KENT STATE

 

John Filo

 

53 years ago today, Ohio State National guardsmen opened fire on students at Kent State University killing 4 and wounding 9. I was 15 and finishing up my sophomore year in high school. The incense-laden flower power days of the mid-60's were over. Things had turned sour as the country was deeply divided over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights. Three major political leaders had been assassinated. Student demonstrations on college campuses had ramped up and had become violent. The '68 Chicago Convention had been a police riot and in the following year, a militant student group called the Weather Underground from Ann Arbor had returned to Chicago for 3 days of rioting later known as "Days of Rage". Young people were vilified especially those who grew their hair long and said "no thanks" to the values, lifestyle and future plans that their parents had projected on them. Meanwhile, the draft was still dragging kids into a fucked up war that was looking like a losing endeavour regardless of the bullshit fed to the public by Tricky Dick and the Pentagon. 

So, against this backdrop came Kent State. My cohort (Class of '72) was for the most part much more cynical than the folks from '68. And this event helped cement these feeling. I clearly remember hearing (perhaps from an interview on the news), adults stating that what they were sorry about with the shootings was that more students weren't killed. 

This really stuck in my craw. We stand up and say "no" to automatically agreeing to put our lives in harm's way, our actions clearly an exercise in Free Speech and you bastards want to kill us for doing so. Oh, so you're selective about which "freedoms" you support. Fuck you. 

It's still being fought, this war, and it has morphed into a huge Left/Right conflict. I'm still hearing "dirty hippies" and "commiepinkofaggot" being hurled in Republican rhetoric. Lots of anger out there and sadly, this will probably get worse, with no respite on the near horizon.