Editor’s Note: To learn more about the Kent State Truth Tribunal 2010, please go to www.TruthTribunal.org and pre-register to participate as well as support us with your generous donation. Thanks!
Winter 2010
The Kent State Truth Tribunal in 2010
We invite you to join us for the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre.
If Kent State matters to you, please come to participate in the Kent State Truth Tribunal, early May 2010, at the Kent State University campus in Ohio.
The Truth at Kent State Calls to be Revealed in 2010
Inviting the extended family of the 1970 Kent State Massacre:
- All witnesses of the 1970 Kent State Massacre
- Kent State protesters or students
- Ohio National Guardsmen
- Ohio/federal government and public servants
- Kent State Univ. administrators/educators
- Local residents
- Families damaged by the killings
- Citizens that deeply care about the truth at Kent State
- Leading practitioners in consensus-building, truth and forgiveness
Please join us by traveling to Kent, Ohio and participating in early May 2010.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre at Kent State University in Ohio. On May 4, 2010 the Kent State Truth Tribunal will reveal the truth surrounding the murder of four young American protesters and the wounding of nine others on May 4, 1970.
The chief goal of the Truth Tribunal is to correct history as we record, document and honor the truth gathered from personal narratives of witnesses and participants from the original shootings. The truth of what happened at Kent State on May 4th 1970 will finally be available for all to hear, read, see and know. The resulting archive will be disseminated in published transcripts, streaming video and audio, film and through social media.
If the truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, and you wish to become meaningfully involved in helping create, organize, fund and successfully reveal the truth about the killings and massacre, please let us know. With early May liftoff, we have a short fuse!
To join now, see the facebook event: http://bit.ly/7AKZl3 and facebook cause: http://bit.ly/4NoM4r There is also considerable writing on Kent State, Allison Krause and the Kent State Truth Tribunal here.
The Kent State Truth Tribunal invites your participation, support and tax-deductible, charitable donations. If the Truth at 1970 Kent State matters to you, please join us here.
Please spread the word by going to the Kent State Truth Tribunal facebook event, joining in and sharing it with your family, friends and colleagues.
Thank you,
Laurel Krause
sister of slain KSU student Allison Krause
Laurel,
I’ll never forget that day, seeing what had happened at Kent State on the news. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for at the meeting in May. I can’t help but wonder if the sacrifice of your sister’s life, and the others’ lives, are holding this space and time open for all of us to continue our 60s quest for peace.
Pam
Our mission is simple: Gathering truth from the personal narratives of the attendees of the 40th Kent State Tribunal!
Pam, thank you for your support and, for holding the space for this healing to occur.
L.
I was in high school in 1970 and had already been at demonstrations in Chicago (’67 on) and Washington D.C.
I went to finally went to Kent in 2005. Overwhelming. I will try to go again this year.
We’ll be looking for you Louis! Thanks for sharing your Truth @ Kent State. Hopefully, you’ll be able to participate in the Kent State Truth Tribunal with us in 2010. Please tell your friends and support our important cause. With thanks, L.
All I can say is I cried for those who we lost.
The sad thing is as our world becomes more insecure, more innocent citizens will be abused by our Government a government that does not support the voter but supports money and money corrupts and corruption leads to incidents like Kent State May 1970.
The freedoms then truly no longer exist now and when freedom is fleeting it is time to stand and fight again. Let’s learn from the past and make sure the future never repeats the tragic losses of the past.
People need to unite again they have been divided and conquered.
Laurel,
The video brings tears and your blog healing. I am committed to support you and your sister Allison has never been forgotten over the years. I was stationed in the US Army 23 miles away in Warrensville and refused to take up my rifle and enter the campus on the morning of May 4, 1970 at 19 years of age. The horror that occurred changed my life. I quit the military, spent three months in the FT Knox stockade and was given an “Undesirable Discharge.” The injustice and violation of civil rights that occurred on May 4th buried the “Declaration of Independence” and “Constitution of the United States” in a political statement that the President can take civil actions to control freedom of speech without suffering the consequences of his decisions. Today our society is owned and operated by elite plutocracies with no consideration of moral hazards and no accountability. Our situation is a thousand fold worse today than 1970. Please add my voice, writing and stance to your truth commission and fund raising efforts.
In regards to Allison she is ever present in my consciousness and recently resurrected when Neda was killed in the Iranian civil demonstrations. Looking forward to meeting you when time and circumstances permit.
Thank you for remembering Allison and being passionate about justice as an American.
Patric
On my return from two years in Peru in the Peace Corps, I was working in Charles County, Maryland as the only school psychologist. On that historical day, I taped two articles from the Washington Post to my Board of Education office door: Spiro Agnew’s comment in the Washington Post, “America: Love it or Leave it.” along side the article of the Kent State killings. Within 30 minutes, the Superintendent of Schools was in my office, saying a committee had formed in the building and notified him of the postings. He added that I had to immediately remove the articles or I would be fired.
I asked him about all the cars in the parking lot with Nixon-type bumper stickers and in their rear windows. He said that was on “personal property”. The next day I arrived for work with anti-war signs on both sides of my car. Needless to say, the Principal of the only high school in the county would not let me inside to work with his students. I asked many employees: “In which grade school year, do you want to stop preparing and sending Charles County children into war?”
That school year was one of wonder, mystery, and profound loss. I was an active anti-war protester at KSU, and I am still a peace activist with my focus on Gaza and the West Bank.
I remember Dr. Franks’ voice, the hollow feeling of going back to my apartment to pack, the ugly reactions and comments from Kent residents as well as people I knew at home.
A retired history teacher, I used a documentary video on the shootings in my classes. May we always remember Allison and the others. May 4, 1970–a date when elements of a reactionary government saw fit to muder their young.
God bless you.
Please accept my 40-years-late condolences on the loss your family suffered that day.
Although we all knew in theory that we could “get in trouble” for demonstrating against the war and did so nevertheless, the events that day put a new face on what we were fighting and, in a way, helped clarify things for those of us who were intent on stopping the killing.
Nevertheless, the world is a lot poorer for your sister’s absence over the past 40 years.
Thank you for doing this work.
Good Morning Laurel,
I have posted an article by my friend Paul Krassner, titled: Kent State Anniversary Blues and some related things; including a point to your material here, at:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/
which will, eventually, be moved to the following Permalink:
http://www.flyingsnail.com/201004.html
Bless You, ~@~ (Curtis)
Dear Laurel,
What’s below are my comments for my Kent State Memorial Issue posted today to maybe a thousand readers.
Of course I’d be pleased to email you the entire edition if you wish.
Very best,
Keith Lampe aka Pondo
Government of the USA in Exile
Free Americans Reaching Out to Amerika’s Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
Via
April 30, 2010
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
First please scroll down a bit till you can click “START” for a picture tour of the May 4, 1970 massacre of peace-seeking unarmed students by the infamous US military. It’s important that you begin by feeling this in your gut and in your heart–rather than merely skimming more word-sequences.
I’ve been quite surprised at how much this has affected me all these years later. I hadn’t seen those photos for many years and when I absorbed them again a few days ago I broke up extensively and for quite a long time.
Then I looked at them again an hour ago and again I wept.
For this indeed was the death of the USA.
Democracy had been removed with the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in ’63. But the ensuing movements of the ’60s–starting with the markedly gallant civil-rights one–had raised hopes of reinstating it.
Those hopes were crushed with the one-two punch of Chicago ’68 and Kent State ’70.
Our various movements had become so strong that the controllers starting killing us.
In August of ’68 the police murdered Dean Johnson, a teenager who’d come some distance to Chicago–evidently to protest at the Democratic Convention there. Since the convention hadn’t even begun, this was like throwing a dead body on our doorstep as a warning. This was followed up with spectacularly vicious police behavior during the convention–so spectacular that inside the convention Senator Abraham Ribicoff denounced the use of “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago”.
Why weren’t all those responsible for this monumental Kent State Massacre prosecuted and imprisoned? Is it because the assassination of JFK was a military coup d’etat? Or is it merely because the military is ceded a wide zone of autonomy within the military-industrial-academic complex?
Either way, it was the only successful US military action within a long series–including the long one in Southeast Asia and the current ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Successful because it did indeed massively intimidate US activists. Suddenly most of them were casting about for a respectable (no one wanted to become ashamed of her/himself!) excuse for no longer doing confrontational action and the most respectable one went something like this: I’m terribly sorry I can’t attend your civil-disobedience demo tomorrow–but, you see, I haffta teach a yoga workshop.
Thus the massacre provided some of the impetus for the early years of what’s now called New Age.
About a decade later, US activism made a bit of a comeback during the early years of Earth First! Then another decade later West Coast activists’ hopes were raised awhile by Redwood Summer.
The two main strengths of pre-Kent-State activism were the easy availability of clean confidence-enhancing psychedelics and the relatively favorable economic circumstances within which almost all activists were able to be volunteers.
The main reason why today’s US activism is so occluded is that the collapsed economy forces well-intentioned people to accept money for their activism–and thus it’s easy for corporations to control them via bribes referred to euphemistically as grants, gifts, salaries, stipends, awards, prizes, honoraria (my favorite one!), etc.
I’ll have more comments on Kent State next Tuesday. I want this one to reach you in time for you to tune in on Michael Moore’s 36 hours of livecast–enumerated second below.
Yours for waking to the quantum ether,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te,
Ponderosa Pine
Transition Prez
PS: I urge you to click on the link provided by Paul Krassner (third below) for more info on the 2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal and also for a four-minute Kent State video. And I urge you to visit where currently you’ll find Kent State indexed historiographically within a sequence of major events beginning with the first atomic explosion.
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http://www.aztlan.net/kentstate.htm
Lest we forget
the fruits of war!
The Vietnam War at Home
The picture above was taken the day after the massacre of Kent State University students on May 4, 1970 by the Ohio National Guard. The unknown girl is silently contemplating the blood splattered concrete where one of four students fell after being shot dead by Ohio National Guard sharpshooters. Nine other students were injured and one was paralyzed for life. Judging from the location of the pool of blood, it appears that it may belong to student William Schroeder.
La Voz de Aztlan can not help wonder if the lonely girl, gazing at the blood, knew William Schroeder. Perhaps she secretly admired him but never had the opportunity to let him know. Over 50, 000 young men also met their deaths in the jungles of Vietnam clear across the world. Many more came back mangled, some physically and others mentally. The two female and two male Kent University students gave their lives in the effort to stop a senseless war that was ripping at the gut of America. On May 4, 1970, after many demonstrations by college and university students against the war, then President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew decided to bring the war home against it’s own children. The invasion and occupation by armed troops of Kent State University and their murder of the four students will never be forgotten.
We invite you to take a short tour of this immemorial day through pictures and their description.
Start
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[…] 40 years later, Laurel, her mother and other Kent State activists have been organizing the 2010 Kent State Truth Tribunal, scheduled for May 1-4 on the campus where the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators originally […]