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Long Live the Spririt of Kent and Jackson State

By VVAW

3000 Demonstrate at Kent State

Since last May, Kent State University has been rocked by demonstrations, picket lines, rallies, court injunctions, massive arrests and a 62 day occupation of the site of the murders of 4 KSU students on May 4, 1970. Thousands of students at Kent and around the country have put the KSU administration on notice that their efforts to wipe out the memory of May 4 by building a gym on the site will not be tolerated.

The protests against the 1970 invasion of Cambodia and the murders at Kent and Jackson State College in Mississippi have come to symbolize a spirit of resistance to U.S. imperialism. At Kent each new class of students has been educated about the history and background of May 4 through annual commemorations.

When Kent opened this semester a demonstration of several hundred introduced the new students to the issue and put the new school president, Brage Golding, on notice that if he went ahead with the project, "what goes up must come down." The May 4th Coalition called for a national rally on September 24 to demand relocation of the gym.

The KSU Administration responded with a massive intimidation campaign to try and neutralize the widespread and growing "Move the Gym" sentiment on campus. The school trustees had imported Golding hoping his experience could help crush the resistance to the gym site. During the 60s, he had been in Brazil working for the Aid for International Development (a notorious CIA front) helping the dictatorship there set up a police apparatus. Late at San Diego State, he took charge of wiping out the ethnic studies courses and arming the campus cops. Golding rushed construction crews onto the site and began construction under the protection of scores of riot-equipped cops. As a "compromise" Golding proposed naming the gym after all the "victims" of May 4, 1970--including not only the 4 students but the National guardsmen who shot them and Governor Rhodes who ordered them onto the campus!

At the same time it was announced that anyone violating the court injunction permitting construction would be immediately suspended for one year, and arrest and grand jury warrants were sworn out against May 4th Coalition leaders. They also declared that the September 24 demonstration would not be permitted.

They might as well have issued edicts to the winds. On September 24, students from Kent State and campuses all over the country gathered at Kent to oppose construction of the gym in the most significant student demonstration in years.

The "forbidden demonstration" began with a rally of 3,000. Bolstered by this powerful show of outside support, a thousand Kent students defied the administration's intimidation campaign to take part. Al Canfora, one of the students shot by guardsmen in 1970, traced the history of the battle at Kent and said that the demonstration was the highest level of this struggle in 7 years, because of its size, because of its nationwide character and because the face of the ruling class was more clearly exposed than ever.

In May, 1970, when the students were shot, a lot of veterans were under fire ourselves in Vietnam. Some of us were back in the states, beating the streets, looking for jobs that weren't there. Most of us realized then, or have come to realize since then, that what the students were saying was right--Vietnam was nothing but a rich man's war, and we were only cannon fodder--to be used once, and then thrown away.

It is because the students were speaking the truth--and because people like us were starting to listen and agree--that they were gunned down. These and other protesters--like the Black students killed the same week at Jackson State--were making it as hard as hell for the rulers to carry out their war, though the rich made a determined effort to crush the anti-war movement.

They failed. The struggle of the Vietnamese people, combined with the struggle of the American people--students, vets, GIs, and others--forced the U.S. out of Vietnam.

But the capitalist rulers of this country continue to ram the world in search of profits. In recent years, they have run head on with their fellow bloodsuckers in the Soviet Union--who also want to rule and rob the whole world in Angola, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The danger of war as a result of these clashes is growing everyday, and in this situation, the ruling class wants a free hand to mobilize the American people to fight--for them.

For this reason they are doing everything in their power to bury every memory of the anti-war movement, and especially of the events at Kent State, which is a symbol of the heroic spirit of resistance to an unjust war. We must not allow them to get away with this.

We learned that we were used in Vietnam. We'll never forget that and we'll never forgive that and we'll never forgive the U.S. ruling class for it or for killing the students at both Kent and Jackson State. This is the message the students are putting forward at Kent. The powerful, important struggle there is our struggle too. As one vet in VVAW said, "I was part of the invasion into Cambodia. When I found out that students were killed demonstrating against it, I vowed to get home and fight 'til my dying breath against their murders--the rulers of this country, who killed the students at Kent and Jackson and my thousands of buddies in Vietnam."

During an International Conference in Rome in February, 1973, a spokesman for the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia, the predecessor of the present government of that country, made the following statement about the students at Kent and Jackson State:

"When we were attacked in our own country, Americans died for our cause; the students at Kent and Jackson States. This is the highest form of solidarity, when people give their lives for the struggles of others. We thank you."