Not that much has changed in 35 years.
May. 4th, 2005 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
varropdx 35 years ago today, Ohio National Guard troops indiscriminately fired on protesters at Kent State University.
2 protesters and 2 bystanders were killed, many were wounded, and America got a glimpse of what conservatism wrought - troops gunning down protesters much like what had happened in Bupapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, and what the Maoist Chinese would do in 1989. (Yes, I consider Communism conservative. Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, et al. would be quite happy in Stalin's or Brezhnev's USSR or Mao's China - their cronyism would be entrenched even deeper than it is now in the United States.)
We like to think that it can't happen now. Or can it? True, the police and military have not shot down protesters in cold blood like they did at Kent State. But police have shot peaceful crowds with pepper spray and rubber bullets in Portland, Oakland, Miami and other places during peaceful protests, and thousands of people were falsely arrested and held in an unsanitary bus garage during Dear Leader George W. Bush's convention this summer in New York.
The police would have you think that these weapons are less-lethal. But they've caused disfiguring injuries, such as the ones shown in the Oakland photos, and have killed at least one person.
While we haven't had another Kent State since then, not even during the Seattle WTO police riots of 1999, the attitude still remains among conservatives that any dissent from Dear Leader's party line is disloyalty that must be met with violence. Typically, conservatives and cops will say that the protesters started it by throwing objects or other misbehavior, but videotape usually proves the cops are lying.
But on this anniversary, we have to realize that Dear Leader and his Limbaugh and Hannity-listening followers will do anything to keep power, and that we must organize a loyal resistance to take America back from the thugs who would shoot protesters, whether with live ammunition like at Kent State, or with so-caled "less-lethal" weapons such as rubber bullets and pepper spray. Read blogs and communicate with their writers and commenters. Listen to Air America or your local community station and educate yourself. Read news digests like Alternet, Common Dreams, or Truthout, or your local Indymedia site. (Ignore the chemtrails, anti-fluoridation, and other Dale Gribbles, though, on Indymedia.)
Never let Kent State happen again.
2 protesters and 2 bystanders were killed, many were wounded, and America got a glimpse of what conservatism wrought - troops gunning down protesters much like what had happened in Bupapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, and what the Maoist Chinese would do in 1989. (Yes, I consider Communism conservative. Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, et al. would be quite happy in Stalin's or Brezhnev's USSR or Mao's China - their cronyism would be entrenched even deeper than it is now in the United States.)
We like to think that it can't happen now. Or can it? True, the police and military have not shot down protesters in cold blood like they did at Kent State. But police have shot peaceful crowds with pepper spray and rubber bullets in Portland, Oakland, Miami and other places during peaceful protests, and thousands of people were falsely arrested and held in an unsanitary bus garage during Dear Leader George W. Bush's convention this summer in New York.
The police would have you think that these weapons are less-lethal. But they've caused disfiguring injuries, such as the ones shown in the Oakland photos, and have killed at least one person.
While we haven't had another Kent State since then, not even during the Seattle WTO police riots of 1999, the attitude still remains among conservatives that any dissent from Dear Leader's party line is disloyalty that must be met with violence. Typically, conservatives and cops will say that the protesters started it by throwing objects or other misbehavior, but videotape usually proves the cops are lying.
But on this anniversary, we have to realize that Dear Leader and his Limbaugh and Hannity-listening followers will do anything to keep power, and that we must organize a loyal resistance to take America back from the thugs who would shoot protesters, whether with live ammunition like at Kent State, or with so-caled "less-lethal" weapons such as rubber bullets and pepper spray. Read blogs and communicate with their writers and commenters. Listen to Air America or your local community station and educate yourself. Read news digests like Alternet, Common Dreams, or Truthout, or your local Indymedia site. (Ignore the chemtrails, anti-fluoridation, and other Dale Gribbles, though, on Indymedia.)
Never let Kent State happen again.
