Kent State activists say
'Don't let their deaths be in vain'
By Martha Grevatt
Kent, Ohio
Every year on May 4, activists have returned to this college
town to honor the four students killed and nine wounded when
the Ohio National Guard fired on a campus demonstration in
1970.
These murders were a deliberate attempt by the state to
silence the hundreds of thousands of youths who were protesting
the Vietnam War and the invasion of Cambodia. Days later two
African-American students were murdered at Jackson State in
Mississippi.
Every year since that tragic day, activists have returned to
Kent to honor the slain students, at Jackson State as well as
Kent, in a variety of ways. In the late 1970s, militant
students and antiwar activists gathered to protest the building
of a gymnasium on the site of the shootings, and delayed this
act of desecration for several years.
Prominent figures like the late people's attorney William
Kunstler and Black liberation leader Kwame Toure made a point
of traveling to Kent on May 4 for the commemorations. Two years
ago, students faced the hostility of both the campus
administration and the capitalist media when they insisted on
playing a taped statement from imprisoned Black revolutionary
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal at the commemoration.
This year, organizers of the official commemoration toned
down the politics so much that there was barely a mention of
the current U.S. wars against Palestine and Afghanistan or the
war threatened against Iraq. Determined to make the obvious
connection between past and present imperialist wars and
government repression, the Kent State Anti-War Coalition
organized a militant rally and march that immediately followed
the traditional event.
The most rousing and moving speeches came from the student
organizers themselves, representing the Muslim Students
Association, Student Environmental Action Coalition, and KSAWC.
National speakers included Gulf War resister Jeff Patterson and
a Michigan representative of the campaign to free Rabbih
Haddad. A high point was when Jeff Johnson, vice president of
the Black United Students, read a solidarity message from Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
An energetic march wound its way around campus, with loud
chanting and percussion. Here the emphasis was clear, with
antiwar and antiracist signs and Palestinian flags. At the
parking lot where the slain students fell--now a permanent
memorial--the message was deafening: "Let them not have died in
vain, no more killing in our name."
Reprinted from the May 16, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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