Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Kent State: Are We There Yet?

So what if a smart-ass college kid gets tazed?

I love Greg Palast, but taking a book, even one as dangerous as Armed Madhouse, to a protest in the year 2007 is like taking a knife to a gun fight. But it could get worse. Remember murdered students at Kent and Jackson State in the 1970's?

Maybe it was not only the endless arrival of flag-draped coffins, or the daily news' "Official Body Count" intoned by burned-out journalists. Maybe in the end it was American Guards killing American kids on American soil that finally sickened America into shaking off-- if only for a moment-- faith in a war gone so wrong we killed our own children attempting to silence their rightful objections. After all, it was they who were dying, not their parents.

Are we there yet?
Tears of Rage: Remembering May 1970: "May 4th and May 14th. These are the anniversaries of the 1970 murders of student antiwar protestors at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi by military and lawmen. These murders marked a turning point in the war and the protest against it. The antiwar movement grew up with those murders. Now, protest meant risking one's life. The U.S. government had made it clear once and for all that it would tolerate only so much dissent."

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