Issues Raised in 1970 Remain Unresolved

Wednesday, April 29, 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia to “neutralize communist operation bases.” Sen. J. William Fulbright called the invasion “a great mistake, a great tragedy.”

Astronaut John Glenn, speaking at the University of Akron in his Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate, said: “We must get the war-making power back in Congress. We cannot tolerate the president drifting us into war.”

That same day Governor James A. Rhodes ordered 3,000 Ohio National Guardsmen to duty in the Teamsters truckers strike, and sent 1,200 troops to Ohio State University to suppress students protesting ROTC programs and inadequate admissions of black students.

The next day, April 30, President Nixon, formally announcing the invasion of Cambodia, said “This is not an invasion of Cambodia,” and added: “My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. … Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed.”

On May 1, some 500 Kent State students interred a copy of the Constitution on campus, accusing President Nixon of “murdering” it by sending U.S. troops into Cambodia without Congress declaring war. The Black United Students group also demonstrated, demanding that KSU enroll more blacks and establish a black cultural center.

Late Saturday, May 2, Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom, apparently believing rumors that radical revolutionaries intended to destroy the town and university, called out the National Guard, who started arriving after the burning of the ROTC building was already under way.

Sunday, May 3, students held another sit-in in hope of gaining a meeting with Mayor Satrom and KSU President Robert White. They were again dispersed with tear gas and bayonets.

May 4th afternoon we townspeople were shocked and shaken at news stories and neighbors’ accounts of violence and carnage on campus, and rumors that four National Guardsmen had been killed. It took about 24 hours to sort out the reality that it was four unarmed students who were dead.

But by then rumors, gossip, accusations, hostile feelings and outright fictions against the students were in full cry. It was communists from a Soviet submarine subverting gullible students; “professional agitators” were organizing and arming malcontents; the SDS was planning to blow up the Main Street bridge; the Black Panthers were taking over the town of Hudson; the KSU students were diseased, criminal, anarchists, filthy, lice-ridden “bums” or “scuzz-balls”; they deserved to be shot; “They should have shot more of them.”

In the spring of 1970 an estimated 4 million students nationwide participated in protests against the war and some 30 ROTC buildings were burned. Students everywhere were asking questions like: Why are we having this war in Vietnam? Why invade Cambodia? Who gets to decide about wars? Why are we being taught war and killing in ROTC? Why are our protests met with police brutality? Why are so few blacks able to go to college? Why are we conscripted to fight a war we don’t believe in when we can’t vote and have no voice in public decisions about our lives?

Nixon, Rhodes and Satrom didn’t want to talk about those questions, didn’t even want them talked about. Many citizens didn’t, either. Instead of giving the students a place at the table, listening to them, and working with them, we used force to control them, reviled them, criminalized them, arrested them, tear-gassed them, bayoneted them, shot them.

Thirty-eight years later we still haven’t answered their questions. We haven’t confronted the use of war and violence for political or economic ends. We haven’t faced the residual racism and resentment of the poor in our communities; our Constitution has been freshly dismembered; our Congress cannot shake off its addiction to corporate finance or reclaim its war-making power.

We still write off anyone who threatens our comfortable assumptions as worthless, deserving no mercy. Recently, after a news story in the Record-Courier gave the Latino-sounding name of a man without health insurance who was badly injured in an accident, the reporter received a phone call demanding to know if “the Mexican was in the country legally.”

We still keep young people, poor people, people of color, “illegal” immigrants away from the table, out of the public discourse; we keep them from having medical care, living wages, public transportation, basic education, saddle them with debt from credit cards and student loans, and we make sure not too many of them vote.

With six months until we elect our next president we still haven’t decided some fundamental questions: Who constitutes “we-the-people”? What do we want from our President and Congress? Do we want a president who terrorizes the rest of the world with bombs, mercenary warriors, secret detentions, refined tortures, and brutal economics and marketing systems that exploit poor people? Do we want a president who makes sure undeserving “illegals” don’t get anything our tax dollars have paid for?

I am not encouraged that Sen. Barack Obama’s response to the “outrageous” ideas raised by Jeremiah Wright was to send the contentious pastor away from the table instead of engaging with him over the questions raised. If some people wonder whether the government infected blacks with AIDS, and some believe our government practices terrorism, we need to talk about it.

I want to think that both Hillary Clinton and Obama would try to get everyone to the table, listen to them and bring them into the process of dealing with the issues that affect their lives — war, health care, energy and food prices, education, environmental issues. I want to think that either of them would bring students, the poor, and people of color into the conversations and help us all learn to make democracy and democratic government work for the common good.

Because if we, presently the richest, most powerful nation on earth, can’t come up with some shared — by everyone, students, the poor, the misguided and the undeserving — vision of a world we all want to live in, we will kill everyone.

Before joining Senator Glenn’s Washington staff in 1985, Caroline Arnold founded a successful small business and served three terms on the Kent (OH) Board of Education. In retirement she is active with civic and environmental organizations in Kent, and serves on the board of Family & Community Services.

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32 Comments so far

KEM PATRICK May 5th, 2008 12:17 pm

No such demonstrations now?

No draft now.

5280 May 5th, 2008 1:01 pm

Until we all understand what America really is, then we’ll never get control of the evil we do in its name. We are not what many of us thought we were. Our “country” is an illusion, its “laws” used by unseen faces to rule the world by violence or the threat of it. Never has that been so true as now.

I had hope for Obama, but turning his back on his friend may cost him my vote… the first one since the ‘76 election for a democrat. Oh well, I guess even he was too good to be true.

tj May 5th, 2008 1:07 pm

Thanks for this.

Thanks especially for remembering the seldom-noted fact that the National Guard in Ohio was first deployed to suppress a Teamsters’ strike. The National Guard was originally created to counter labor organizing and unrest in the United States.

As both Arnold and Ritter (above) point out, when the Kent demonstrators buried the U.S. Consitution, they weren’t just talking about the immediate outrages of the 1960s and 70s, but about a systematic effort by the US governement, on behalf of US corporations and the rich, to subjugate and destroy the possibility of both representative democracy and direct democracy in this nation.

The corporations and the rich, it seems, have won: and we now have devolved into a fully-developed white-supremacist, religously-fundamentalist, fascist empire.

Domestically, more than 2.3 million citizens are locked up in prisons and jails. The majority are non-white. The vast majority are poor. Tens of millions of others have become “criminals for life,” becuase of long paroles, probations and because once you have a police record, it is almost never erased.

Tens of thousands of immigrants (legal, illegal and even citizens) are held in camps, prisons and jails w/o charge. Torture and other crimes against humanity are sanctioned at Guantanamo and are de facto practices throughout the US “criminal justice” system.

Presidents can — and do — rule through “executive orders,” giving them dictatorial powers. Many state governors do the same on a fairly regular basis. (Finacially, this practice has been institutionalized in the so-called line-item veto).

We have never had direct elections of our presidents and vice-presidents. The state and local judicial systems are quite literally for sale through campaign contributions and outright bribes, as are elected officials at all levels.

The federal courts have become a joke. The main requirement for a federal judge, whether appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents, is that you have a corporate law background (look up the Carter/Clinton appointments), or are an apologist for facsism, ala Scalia, Thomas and Roberts, et al.

When was the last time a civil libertarian, schooled and practiced in Constitutional Law and its philosophical underpinnings, was even considered for a Supreme Court or other federal court appointments?

And, of course, outside our borders we have expanded the US Empire to include more than 700 bases in more than 130 countries and we are in the midst of two brutal “wars” of occupation that are destroying those nations and bankrupting our national wealth and the futures of our descendants as well.

The slaughters at Kent State, Jackson State and elsewhere nearly four decades ago should remind us of all of that.

hazmat May 5th, 2008 1:09 pm

re KEM

lest we forget, more than 10 million people around the world took to the streets in feb ‘03 to protest an invasion that hadn’t taken place yet—to no effect whatsoever.

“politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

—paul valery, french poet and critic, 1871-1945

Mendo Chuck May 5th, 2008 1:14 pm

Could it be that may be we are ready for a 3rd and maybe a 4th Party? Can there really be enough disgust with what the Democrats and Republicans have to offer that this could be the turning point?
We are certainly way past the need for this to happen. Maybe there are enough of us out here that have had it with “Business As Usual.” If you want real change than vote for real change. If you want the status quo than vote Republican or Democrat.

Hammo May 5th, 2008 1:27 pm

This hits close to home because in 1970 I graduated from high school in Ohio, received my draft card and then started college at Ohio University, a few hours south of Kent State and a school in the same athletic conference as Ohio U.

Ohio U., like Kent State and the other state universities in Ohio, had been shut down the previous spring by Ohio gov. James Rhodes. National Guard troops occupied Ohio U. in Athens and other campuses.

For a bit more insight on this, see the article:

Revisiting the Vietnam War era: The draft, casualties and the Kent State shootings

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/3514

militantliberal May 5th, 2008 1:33 pm

Obama engaged with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, and that’s enough time to give the man’s ideas a fair hearing.

kahalab May 5th, 2008 1:35 pm

And don’t forget that the US military has killed 10 million people worldwide since WWII.

Fat Lady has sung May 5th, 2008 1:37 pm

Protests don’t work anymore as the media doesn’t cover them and elected people don’t listen to the people to but big companies. Before it was front page day after day now it is tucked under the sale at Wal Mart or some super store opening. Control the media and you control the country. Well guess what the US is 100% controled and the internet will be next after Nov.
Anyone have some good cooking web sites I could spend my days on? Trying to change the world with web sites that are 80+ % saying the same thing story after story isn’t working as well.

heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

I wrote this post in response to another article earlier in the week.

My high school counselors were idiots and intentionally gave me bad advice because I was both a rebel and popular and was elected student body president. I didn’t know much about colleges and in the remote little town in northern Michigan where I grew up neither did anybody else.

So I was at Western Michigan in 1970 and we didn’t organize a takeover until right after Nixon invaded Cambodia. Organize was the wrong word.

I got pretty scared that day. We had 8,000 students on strike and massed in front of the student union. Some friends and I commandeered all the city buses that came up the “Ave” and we used wire cutters to cut the brake lines so the big street through campus got blocked with immobilized buses.

The cops came up to clear the Ave. like storm troopers, 120 of them marching in formation in full riot gear, and started to wade into the crowd, spraying tear gas and beating anyone they could get their hands on.

Several of the big, riot clad thugs had a buddy of mine down and they were administering a “lesson” with their 3 foot leaden nightsticks. People had been picking up pieces of asphalt from the crumbling edge of the road and heaving them at the pigs. I picked up a big chunk and hurled it wildly in the direction of the scrum of pigs beating my friend just as a detective, who probably thought the beating was getting to the point of bad publicity jumped into the fray to call off his thugs. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he jumped in just in time to get clobbered in the back of the head by the big chunk of asphalt I had hurled wildly in that direction.

He crumpled like a sack of potatoes, and his gang of thugs dropped my friend and turned to come after me. I turned and ran, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, and I was able to run through. The crowd closed behind me and I got away, but I was pretty scared that I had seriously injured or done worse to that cop. I’m really a non violent guy, and in the heat of the moment had just reacted to the situation without thinking, and I certainly did not intend to whack a cop with a big piece of asphalt in the head. The rocks had been bouncing off the pigs with no effect until my “lucky” shot.

We sneaked away and went home to our rental in the ghetto and listened to the radio to hear what happened to the cop. We didn’t hear about any dead cops, so went back to campus and that evening we took over the student union building. But the planning was terrible to non existent, and it just turned into a mass looting of the cafeteria, snack bar and bookstore.

After several tear gas attacks and the usual warning about anybody left in the building will be charged with plenty of felonies, there were only two of us left, me and an African American girl who had experience in the Detroit riots and had thought ahead enough to bring chains and padlocks and we had been going around locking the doors from the inside, but we finally bailed too.

It was May 4, 1970, and only a couple of hundred miles away, at one of our sister schools in the Mid America Conference, Kent State, the National Guard opened fire on demonstrators that day and 13 kids were shot with high powered rifles and four of them died.

ClassAct May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

Seats at the table are available on an “invitation only” basis.

heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:10 pm

When Hillary Clinton threatens the Iranian people with mass murder - “we will obliterate you!” - She is also telling us that she has no understanding or respect for our Constitution or Republic.

We have no mutual defense pact with Israel. It would take an act of Congress before the President had any legal authority to do anything to Iran for an attack on Israel.

The Iranian ambassador made a well founded complaint to the United Nations after Clinton’s remark, as such threats are a violation of the U.N. Charter. And since Article VI of the Constitution makes treaties the supreme law of the land, it is also illegal under U.S. law for Clinton to be making such threats.

“Article VI

“All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. “

KEM PATRICK May 5th, 2008 2:19 pm

Hi ~HAZMAT~ You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.

I did see what happened at Kent State University though and many other Americans and the Walter Cronkites protesting the war in Vietnam. ___ We had a military draft then. ___ Remember? __ I do.

SallyUUKent May 5th, 2008 3:13 pm

I’ve lived in Kent my entire life, just a stone’s throw from the KSU campus and always in the same neighborhood, so we were kind of thrown right into the maelstrom of the whole mess whether or not we wanted to be. My mom’s youngest brother was also a National Guardman who had been deployed to Kent that weekend. He was a Huey pilot who was flying over us with one of those big choppers that weekend.

I was 13 years old at the time of the 1970 shootings, just old enough to understand that something fundamentally wrong had happened and that the Vietnam War had come home to my sleepy little town. It wasn’t supposed to happen here. It was supposed to happen at one of the more overtly radical colleges like Berkeley or Columbia, but KENT STATE UNIVERSITY???

I attended Kent State from 1975 to 1979, receiving my B.A. at spring commencement in 1979. During those four years of my being a student, there were still a lot of raw feelings left over from the 1970 shootings. I remember well meeting wound survivors Dean Kahler and Alan Canfora as an 18 year old freshman at a talk they gave at one of the dormitories one night. To actually be able to speak to those who were shot and to hear their viewpoints was a real education for me, and I have been attending the May 3 candlelight vigils and the May 4 commemorations, work schedule permitting, pretty much ever since.

I still find myself thinking of those chaotic days in early May of 1970 from the standpoint of the 13 year old that I was. I can still see it through my teenage eyes as I watched the military descend on my town to where it almost began to feel like an occupied city like we heard about in history books. It was surreal going to Mass at St. Patrick’s on Sunday morning, the day before the shootings, seeing armored personnel carriers, soldiers with rifles and other military paraphenalia on the street corners.

The shootings shut the entire city down and it rapidly became a ghost town as the students were sent home from Kent State, the campus became forbidden territory and all schools were also closed. You could have cut through the tension in Kent with a knife in those next few days. A deep tear between Town and Gown was created that still hasn’t completely mended to this day. There are still pockets of resentment toward the University around town - I know, I hear it all the time, sad though it is.

So in a way, I, too, am a survivor of May 4th. No, I wasn’t being shot at by Guardsman (although I did face down a bayonet the day before!), but I was a teenaged girl thrown into a sudden maelstrom of chaos and fear in my small hometown and for as long as I live, I will never forget that time in my life. It’s just too bad that, as Caroline says in her essay, there are still so many unresolved issues from that time that may never see closure and resolution.

Goose2 May 5th, 2008 3:22 pm

>>The National Guard was originally created to counter labor organizing and unrest in the United States.<<

That is not correct. The National Guard traces its roots back to 1636 at the first muster of militia in the colonies. The forunner orgainzations that became the National Guard fought in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, the Revoultion, the Mexican-American war and the first half of the Civil War and Spanish-American Wars. All but the last predate labor organization in the US.

toomuchsun May 5th, 2008 4:24 pm

I have spent most of my life believing that I lived in a good country. When I was young, I was a single mom, working two jobs and struggling to survive. That’s no excuse for not paying attention, but I wasn’t interested in the news, or what was going on in the world. I was young and self-absorbed. It’s only been the past few years that I’ve really been paying attention. And I have been appalled at the actions of my country. In my wonderings through the internet, I kept coming across references to Howard Zinn’s book, The Peoples History. Last fall, I got it from the library. It took me months to read it. Each section of the book was difficult to absorb, and at times, I found myself in tears at the actions of this country I once was proud of. I’m afraid that America is just what it’s always been, a violent, opportunist bully, bent on profit and empire, with little regard for humanity. It’s sad for me to admit this. At this point, I don’t know if there is much hope for this country. Just as a person must often hit rock bottom in order to make any changes in their life, so it might go for America. This country might have to hit rock bottom before any significant change can occur. The mainstream news pumps out propaganda that the people soak up like sponges, and we see our Presidential election turned into nothing more than a popularity contest for student body president. Some things give me hope, seeing Michael Moore on Larry King live last week, and his absolute conviction that this country would change reminded me of John Lennon and his absolute conviction that world peace was achievable. In the past week, I have met both Amy Goodman and Norman Solomon. I still have hope, but until we as a country, start to think as a community, and as global citizens, things will remain the same. I picked up the Time Magazine special edition on the year 1968, and the parallels are amazing. We are at another critical juncture in the history of our country. I just hope that this time we listen to the young people. They are the future.

luckylefty May 5th, 2008 5:09 pm

We were in the heat of battle over a single choice: Will we make a place for everyone at the table and will we reject war and conquest as a way of life? That’s all any of it was ever about. On one side, you get an egalitarian participatory Democracy, the end of poverty in this country and lifetime stable employment. On the other side you get Oligarchy, patriarchy (male supremacy), gender slavery, human slavery, and constant war.

Any questions about which choice America made? Is STILL emphatically demanding to this day? Are they still hanging ropes from the trees in Jena? Is their DA still threatening to wipe out those children’s lives with the stroke of a Pen? WE GOT AWAY WITH GENOCIDE AND WE’RE PROUD OF IT.

Scream now children. Weep for the living. The Great Shattering is shortly upon us all. We are a depraved, degraded, and debased people and we will meet the fate of all depraved, degraded, and debased people. We are no better than the Mayans with their altars of human sacrifice. We like the meat of our victims fresh.

Pieces of 8.

Mike Corbeil May 5th, 2008 5:31 pm

“Fat Lady has sung May 5th, 2008 1:37 pm

…

Anyone have some good cooking web sites I could spend my days on? …”

You may be joking, but might nevertheless like exploring http://www.whfoods.com , WH for ‘World’s Healthiest’ (foods), the or a top-100 selection of foods; much, if not all, content being from “George Mateljan with his team of nutritionists and food experts”. The website includes all or almost all categories of foods, and there’s a link somewhere in the homepage for a ToC index of the individual foods categorised by type; the link is titled ‘WHFoods List’ and is immediately under the ‘Eating Healthy’ category heading down the page a ways and on the left-hand side. Seems like a good website to me, and I’ve used it since around 2003.

“heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

…

… We didn’t hear about any dead cops, so went back to campus and that evening we took over the student union building. But the planning was terrible to non existent, and it just turned into a mass looting of the cafeteria, snack bar and bookstore.

…”

A little headstrong, you are, and you’re right about it not being a good idea to throw rocks or asphalt … at police.

And, hey, ’snack bar and bookstore’? What about the beer store? None on campus?

william street May 5th, 2008 5:57 pm

toomuchsun -

If you discovered, read, and appreciated Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History”, then check out historian Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy on the rise, decline, and fall of empire Americana too.

What strikes me as a point for some optimism here is that for years and years, Zinn’s scathing depiction of militarism throughout American history was denounced and rejected by much of the academic establishment. Perhaps the only silver lining on the neo-con militarists’ big black cloud cover is that with the passage of time, many in the far right think tank intelligensia now unashamedly accept and embrace the accuracy of Zinn’s historical narrative, although drawing dramatically different political conclusions.

Yes, the Vulcans say, we’ve always kept our powder dry and answered the call to strike down the barbarian hordes milling about America’s gates. This is realpolitik - the way of the world. Manifest destiny for real men. Right wing gurus like Kagan even point directly at US colonial campaigns against the “Phillippine insurrection” as a model of excellent counterinsurgency tactics for General Petraeus to adapt.

Well, if the left and the right wings have converged to agree that the great string of wars, large and small, that America has voraciously waged (particularly from the late 1890’s through the occupation of Iraq) has been largely fueled by business interests overseas and potential profit for the US arms industry (why did the Germans sink the Louisitania? why did the Japanese want to neutralize the US fleet at Pearl Harbor?), then isn’t it weird how the moderate “center” of our conventional political spectrum still clings to the sappy, fake narrative that all of Uncle Sam’s wars have been “good” wars of self-defense, in which we were always of the purest motive and never the aggressor?

I had thought that Vietnam had put the red-white-and-blue frontier narrative to rest forever, but obviously the Reagan/Bush years have successfully resurrected those old myths. If both the left and the right can call it hokum, why not that great mushy mass in the middle?

Bill from Saginaw

wchere May 5th, 2008 6:19 pm

To Kem Patrick who said:
“Hi ~HAZMAT~ You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.”

Apparently you just weren’t looking or listening. I was in Cairo, Egypt and we had a candlelight vigil that day in 2003 and there were plenty of people there protesting the start of the war. as in many opther countries around the world.

tucsonlib May 5th, 2008 6:20 pm

So Bush actually admits now that he knew about and condoned the torturing of prisoners. And why not? What’s he got to fear? After all, impeachment is still “off the table”; The people are distracted by the primaries and the price of gas; Congress won’t do squat; And in a few months he’ll be heading for a nice, comfy retirement. Same goes for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the rest of the gang. Now, fact is, these folks are criminals. Not in some partisan sense - like the way the Republicans branded Bill Clinton. These people committed actual crimes! Lots of crimes. The evidence is there. In some cases they’ve even confessed their guilt! So what’s to do?
In January of 2003 I attended a demonstration in Washington D.C., along with several hundred thousand other traitorous, anti-American Saddam-lovers. Our goal was to perform an intervention of sorts. To try to convince the administration that an invasion of Iraq would be not only morally, ethically and financially catastrophic - It would also be a criminal act. Predictably, they ignored our advice, and two months later they embarked on a crime spree of historic proportions.

Now, imagine this:

We choose a day this coming summer when we’re certain Bush will be at home in our White House. Ideally, a day when a cabinet meeting is scheduled. We have indictments written up detailing the crimes committed. (I believe such a document already exists for Bush. It just needs some updating to include his most recent offenses.) In the weeks leading up to the event we wage an educational campaign - to convince any remaining doubters or fence-sitters that: A. We’re serious, and B. These are in fact actual criminal acts that were committed.

Then, on the appointed day, we march to the White House and issue arrest warrants IN THE NAME OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
How many marchers do you think would show up? A million? Five million? 50 million?
Now, I’m not so naive as to believe that we’d accomplish anything substantive - at least in the short run. But I’d be willing to wager that history would one day recognize it as the day that sparked the Second American Revolution. And that schoolchildren would one day learn of both the Boston Tea Party…. and the Great Washington Citizens’ Arrest.

Just imagine…..

Lairderg May 5th, 2008 7:00 pm

tucsunlib: I do imagine this, all the time. Also, remember that John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was one of the first songs banned from the airwaves after 9/11. We’re not supposed to have imaginations, just enough brains to see the red dress and the blue one, and decide which one to buy. But, having been a teenager in 1970 instead of now, I still keep imagining, nevertheless. I also imagine peace.

JH May 5th, 2008 8:15 pm

Maybe the students aren’t demonstrating. Maybe. The ILWU dockworkers shut down West Coast docks from Seattle to San Diego on May 1. There wasn’t any word of it on any network news channel. Maybe local news broadcasts related the story. Maybe.

Possibly there needs to be a shift in how the rest of us become informed. Internet sites such as this are my main source now. But I fear that the masses only use the internet for shopping and porn.

MiMiCcS May 5th, 2008 9:17 pm

“I am not encouraged that Sen. Barack Obama’s response to the “outrageous” ideas raised by Jeremiah Wright was to send the contentious pastor away from the table instead of engaging with him over the questions raised. If some people wonder whether the government infected blacks with AIDS, and some believe our government practices terrorism, we need to talk about it.”

That would be dangerous for the terrorists and those who unleashed HIV on the world. So it does not get discussed. See the pattern people, that which can not be discussed, but which is protected, is the Lie that pretends to be Truth.

“Because if we, presently the richest, most powerful nation on earth, can’t come up with some shared - vision of a world we all want to live in, we will kill everyone.”

Those with the vision are sharing it, you are not listening, but it includes killing up to 6 billion people to depopulate the earth.

“1988 The Princes of Genocide: Philip …“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

That statement, reported by Deutsche Press Agentur in August 1988, presents in the most concise manner, the commitment of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, to genocide against the world’s population. In expressing this view—which he also put in writing in the foreword to the book People as Animals in 1986—Philip places himself in the tradition of that Fabian genocidalist Lord Bertrand Russell, who had defined alleged overpopulation as the greatest threat to the oligarchical way of life.

foreverhippie May 6th, 2008 12:59 am

my generation fought a war at home and abroad

we lost both

and now we sit as complacent as our parents once did, smug and insular, yet our parents had more disposable income, and time to enjoy it

I have no solutions only observations and despair

Fat Lady has sung May 6th, 2008 8:29 am

Kem, wchere,hazmet
as my posting said on the 5th at 1:37 you don’t get media coverage and this is 2003 coverage not 2008 that is even more controled. Some say I saw it in Egypt well guess what that is not America. If it doesn’t happen in America it didn’t happen is the way American media works. As others have posted as well, any story that is near the truth is never printed ( very few) or on TV in prime time in the USA, it is a Canadian paper or UK or Auz. The media is controled in the USA the media is controled in the USA OK, got it? We can type till our fingers bleed but it isn’t going to change a F-ing thing

plantman13 May 6th, 2008 11:31 pm

Sure you can, Fat Lady…you can change yourself.

…so that ALL those who are the focus of our compassion may attain enlightenment, I must rouse MY body, speech and mind to the practice of virtue. Padmasambava-c. 800AD

Change your anger to compassion…it works wonders. We have no control over others, only ourselves

USAn May 7th, 2008 10:30 am

Kem wrote:

You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.

Were you in midtown Manhattan on February 15? Throngs flowed in from Penn Sta. to past Times Square eastward, eventualy filling an area from Lexington to 1st Street, 48th to 59th. Maybe 3/4 million. Small compared to the protests the same day in Europe - where Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona saw 3 million each. London 1 1/2 million.

But yes, here in amerikkka, if it doesn’t appear on TV, it never happened, and “they” most decidedly and deliberately did not show the protests on TV.

Most people are also totally unaware of the mass gauntlet of angry protest that Bush passed through on PA Ave. on Jan 21, 2001. The Winston Smiths in the control rooms made considerable efforts to completely edit it out of history.

Kem, maybe you need to attend some protests.

USAn May 7th, 2008 10:35 am

Change your anger to compassion…it works wonders. We have no control over others, only ourselves

Plantman, it is exactly that self absorbed, narcissistic, california nonsense, that has rendered the US left so ineffective.

The operative word is SOLIDARITY - an injury to one, anywhere in the world, is an injury to all!

USAn May 7th, 2008 10:38 am

…

dubet May 7th, 2008 12:34 pm

woe to this planet and all of it’s teeming variety of life the day we self-deluding sloth\monkeys reached the plateau of partial-awareness, non-responsibility and manual dexterity we now inhabit…fascinated by our own thoughts to the point of distraction, yet unable to learn from them, or to question the thoughts or motivations of others…some showing promise as individuals, but all lost, either converted or killed, once among a rabid, reactionary group…violence our most natural and basest reaction, due to our many physical and emotional vulnerabilities, perhaps…

the only arena left for meaningful change is individual thinking\lifestyle…stop buying\consuming\discarding…live small…grow locally-sustainable food…do your own thinking and investigating…industry is artificial and detrimental to all life on this planet…

as to our current situation, if industry\consumption continues unabated, as it appears it will, the only certainty I see is, one day, rampant murder in the streets of Yourtown, USA…the machete of the corporation\government, zealously wielded by deceived and self-deceiving citizenry, hacking and beheading anyone around…get to know your neighbors, and get ready…

dfabian0 May 9th, 2008 10:01 am

Note to the discouraged: Yes, mainstream media is solidly under corporate control. But remember, successful revolutions were waged long before there was a mainstream media. Entire empires were born and torn down before mainstream media. Because there is a media now, the gov/corp media needs to be answered with strong alternative media. Most importantly, instead of getting discouraged, people must talk to each other at school and work. Discuss what we all have in common — deteriorating “quality of life”, loss of job security, lack of medical care and other fundamental human rights, etc — and what we can (and must) do about it.

KEM PATRICK May 5th, 2008 12:17 pm

No such demonstrations now?

No draft now.
5280 May 5th, 2008 1:01 pm

Until we all understand what America really is, then we’ll never get control of the evil we do in its name. We are not what many of us thought we were. Our “country” is an illusion, its “laws” used by unseen faces to rule the world by violence or the threat of it. Never has that been so true as now.

I had hope for Obama, but turning his back on his friend may cost him my vote… the first one since the ‘76 election for a democrat. Oh well, I guess even he was too good to be true.
tj May 5th, 2008 1:07 pm

Thanks for this.

Thanks especially for remembering the seldom-noted fact that the National Guard in Ohio was first deployed to suppress a Teamsters’ strike. The National Guard was originally created to counter labor organizing and unrest in the United States.

As both Arnold and Ritter (above) point out, when the Kent demonstrators buried the U.S. Consitution, they weren’t just talking about the immediate outrages of the 1960s and 70s, but about a systematic effort by the US governement, on behalf of US corporations and the rich, to subjugate and destroy the possibility of both representative democracy and direct democracy in this nation.

The corporations and the rich, it seems, have won: and we now have devolved into a fully-developed white-supremacist, religously-fundamentalist, fascist empire.

Domestically, more than 2.3 million citizens are locked up in prisons and jails. The majority are non-white. The vast majority are poor. Tens of millions of others have become “criminals for life,” becuase of long paroles, probations and because once you have a police record, it is almost never erased.

Tens of thousands of immigrants (legal, illegal and even citizens) are held in camps, prisons and jails w/o charge. Torture and other crimes against humanity are sanctioned at Guantanamo and are de facto practices throughout the US “criminal justice” system.

Presidents can — and do — rule through “executive orders,” giving them dictatorial powers. Many state governors do the same on a fairly regular basis. (Finacially, this practice has been institutionalized in the so-called line-item veto).

We have never had direct elections of our presidents and vice-presidents. The state and local judicial systems are quite literally for sale through campaign contributions and outright bribes, as are elected officials at all levels.

The federal courts have become a joke. The main requirement for a federal judge, whether appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents, is that you have a corporate law background (look up the Carter/Clinton appointments), or are an apologist for facsism, ala Scalia, Thomas and Roberts, et al.

When was the last time a civil libertarian, schooled and practiced in Constitutional Law and its philosophical underpinnings, was even considered for a Supreme Court or other federal court appointments?

And, of course, outside our borders we have expanded the US Empire to include more than 700 bases in more than 130 countries and we are in the midst of two brutal “wars” of occupation that are destroying those nations and bankrupting our national wealth and the futures of our descendants as well.

The slaughters at Kent State, Jackson State and elsewhere nearly four decades ago should remind us of all of that.
hazmat May 5th, 2008 1:09 pm

re KEM

lest we forget, more than 10 million people around the world took to the streets in feb ‘03 to protest an invasion that hadn’t taken place yet—to no effect whatsoever.

“politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

—paul valery, french poet and critic, 1871-1945
Mendo Chuck May 5th, 2008 1:14 pm

Could it be that may be we are ready for a 3rd and maybe a 4th Party? Can there really be enough disgust with what the Democrats and Republicans have to offer that this could be the turning point?
We are certainly way past the need for this to happen. Maybe there are enough of us out here that have had it with “Business As Usual.” If you want real change than vote for real change. If you want the status quo than vote Republican or Democrat.
Hammo May 5th, 2008 1:27 pm

This hits close to home because in 1970 I graduated from high school in Ohio, received my draft card and then started college at Ohio University, a few hours south of Kent State and a school in the same athletic conference as Ohio U.

Ohio U., like Kent State and the other state universities in Ohio, had been shut down the previous spring by Ohio gov. James Rhodes. National Guard troops occupied Ohio U. in Athens and other campuses.

For a bit more insight on this, see the article:

Revisiting the Vietnam War era: The draft, casualties and the Kent State shootings

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/3514
militantliberal May 5th, 2008 1:33 pm

Obama engaged with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, and that’s enough time to give the man’s ideas a fair hearing.
kahalab May 5th, 2008 1:35 pm

And don’t forget that the US military has killed 10 million people worldwide since WWII.
Fat Lady has sung May 5th, 2008 1:37 pm

Protests don’t work anymore as the media doesn’t cover them and elected people don’t listen to the people to but big companies. Before it was front page day after day now it is tucked under the sale at Wal Mart or some super store opening. Control the media and you control the country. Well guess what the US is 100% controled and the internet will be next after Nov.
Anyone have some good cooking web sites I could spend my days on? Trying to change the world with web sites that are 80+ % saying the same thing story after story isn’t working as well.
heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

I wrote this post in response to another article earlier in the week.

My high school counselors were idiots and intentionally gave me bad advice because I was both a rebel and popular and was elected student body president. I didn’t know much about colleges and in the remote little town in northern Michigan where I grew up neither did anybody else.

So I was at Western Michigan in 1970 and we didn’t organize a takeover until right after Nixon invaded Cambodia. Organize was the wrong word.

I got pretty scared that day. We had 8,000 students on strike and massed in front of the student union. Some friends and I commandeered all the city buses that came up the “Ave” and we used wire cutters to cut the brake lines so the big street through campus got blocked with immobilized buses.

The cops came up to clear the Ave. like storm troopers, 120 of them marching in formation in full riot gear, and started to wade into the crowd, spraying tear gas and beating anyone they could get their hands on.

Several of the big, riot clad thugs had a buddy of mine down and they were administering a “lesson” with their 3 foot leaden nightsticks. People had been picking up pieces of asphalt from the crumbling edge of the road and heaving them at the pigs. I picked up a big chunk and hurled it wildly in the direction of the scrum of pigs beating my friend just as a detective, who probably thought the beating was getting to the point of bad publicity jumped into the fray to call off his thugs. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he jumped in just in time to get clobbered in the back of the head by the big chunk of asphalt I had hurled wildly in that direction.

He crumpled like a sack of potatoes, and his gang of thugs dropped my friend and turned to come after me. I turned and ran, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, and I was able to run through. The crowd closed behind me and I got away, but I was pretty scared that I had seriously injured or done worse to that cop. I’m really a non violent guy, and in the heat of the moment had just reacted to the situation without thinking, and I certainly did not intend to whack a cop with a big piece of asphalt in the head. The rocks had been bouncing off the pigs with no effect until my “lucky” shot.

We sneaked away and went home to our rental in the ghetto and listened to the radio to hear what happened to the cop. We didn’t hear about any dead cops, so went back to campus and that evening we took over the student union building. But the planning was terrible to non existent, and it just turned into a mass looting of the cafeteria, snack bar and bookstore.

After several tear gas attacks and the usual warning about anybody left in the building will be charged with plenty of felonies, there were only two of us left, me and an African American girl who had experience in the Detroit riots and had thought ahead enough to bring chains and padlocks and we had been going around locking the doors from the inside, but we finally bailed too.

It was May 4, 1970, and only a couple of hundred miles away, at one of our sister schools in the Mid America Conference, Kent State, the National Guard opened fire on demonstrators that day and 13 kids were shot with high powered rifles and four of them died.
ClassAct May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

Seats at the table are available on an “invitation only” basis.
heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:10 pm

When Hillary Clinton threatens the Iranian people with mass murder - “we will obliterate you!” - She is also telling us that she has no understanding or respect for our Constitution or Republic.

We have no mutual defense pact with Israel. It would take an act of Congress before the President had any legal authority to do anything to Iran for an attack on Israel.

The Iranian ambassador made a well founded complaint to the United Nations after Clinton’s remark, as such threats are a violation of the U.N. Charter. And since Article VI of the Constitution makes treaties the supreme law of the land, it is also illegal under U.S. law for Clinton to be making such threats.

“Article VI

“All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. “
KEM PATRICK May 5th, 2008 2:19 pm

Hi ~HAZMAT~ You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.

I did see what happened at Kent State University though and many other Americans and the Walter Cronkites protesting the war in Vietnam. ___ We had a military draft then. ___ Remember? __ I do.
SallyUUKent May 5th, 2008 3:13 pm

I’ve lived in Kent my entire life, just a stone’s throw from the KSU campus and always in the same neighborhood, so we were kind of thrown right into the maelstrom of the whole mess whether or not we wanted to be. My mom’s youngest brother was also a National Guardman who had been deployed to Kent that weekend. He was a Huey pilot who was flying over us with one of those big choppers that weekend.

I was 13 years old at the time of the 1970 shootings, just old enough to understand that something fundamentally wrong had happened and that the Vietnam War had come home to my sleepy little town. It wasn’t supposed to happen here. It was supposed to happen at one of the more overtly radical colleges like Berkeley or Columbia, but KENT STATE UNIVERSITY???

I attended Kent State from 1975 to 1979, receiving my B.A. at spring commencement in 1979. During those four years of my being a student, there were still a lot of raw feelings left over from the 1970 shootings. I remember well meeting wound survivors Dean Kahler and Alan Canfora as an 18 year old freshman at a talk they gave at one of the dormitories one night. To actually be able to speak to those who were shot and to hear their viewpoints was a real education for me, and I have been attending the May 3 candlelight vigils and the May 4 commemorations, work schedule permitting, pretty much ever since.

I still find myself thinking of those chaotic days in early May of 1970 from the standpoint of the 13 year old that I was. I can still see it through my teenage eyes as I watched the military descend on my town to where it almost began to feel like an occupied city like we heard about in history books. It was surreal going to Mass at St. Patrick’s on Sunday morning, the day before the shootings, seeing armored personnel carriers, soldiers with rifles and other military paraphenalia on the street corners.

The shootings shut the entire city down and it rapidly became a ghost town as the students were sent home from Kent State, the campus became forbidden territory and all schools were also closed. You could have cut through the tension in Kent with a knife in those next few days. A deep tear between Town and Gown was created that still hasn’t completely mended to this day. There are still pockets of resentment toward the University around town - I know, I hear it all the time, sad though it is.

So in a way, I, too, am a survivor of May 4th. No, I wasn’t being shot at by Guardsman (although I did face down a bayonet the day before!), but I was a teenaged girl thrown into a sudden maelstrom of chaos and fear in my small hometown and for as long as I live, I will never forget that time in my life. It’s just too bad that, as Caroline says in her essay, there are still so many unresolved issues from that time that may never see closure and resolution.
Goose2 May 5th, 2008 3:22 pm

>>The National Guard was originally created to counter labor organizing and unrest in the United States.<<

That is not correct. The National Guard traces its roots back to 1636 at the first muster of militia in the colonies. The forunner orgainzations that became the National Guard fought in the French and Indian War 1756-1763, the Revoultion, the Mexican-American war and the first half of the Civil War and Spanish-American Wars. All but the last predate labor organization in the US.
toomuchsun May 5th, 2008 4:24 pm

I have spent most of my life believing that I lived in a good country. When I was young, I was a single mom, working two jobs and struggling to survive. That’s no excuse for not paying attention, but I wasn’t interested in the news, or what was going on in the world. I was young and self-absorbed. It’s only been the past few years that I’ve really been paying attention. And I have been appalled at the actions of my country. In my wonderings through the internet, I kept coming across references to Howard Zinn’s book, The Peoples History. Last fall, I got it from the library. It took me months to read it. Each section of the book was difficult to absorb, and at times, I found myself in tears at the actions of this country I once was proud of. I’m afraid that America is just what it’s always been, a violent, opportunist bully, bent on profit and empire, with little regard for humanity. It’s sad for me to admit this. At this point, I don’t know if there is much hope for this country. Just as a person must often hit rock bottom in order to make any changes in their life, so it might go for America. This country might have to hit rock bottom before any significant change can occur. The mainstream news pumps out propaganda that the people soak up like sponges, and we see our Presidential election turned into nothing more than a popularity contest for student body president. Some things give me hope, seeing Michael Moore on Larry King live last week, and his absolute conviction that this country would change reminded me of John Lennon and his absolute conviction that world peace was achievable. In the past week, I have met both Amy Goodman and Norman Solomon. I still have hope, but until we as a country, start to think as a community, and as global citizens, things will remain the same. I picked up the Time Magazine special edition on the year 1968, and the parallels are amazing. We are at another critical juncture in the history of our country. I just hope that this time we listen to the young people. They are the future.
luckylefty May 5th, 2008 5:09 pm

We were in the heat of battle over a single choice: Will we make a place for everyone at the table and will we reject war and conquest as a way of life? That’s all any of it was ever about. On one side, you get an egalitarian participatory Democracy, the end of poverty in this country and lifetime stable employment. On the other side you get Oligarchy, patriarchy (male supremacy), gender slavery, human slavery, and constant war.

Any questions about which choice America made? Is STILL emphatically demanding to this day? Are they still hanging ropes from the trees in Jena? Is their DA still threatening to wipe out those children’s lives with the stroke of a Pen? WE GOT AWAY WITH GENOCIDE AND WE’RE PROUD OF IT.

Scream now children. Weep for the living. The Great Shattering is shortly upon us all. We are a depraved, degraded, and debased people and we will meet the fate of all depraved, degraded, and debased people. We are no better than the Mayans with their altars of human sacrifice. We like the meat of our victims fresh.

Pieces of 8.
Mike Corbeil May 5th, 2008 5:31 pm

“Fat Lady has sung May 5th, 2008 1:37 pm

…

Anyone have some good cooking web sites I could spend my days on? …”

You may be joking, but might nevertheless like exploring http://www.whfoods.com , WH for ‘World’s Healthiest’ (foods), the or a top-100 selection of foods; much, if not all, content being from “George Mateljan with his team of nutritionists and food experts”. The website includes all or almost all categories of foods, and there’s a link somewhere in the homepage for a ToC index of the individual foods categorised by type; the link is titled ‘WHFoods List’ and is immediately under the ‘Eating Healthy’ category heading down the page a ways and on the left-hand side. Seems like a good website to me, and I’ve used it since around 2003.

“heav y runner May 5th, 2008 2:04 pm

…

… We didn’t hear about any dead cops, so went back to campus and that evening we took over the student union building. But the planning was terrible to non existent, and it just turned into a mass looting of the cafeteria, snack bar and bookstore.

…”

A little headstrong, you are, and you’re right about it not being a good idea to throw rocks or asphalt … at police.

And, hey, ’snack bar and bookstore’? What about the beer store? None on campus?
william street May 5th, 2008 5:57 pm

toomuchsun -

If you discovered, read, and appreciated Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History”, then check out historian Chalmers Johnson’s trilogy on the rise, decline, and fall of empire Americana too.

What strikes me as a point for some optimism here is that for years and years, Zinn’s scathing depiction of militarism throughout American history was denounced and rejected by much of the academic establishment. Perhaps the only silver lining on the neo-con militarists’ big black cloud cover is that with the passage of time, many in the far right think tank intelligensia now unashamedly accept and embrace the accuracy of Zinn’s historical narrative, although drawing dramatically different political conclusions.

Yes, the Vulcans say, we’ve always kept our powder dry and answered the call to strike down the barbarian hordes milling about America’s gates. This is realpolitik - the way of the world. Manifest destiny for real men. Right wing gurus like Kagan even point directly at US colonial campaigns against the “Phillippine insurrection” as a model of excellent counterinsurgency tactics for General Petraeus to adapt.

Well, if the left and the right wings have converged to agree that the great string of wars, large and small, that America has voraciously waged (particularly from the late 1890’s through the occupation of Iraq) has been largely fueled by business interests overseas and potential profit for the US arms industry (why did the Germans sink the Louisitania? why did the Japanese want to neutralize the US fleet at Pearl Harbor?), then isn’t it weird how the moderate “center” of our conventional political spectrum still clings to the sappy, fake narrative that all of Uncle Sam’s wars have been “good” wars of self-defense, in which we were always of the purest motive and never the aggressor?

I had thought that Vietnam had put the red-white-and-blue frontier narrative to rest forever, but obviously the Reagan/Bush years have successfully resurrected those old myths. If both the left and the right can call it hokum, why not that great mushy mass in the middle?

Bill from Saginaw
wchere May 5th, 2008 6:19 pm

To Kem Patrick who said:
“Hi ~HAZMAT~ You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.”

Apparently you just weren’t looking or listening. I was in Cairo, Egypt and we had a candlelight vigil that day in 2003 and there were plenty of people there protesting the start of the war. as in many opther countries around the world.
tucsonlib May 5th, 2008 6:20 pm

So Bush actually admits now that he knew about and condoned the torturing of prisoners. And why not? What’s he got to fear? After all, impeachment is still “off the table”; The people are distracted by the primaries and the price of gas; Congress won’t do squat; And in a few months he’ll be heading for a nice, comfy retirement. Same goes for Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the rest of the gang. Now, fact is, these folks are criminals. Not in some partisan sense - like the way the Republicans branded Bill Clinton. These people committed actual crimes! Lots of crimes. The evidence is there. In some cases they’ve even confessed their guilt! So what’s to do?
In January of 2003 I attended a demonstration in Washington D.C., along with several hundred thousand other traitorous, anti-American Saddam-lovers. Our goal was to perform an intervention of sorts. To try to convince the administration that an invasion of Iraq would be not only morally, ethically and financially catastrophic - It would also be a criminal act. Predictably, they ignored our advice, and two months later they embarked on a crime spree of historic proportions.

Now, imagine this:

We choose a day this coming summer when we’re certain Bush will be at home in our White House. Ideally, a day when a cabinet meeting is scheduled. We have indictments written up detailing the crimes committed. (I believe such a document already exists for Bush. It just needs some updating to include his most recent offenses.) In the weeks leading up to the event we wage an educational campaign - to convince any remaining doubters or fence-sitters that: A. We’re serious, and B. These are in fact actual criminal acts that were committed.

Then, on the appointed day, we march to the White House and issue arrest warrants IN THE NAME OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
How many marchers do you think would show up? A million? Five million? 50 million?
Now, I’m not so naive as to believe that we’d accomplish anything substantive - at least in the short run. But I’d be willing to wager that history would one day recognize it as the day that sparked the Second American Revolution. And that schoolchildren would one day learn of both the Boston Tea Party…. and the Great Washington Citizens’ Arrest.

Just imagine…..
Lairderg May 5th, 2008 7:00 pm

tucsunlib: I do imagine this, all the time. Also, remember that John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was one of the first songs banned from the airwaves after 9/11. We’re not supposed to have imaginations, just enough brains to see the red dress and the blue one, and decide which one to buy. But, having been a teenager in 1970 instead of now, I still keep imagining, nevertheless. I also imagine peace.
JH May 5th, 2008 8:15 pm

Maybe the students aren’t demonstrating. Maybe. The ILWU dockworkers shut down West Coast docks from Seattle to San Diego on May 1. There wasn’t any word of it on any network news channel. Maybe local news broadcasts related the story. Maybe.

Possibly there needs to be a shift in how the rest of us become informed. Internet sites such as this are my main source now. But I fear that the masses only use the internet for shopping and porn.
MiMiCcS May 5th, 2008 9:17 pm

“I am not encouraged that Sen. Barack Obama’s response to the “outrageous” ideas raised by Jeremiah Wright was to send the contentious pastor away from the table instead of engaging with him over the questions raised. If some people wonder whether the government infected blacks with AIDS, and some believe our government practices terrorism, we need to talk about it.”

That would be dangerous for the terrorists and those who unleashed HIV on the world. So it does not get discussed. See the pattern people, that which can not be discussed, but which is protected, is the Lie that pretends to be Truth.

“Because if we, presently the richest, most powerful nation on earth, can’t come up with some shared - vision of a world we all want to live in, we will kill everyone.”

Those with the vision are sharing it, you are not listening, but it includes killing up to 6 billion people to depopulate the earth.

“1988 The Princes of Genocide: Philip …“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”

That statement, reported by Deutsche Press Agentur in August 1988, presents in the most concise manner, the commitment of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, to genocide against the world’s population. In expressing this view—which he also put in writing in the foreword to the book People as Animals in 1986—Philip places himself in the tradition of that Fabian genocidalist Lord Bertrand Russell, who had defined alleged overpopulation as the greatest threat to the oligarchical way of life.
foreverhippie May 6th, 2008 12:59 am

my generation fought a war at home and abroad

we lost both

and now we sit as complacent as our parents once did, smug and insular, yet our parents had more disposable income, and time to enjoy it

I have no solutions only observations and despair
Fat Lady has sung May 6th, 2008 8:29 am

Kem, wchere,hazmet
as my posting said on the 5th at 1:37 you don’t get media coverage and this is 2003 coverage not 2008 that is even more controled. Some say I saw it in Egypt well guess what that is not America. If it doesn’t happen in America it didn’t happen is the way American media works. As others have posted as well, any story that is near the truth is never printed ( very few) or on TV in prime time in the USA, it is a Canadian paper or UK or Auz. The media is controled in the USA the media is controled in the USA OK, got it? We can type till our fingers bleed but it isn’t going to change a F-ing thing
plantman13 May 6th, 2008 11:31 pm

Sure you can, Fat Lady…you can change yourself.

…so that ALL those who are the focus of our compassion may attain enlightenment, I must rouse MY body, speech and mind to the practice of virtue. Padmasambava-c. 800AD

Change your anger to compassion…it works wonders. We have no control over others, only ourselves
USAn May 7th, 2008 10:30 am

Kem wrote:

You said Ten million people around the world protested against the Iraqi war in 2003. I was living near Philadelphia, worked six days a week in New Jersey and New York and I never saw one of the ten million and never saw them on TV, or if I ever did it didn’t make a strong impression between the commercials.

Were you in midtown Manhattan on February 15? Throngs flowed in from Penn Sta. to past Times Square eastward, eventualy filling an area from Lexington to 1st Street, 48th to 59th. Maybe 3/4 million. Small compared to the protests the same day in Europe - where Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona saw 3 million each. London 1 1/2 million.

But yes, here in amerikkka, if it doesn’t appear on TV, it never happened, and “they” most decidedly and deliberately did not show the protests on TV.

Most people are also totally unaware of the mass gauntlet of angry protest that Bush passed through on PA Ave. on Jan 21, 2001. The Winston Smiths in the control rooms made considerable efforts to completely edit it out of history.

Kem, maybe you need to attend some protests.
USAn May 7th, 2008 10:35 am

Change your anger to compassion…it works wonders. We have no control over others, only ourselves

Plantman, it is exactly that self absorbed, narcissistic, california nonsense, that has rendered the US left so ineffective.

The operative word is SOLIDARITY - an injury to one, anywhere in the world, is an injury to all!
USAn May 7th, 2008 10:38 am

…
dubet May 7th, 2008 12:34 pm

woe to this planet and all of it’s teeming variety of life the day we self-deluding sloth\monkeys reached the plateau of partial-awareness, non-responsibility and manual dexterity we now inhabit…fascinated by our own thoughts to the point of distraction, yet unable to learn from them, or to question the thoughts or motivations of others…some showing promise as individuals, but all lost, either converted or killed, once among a rabid, reactionary group…violence our most natural and basest reaction, due to our many physical and emotional vulnerabilities, perhaps…

the only arena left for meaningful change is individual thinking\lifestyle…stop buying\consuming\discarding…live small…grow locally-sustainable food…do your own thinking and investigating…industry is artificial and detrimental to all life on this planet…

as to our current situation, if industry\consumption continues unabated, as it appears it will, the only certainty I see is, one day, rampant murder in the streets of Yourtown, USA…the machete of the corporation\government, zealously wielded by deceived and self-deceiving citizenry, hacking and beheading anyone around…get to know your neighbors, and get ready…
dfabian0 May 9th, 2008 10:01 am

Note to the discouraged: Yes, mainstream media is solidly under corporate control. But remember, successful revolutions were waged long before there was a mainstream media. Entire empires were born and torn down before mainstream media. Because there is a media now, the gov/corp media needs to be answered with strong alternative media. Most importantly, instead of getting discouraged, people must talk to each other at school and work. Discuss what we all have in common — deteriorating “quality of life”, loss of job security, lack of medical care and other fundamental human rights, etc — and what we can (and must) do about it.

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