember from that time period was anti war protesters spiting on our troops returning from war! Bunch of wimpy whiners!

 

[Revoltingest]

You weren't there at the time and have no idea what you are talking about. We all saw those absurd paranoid news stories and took them with the huge grain of salt that they deserved. There was a major effort on the part of authorities--administrators, police, conservative politicians--to always blame demonstrations on "outside agitators", and that is reflected in your news articles. At Ohio State, I ran a draft counseling center and was part of the antiwar coalition, so I had a front row seat to all of the "outside agitators" that visited us. (For example, I got to meet Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22. He gave a talk about his book and the then current protest movement. Also, scary figures like Norman Mailer, who was criticized by students for chain smoking while giving his talk.) There were no outside agitators stirring up or organizing the protests. Radical groups like the SDS and Communists were marginalized players, although any protest movement served as a magnet for them. And none of that ever justified the use of deadly force against crowds of people.

I too never met any "outside agitators".
This was an invention of pro-war anti-hippie
love-it-or-leave-it conservatives.
BTW, Catch-22 is one of my favorite books.
(The TV series is better than the movie.)
Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite anti-war author.
So many great books.

 

[Revoltingest]

That’s not what the investigation concluded.

What I remember from that time period was anti war protesters spiting on our troops returning from war! Bunch of wimpy whiners!

A pro-war government investigates anti-war groups.
Duh.
Of course they'll make dubious negative claims.
BTW, I've never met a Viet Nam vet who says he
was spit upon. It's a pretend problem by whining
vets who imagine that they're heroes.

 

[Colt]

A pro-war government investigates anti-war groups.
Duh.
Of course they'll make dubious negative claims.
BTW, I've never met a Viet Nam vet who says he
was spit upon. It's a pretend problem by whining
vets who imagine that they're heroes.

One of my supper Liberal Vietnam vet friends did in fact experience being spit on and had tomatoes thrown at them in Seattle at the airport. Coming home to a country where some took out their disapproval of the war on vets was a disgraceful period in our nation!

 

[Copernicus]

That’s not what the investigation concluded.

What I remember from that time period was anti war protesters spiting on our troops returning from war! Bunch of wimpy whiners!

Spitting happened, but protesters being spat upon were rarely considered newsworthy. I was once in a small protest where my roommate was singing folksongs while playing his guitar. It was in front of the draft office in Columbus, and we were surrounded by police, some even on rooftops. A car pulled out and two young men jumped out, grabbed Matthew's guitar, and smashed it on the sidewalk. We called for help, but, when I looked, every police office had turned his back to the event. (Reporters on the scene did report this on the 7 o'clock news, but that was it.) The perpetrators sped off, but the idiots were driving a car registered to the local AF base. They were arrested, but the case was dismissed because local authorities never bothered to tell us witnesses where and when the trial started. No witnesses, no trial. The investigations concluded what the people who conducted them wanted to believe--a hodgepodge of facts, rumors, and conjectures. Stuff gets left out of the official historical record.

Some of us who were active in the protest movement once met with reporters from the Columbus dispatch after a protest march and asked them why the only pictures we saw in their story were of hippies. What about all of the respectable looking people, including families? They answered quite candidly that their editors weren't interested in those kinds of pictures. The country was even more polarized back then than it is today, and the narrative was written by those who had a different perspective on the war and the protests.

As a draft and military counselor, I had a lot of interesting experiences from the student side of things. One of the most memorable was a guy who came into our office and claimed to be AWOL from the Air Force. (He was actually working undercover for the AF, which was very active in doing domestic surveillance of the protest movement in Columbus.) Doug would frequently visit the office and was extremely grateful for our counseling service. He claimed to want a discharge, because he had been caught with hashish when deployed in Turkey and was facing a court martial. He kept leaving joints in the office and offering them to people. I used to pick them up and dispose of them. At one point, a bomb threat was called into the church where our office was, and we had to evacuate in a hurry. The police went in, but apparently didn't find anything actionable. We spotted the Air Force marked car parked on the street near the church. It was a staged raid, because they didn't have a warrant. Later on, Doug ended up testifying in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) about the antiwar movement in Columbus, according to one of my professors at OSU. I didn't see his testimony, but I'm guessing he didn't mention anything about the drugs he tried to plant, and that didn't make it into any official reports.

 

[Copernicus]

One of my supper Liberal Vietnam vet friends did in fact experience being spit on and had tomatoes thrown at them in Seattle at the airport. Coming home to a country where some took out their disapproval of the war on vets was a disgraceful period in our nation!

We could continue to trade anecdotes, but none of this justifies the murder of those students at Kent State. The reality is that you get bad behavior on both sides of a political controversy when emotions run high. Usually, you hear only one side of the story, when people recount the tale.

I once was invited to give a talk to new officers at the local police academy. I told them the story of our protest experience in front of the draft office and the incident where I witnessed officers turning their backs on a violent encounter. One of the recruits in the audience objected, saying that I needed to wait until "all the facts were in" before reaching any conclusions. I was an eyewitness! I know what I saw.

 

[Revoltingest]

One of my supper Liberal Vietnam vet friends did in fact experience being spit on and had tomatoes thrown at them in Seattle at the airport. Coming home to a country where some took out their disapproval of the war on vets was a disgraceful period in our nation!

View attachment 76994

One guy.
Well, that's a real trend.

 

[Copernicus]

One thing of relevance that may not have been mentioned yet was what triggered the unrest on college campuses all across the country in May of 1970. Was it all because of "outside agitators" and pressure from extreme left wing groups like the SDS and the Weathermen? There had been an active antiwar movement for years, so that became the handy excuse that politicians and school administrators used.

What happened was that Richard Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia on April 30, drawing Prince Sihanouk's nation into it. At that time, Sihanouk had been trying to stay neutral. Ultimately, Cambodia, which had not been in danger from the Vietnam conflict, but whose territory was being used by North Vietnam to supply the Viet Cong, became a horrible victim. They ultimately succumbed to a complete Communist takeover, which resulted in one of the greatest human tragedies in Southeast Asia after the war ended.

The campus demonstrations were deeply felt by students, because that meant a prolongation of the unwinnable war and a demand for more people of their generation to end up sacrificing their lives in a war that a great many people did not see as critical to US national security. Ultimately, Vietnam became Communist, and the US survived to have friendly relations with that Communist nation today.

 

[Revoltingest]

One thing of relevance that may not have been mentioned yet was what triggered the unrest on college campuses all across the country in May of 1970. Was it all because of "outside agitators" and pressure from extreme left wing groups like the SDS and the Weathermen? There had been an active antiwar movement for years, so that became the handy excuse that politicians and school administrators used.

What happened was that Richard Nixon announced the expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia on April 30, drawing Prince Sihanouk's nation into it. At that time, Sihanouk had been trying to stay neutral. Ultimately, Cambodia, which had not been in danger from the Vietnam conflict, but whose territory was being used by North Vietnam to supply the Viet Cong, became a horrible victim. They ultimately succumbed to a complete Communist takeover, which resulted in one of the greatest human tragedies in Southeast Asia after the war ended.

The campus demonstrations were deeply felt by students, because that meant a prolongation of the unwinnable war and a demand for more people of their generation to end up sacrificing their lives in a war that a great many people did not see as critical to US national security. Ultimately, Vietnam became Communist, and the US survived to have friendly relations with that Communist nation today.

We should note that many of those fighting in Viet Nam
weren't making a sacrifice, which suggests choosing something
noble....they were forced by government to fight under threat
of prosecution & years in prison.
Government held a yearly lottery for all men. Low number "winners"
were drafted, & forced into military servitude. Exempt were women,
priests, rabbis, ministers, medically unfit (eg, Biden, Trump), & the
politically connected (eg, Bill Clinton). Students could defer being
drafted for, unless born in 1953 (lucky me, eh).

 

[Copernicus]

We should note that many of those fighting in Viet Nam
weren't making a sacrifice, which suggests choosing something
noble....they were forced by government to fight under threat
of prosecution & years in prison.
Government held a yearly lottery for all men. Low number "winners"
were drafted, & forced into military servitude. Exempt were women,
priests, rabbis, ministers, medically unfit (eg, Biden, Trump), & the
politically connected (eg, Bill Clinton). Students could defer being
drafted for, unless born in 1953 (lucky me, eh).

Don't forget that I was a draft counselor during that time and was fully versed in Selective Service classifications. Both Biden and Trump were initially disqualified as 1-Y, which meant that they were subject to the draft in a national emergency. The Vietnam war was not a declared national emergency, although its proponents often treated it as a de facto one to justify continuation of the war. Full disqualification for medical reasons would have been a IV-F classification.

Both men had previously had student deferments. Both men were classified 1-Y because of medical disabilities--Biden for asthma and Trump for bone spurs. Biden really did have asthma even in childhood, but Trump's bone spurs were only diagnosed when he was classified 1-A and called in for a physical in 1968, before the lottery came into effect. Trump has always claimed that a high lottery number kept him out of the draft, and that became technically true in 1969. However, it was the 1-Y that initially kept him from being drafted. After all, he would have been called up shortly after his physical. In 1972, Trump was reclassified IV-F, giving him full exemption from the draft, even though he didn't really need it to avoid military service.

See: Classification history for Donald Trump

Clinton was a different story, and one that is more complicated by the fact that he was an active antiwar protester. He did not want to fight in the Vietnam war, and he never pretended otherwise, AFAICT. Later on in life, he did make an effort to obscure that record because of his political ambitions and not wanting to alienate voters who would have resented his antiwar activism. Clinton did not take the path of claiming conscientious objection, which would have required him to claim that he opposed participation in all wars, not just Vietnam. Being opposed to participation in just the Vietnam war was never a valid reason to claim conscientious objection (I-O or I-A-O, the latter for military service as a noncombatant). Instead, Clinton joined ROTC (deferment I-D) in college, deferring his eligibility for the draft until graduation. Afterwards, he would have been eligible for the draft, if he did not volunteer for military service. Had he failed out of college, he would have been immediately reclassified eligible (I-A). A lot of students took that path for temporary deferments, and the I-D deferment existed to "channel" them into making that choice. But Clinton, like Biden and Trump, received a lottery number (210) to keep him from being drafted. So, like many antiwar students who were in ROTC because of class-based channeling, Clinton wrote a letter to withdraw from his obligation to sign up for military service after graduation. That caused him to be reclassified draft-eligible (I-A), but technically ineligible because people with numbers below his were prioritized for the draft. The legal deferment got him to the point where he no longer needed it, not political influence.

See: Bill Clinton's Draft Letter

 

[Revoltingest]

Bone spurs & too asthmatic to be drafted.
No evidence for either...but I don't know the military's standards.
Biden did seem to recover from his childhood asthma enuf
to become an athlete...lifeguard & football player.

Joe Biden Was Once a Solid Football Player and Led His Team To an Improbable Undefeated Season

A look back on the high school and college football career of former Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden.

www.sportscasting.com

I was ineligible for student deferment because I was born in 1953.
I was ineligible for CO status cuz I opposed...
- Only unjust wars. (SCOTUS said we can't use use that basis of opposition.)
- The draft as unconstitutional under the 13th Amendment, ie,
involuntary servitude is prohibited except as punishment or a crime.
The draft is involuntary. Serving in the army is servitude.
(The draft is also arbitrary, ie, requirement is based solely on a lottery number.)

Conscientious Objection to Military Service

The Court considered conscientious objector cases during the Vietnam War, weighing when First Amendment freedom protects someone from laws requiring military service.

mtsu.edu

**** the government & its unjust wars & its revocation of bodily autonomy.
Oddity...
A veteran who knew I was a felonious draft dodger
once thanked me for my service as an engineer at
Northrop on the F18 program. He really liked that
plane. Funny, eh.

 

[Stevicus]

Fifty-two years ago today was The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University. I remember it so well it's almost too recent to be history. From about 1964 on, starting with the "Free Speech" movement in California and escalating to a crescendo six years later, the campuses and inner cities were ablaze. There was likely a combination of causes:

1. The Kennedy assassination(s);
2. The King Assassination;
3. The Vietnam war, both as an atrocity in itself and bringing an end to expectations of people to peacefully graduate school, and marry into an Ozzie and Harriet mode;
4. Dissatisfaction and boredom with the somnolent affluence of the 1950's and early 1960's;
5. The liberation of music with the British invasion;
6. The liberation of women, starting with Betty Friedan's writings; and
7. The Civil Rights movement.

The assassinations and rioting signified a growing unwillingness to patiently abide the democratic system. People on both sides of the spectrum were "taking to the streets." The KKK and some white southerners were rioting or committing random acts of violence against minorities. Think:

1. The Tallahatchee Bridge atrocity;
2. The killings of Schwermer, Cheney & Goodman in Mississippi;
3. Police dogs being sicced on schoolchildren; and
4. Martin Luther King's assassination

The summers of the 1960's after the 1965 Watts Riots were all "long hot summers." Starting with Berkeley and proceeding to Columbia (1968), Cornell (1969) and Kent (1970) as well as numerous others, college campuses were materially disrupted. The construction workers rioted against anti-war protesters in 1969 or 1970 in NYC. Then there were the Manson killings.

Eventually something had to give, and four teens and/or college student were killed by the Ohio Guard on May 4, 1970, two days after my Bar Mitzvah. One letter-writer wrote to the NY Times that he "loved his daughter" but if she was killed in college riots he would "feed dinner" to the Guardsman.

That guy went a little too public. However, after a brief spasm of violence, the campuses and cities quieted down. After a while, ordinary people "had enough."

I was in kindergarten back then. I was in a pretty conservative area, and we were told to stay clear of hippies. I guess the local town police had a bit of a reputation for harassing hippies. But then my parents got divorced and we moved to L.A., where there were hippies. But we'd also stay with our grandparents in Orange County, where there were Birchers.

I had an uncle who was a decorated WW2 combat vet, and he didn't think too much of hippies. In fact, he really really hated hippies. A lot. When my cousin (his niece) got married to a guy with long hair, my uncle made a point of boycotting the wedding.

At the time, I didn't really understand the reasons or the issues underlying all the dissension, although I was rapidly learning.

 

[Copernicus]

Biden did seem to recover from his childhood asthma enuf
to become an athlete...lifeguard & football player.

I couldn't speak to whether he deserved his 1-Y classification, which only exempted him from the draft except in national emergencies. It may not have been based just on having asthma but on whether he needed special medication to treat it. The military had its own standards on fitness, and his draft board felt that it was sufficient to disqualify him for a I-A classification. I knew a lot of people who were physically active but were nevertheless classified I-Y for treatable conditions. So the fact that he was able to play football did not necessarily make him fit for military service, even though that may not seem to make sense to those of us unfamiliar with the details of his illness. That he had it (and is still treated for it) is indisputable.

Joe Biden’s Allergies and Asthma (A summary)​

 

[Revoltingest]

I couldn't speak to whether he deserved his 1-Y classification, which only exempted him from the draft except in national emergencies. It may not have been based just on having asthma but on whether he needed special medication to treat it. The military had its own standards on fitness, and his draft board felt that it was sufficient to disqualify him for a I-A classification. I knew a lot of people who were physically active but were nevertheless classified I-Y for treatable conditions. So the fact that he was able to play football did not necessarily make him fit for military service, even though that may not seem to make sense to those of us unfamiliar with the details of his illness. That he had it (and is still treated for it) is indisputable.

Joe Biden’s Allergies and Asthma (A summary)​

I don't fault anyone for getting out of the draft,
whatever means they use. I see no legal or moral
reason to give government that authority over us.
A country that forces randomly selected men to
fight for those who won't is a country I wouldn't
risk life & limb for.

 

[Heyo]

The military had its own standards on fitness, and his draft board felt that it was sufficient to disqualify him for a I-A classification. I knew a lot of people who were physically active but were nevertheless classified I-Y for treatable conditions.

I don't know the criteria of the US military but in Germany the highest fitness rank is given only to people who are fit for any purpose. A height above 1.80 m makes you unfit for use in U-boats and tanks.

 

[jbg]

Were you actually going to Kent at the time? I was at Ohio State University, where IRRC demonstrations began before those at Kent. My roommate at the time had a brother going to Kent who looked just like the famous one in the photo with the buckskin jacket. Their father told my roommate that they should have shot more students, even though his son might have been one of the victims. I remember that the university built something over the site, because they didn't want anyone commemorating it.

What really happened was that demonstrators got quite emotional, and the police were not really trained to handle crowd control at the time. The gates to one of the roads were closed by a crowd of students, but it was later revealed in a trial of the supposed student instigator that two state undercover agents were identified as having participated in the act (trying to ingratiate themselves with demonstrators by showing how radical they were, I suppose). Anyway, that triggered a call for the police to come on campus, and they tried to push the crowd off campus. At one point, a few people in the jeering crowd started throwing dirt clods (and maybe stones) at the police. I saw one cop draw his weapon and swing it around menacingly at the crowd. The cop next to him in the line literally wrapped his arms around that officer to prevent him from hurting anyone. The police retreated and then stayed around the perimeter of campus.

It sounds to me like the "demonstrators" were creating a dangerous situation that no one was really equipped or trained to handle.

Students were calling for a campus-wide strike.

Maybe I'm stupid but they call that a strike? I call it a riot. A strike is the organized withholding of labor from an employer as a negotiating tool. And how does someone "strike" a university? Are they striking against their parents who are paying tuition, or against the government for subsidizing it.

Not long after that, I woke up in the early morning to the sound of trucks racing by our apartment building. I looked outside and saw truckloads of National Guardsmen racing toward campus. Governor Rhodes had called them in and declared martial law (which he had no legal authority to do, as we learned later). Civil rights were suspended, and we weren't allowed to gather in groups of more than three. Nevertheless, demonstrations continued. Relations between students and guardsmen were not too bad, since everyone knew that most of them were in the Guard to stay out of Vietnam. However, the guardsmen at Kent apparently felt provoked, and they turned and fired their weapons (which had live ammunition!) at some of the demonstrators.

After the shootings, general strikes were called, and the demonstrations got more angry. The Guard officers actually thought it was a good idea to unsheathe their bayonets and advance on the crowd to push them back. That got even more out of control, and rioting ensued. The Guard fired teargas and pepper gas indiscriminately, even at us onlookers. A friend standing next to me was hit by a canister and got a particle from it in his eye, so we had to rush him to the clinic, which was packed with students. They even fired tear gas into a couple of dormitories. Eventually, after vowing to keep the campuses open, the administration had to shut them down. Our campus was reopened for the summer quarter.

To repeat myself, it sounds to me like the "demonstrators" were creating a dangerous situation that no one was really equipped or trained to handle. Were they going to destroy property and the right of uninvolved students to learn and take final exams?