Kent and Jackson, 1970

The real heroes were soldiers who organized against the war

opinion by Mike Alewitz, contributor

May 4, 1970 was a bloody day in the middle of the country. On that daythe Ohio National Guard opened fire on a peaceful anti-war protest atKent State University. As the Guardsmen marched away from the scene,they left four dead or dying and eleven wounded. Among the victimswere anti-war activists, ROTC students, and young people who had beenwalking to class. The massacre was followed with the police barrage ofbullets into a dormitory at Jackson State in Mississippi that left twostudents dead and an unknown number of others wounded.

Students on these and other campuses were protesting against theescalation of the war in Southeast Asia following President RichardNixon’s invasion of Cambodia. That invasion was yet another failedattempt to win a war that could not be won despite the most massivebombing, defoliation and napalming that the world had ever seen.

The massacres at Kent and Jackson, along with deep hatred of the war,sparked a national student strike that was to become the largestpolitical demonstration in US history. Students, by the tens ofthousands, used their universities as a base of organizing to reachdeep into the heart of working class America, and into the army, withtheir anti-war message.

It is worth keeping this in mind when we contemplate the recentadmission of Senator Bob Kerry that he killed civilians during thewar.

Kerry is apparently troubled by his past. Some have rushed forward toextend their sympathy to Kerry. They imply, or state, that Kerry was avictim of the war. I haven’t seen them moved to express too muchsympathy for the victims of Kerry’s crimes, or for the millionsdevastated by the war in Southeast Asia, or for the victims of warhere, including the tens of thousands of vets discarded on the streetsof this country.

Bob Kerry is a war criminal. He was involved in the slaughter ofinnocent and defenseless people. He was given, and accepted, a medalfor it. He parlayed his bogus story into a successful business, a USSenate seat, and eventually into the presidency of the New School.It’s been a lifetime of duplicity.

Kerry was never a hero—but there were genuine American heroes inVietnam.

The vast majority of GIs did not participate in or support suchactions. The real heroes were the US soldiers—men and women ofconscience—who organized to end the war. They were led byAfrican-American and Latino GIs, often reacting to the racist natureof the war and the hypocrisy of the Johnson and Nixon governments.They faced jail and victimization to wage a heroic rank-and-filemovement so massive that the army was forced to withdraw fromSoutheast Asia.

We should be very proud of those brothers and sisters. We can also beproud of the students who marched, sat in, organized, went to jail,faced tear gas, and gave their lives in the struggle for peace.

Today there is a profound social crisis in this country. To many itseems that the wealthy are mad with greed. The disparity of wealthbetween the rich and the poor is greater than any time in history, andthe gap is widening. The conditions that are creating rebellions inChiapas and Cincinnati seem destined to become more generalized

The decade-long struggle to end the war in Vietnam revealed that onlya massive movement could bring peace. Today there is a new movementbeginning for global economic justice. Young people are demonstratingin Seattle, Quebec and many other cities. They envision a world wherefood is not a weapon to be used against poor countries, where USdollars don’t go to death squads, where workers have a living wage,where sweatshops are eliminated and money goes to human needs and notwar. They look to a world of peace and justice.

Today’s protesters are squarely in the tradition of the anti-warsoldiers who rejected terror and fought for peace. With them we seethe living legacy of those who died at Kent and Jackson. We should beoptimistic about the future.

The writer, Mike Alewitz, was a student leader at Kent State, aneyewitness to the murders, and a leader of the national student strikewhich followed. He is now the Artistic Director of the LaBOR aRT &MuRAL PRoJECT at Central Connecticut State University. He painted the“Resurrection of Wesley Everest” mural visible from the Centralia,Washington town square in commemoration of the killings of IWWactivists in that town in 1919. While in Centralia, also be sure tostop and tour the “Art House” on the road between I-5 and the townsquare (you’ll see it!).