Forty years ago today on the campus of Ohio’s Kent State University militarists turned guns on unarmed protesters against a U.S. war in Southeast Asia that left, in Vietnam, 57,000 U.S. soldiers dead; 700,000 to 2 million (various estimates) Vietnamese civilians dead.
In the United States’ persistent precedent in imperialism and bloodshed millions have died, suffered wounds, and lost their homes and livelihoods in (and because of) U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan (across Persia and the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, moving west for oil and other resources).
The U.S. military invasion of the university at Kent 40 years ago left four students dead, nine wounded. Reports say the U.S. National Guard opened fire sending a barrage of 67 shots in roughly 13 seconds on hundreds of unarmed students.
Reflecting on the Kent State killings, protesters of U.S. wars, and global contexts, Elaine Holstein, mother of a son killed in the Kent State shootings, is reported by Al Jazeera:
“… The scene I remember is Tiananmen Square, and seeing those students and thinking ‘how wonderful it is that they will dare to do that.’”
Survivor of the Kent State shootings, activist Alan Canfora:
“Back then, they were doing it for Vietnam. Today we are doing it for Iraq and Afghanistan. … The spirit lives on.”
On Al Jazeera Tuesday-Thursday, May 4-6; and Saturday May 8. “Focus: Four Dead in Ohio: the day the war came home,” by Nick Spicer, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2010/04/2010430134254342410.html
See also: “On 40th Anniversary of Kent State Shootings, Truth Tribunal Seeks Answers,” Democracy Now, May 4, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/4/on_40th_anniversary_of_kent_state
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