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 day the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a peaceful anti-war protest at Kent State University. As the Guardsmen marched away from the scene, they left four dead or dying and eleven wounded. Among the victims were anti-war activists, ROTC students, and young people who had been walking to class. The massacre was followed with the police barrage of bullets into a dormitory at Jackson State in Mississippi that left two students dead and an unknown number of others wounded.

Students on these and other campuses were protesting against the escalation of the war in Southeast Asia following President Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. That invasion was yet another failed attempt to win a war that could not be won despite the most massive bombing, 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 largest political demonstration in US history. Students, by the tens of thousands, used their universities as a base of organizing to reach deep into the heart of working class America, and into the army, with their anti-war message.

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

Kerry is apparently troubled by his past. Some have rushed forward to extend their sympathy to Kerry. They imply, or state, that Kerry was a victim of the war. I haven’t seen them moved to express too much sympathy for the victims of Kerry’s crimes, or for the millions devastated by the war in Southeast Asia, or for the victims of war here, including the tens of thousands of vets discarded on the streets of this country.

Bob Kerry is a war criminal. He was involved in the slaughter of innocent and defenseless people. He was given, and accepted, a medal for it. He parlayed his bogus story into a successful business, a US Senate 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 in Vietnam.

The vast majority of GIs did not participate in or support such actions. The real heroes were the US soldiers—men and women of conscience—who organized to end the war. They were led by African-American and Latino GIs, often reacting to the racist nature of the war and the hypocrisy of the Johnson and Nixon governments. They faced jail and victimization to wage a heroic rank-and-file movement so massive that the army was forced to withdraw from Southeast Asia.

We should be very proud of those brothers and sisters. We can also be proud 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 it seems that the wealthy are mad with greed. The disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor is greater than any time in history, and the gap is widening. The conditions that are creating rebellions in Chiapas and Cincinnati seem destined to become more generalized

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

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

The writer, Mike Alewitz, was a student leader at Kent State, an eyewitness to the murders, and a leader of the national student strike which 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 IWW activists in that town in 1919. While in Centralia, also be sure to stop and tour the “Art House” on the road between I-5 and the town square (you’ll see it!).