PBS Showings of Fire in the Heartland

On PBS stations May 1-4. List of stations and times here.

Trailer and description here.

Webinar on National Student Strike, Kent State, Jackson State & Chicano Moratorium

50TH ANNIVERSARY

MAY 1970 NATIONAL STUDENT

STRIKE and KILLINGS AT KENT

STATE, JACKSON STATE & THE

CHICANO MORATORIUM

Join Us for a Free Webinar

Featuring Event Participants

Songs by Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary

SATURDAY, MAY 9 • 3-5 PM ET

See it by registering HERE

In May 1970, millions of students from at least 884 colleges and high schools took part in the largest national student strike in U.S. history to protest President Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, the killings of students at two universities, and to demand new national priorities as articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Riverside Church one year before his assassination.

Four white students were killed during antiwar protests at Kent State University. Two black students were killed at Jackson State University protesting racially charged intrusions onto their campus. Three Latino demonstrators were killed during the Chicano Moratorium antiwar and social justice march in East Los Angeles that summer.

Join us May 9 to commemorate these events, honor their victims, and reflect on the implications for today.

Jackson State students in front of women's dormitory damaged by police attack

PARTICIPANTS

· Amanda Miller, compiled the interactive map of the National Student Strike for the University of Washington's " Mapping American Social Movements" project. (map)

· Brewster Rhoads, present at Yale University when the strike was launched and an organizer of the protest that shut down his school, Williams College. (article)

· Alan Canfora, wounded at Kent State University where National Guard killed four students. (article, website, video)

· Frank Joyce, a peace activist who was informed of the Kent State shootings by his hosts while visiting a village in North Vietnam that had been bombed by the U.S.

· Gailya Porter, injured during the racially charged police shooting at Jackson State where two students were killed, a precursor of Black Lives Matter. (video, article)

· Guadalupe Cardona, Jorge Rodriguez, Co-chairs of the Planning Committee, 50^th Chicano Moratorium where two demonstrators and an LA Times journalist were killed by police during a peace march in Los Angeles. (article , video )

· Songs by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary.

· Moderated by John McAuliff, Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee.

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Watch the moving 50th anniversary commemoration at Kent State here. See additional aspects of the observance here. PBS broadcast schedule of Fire in the Heartland documentary here

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ABC Television report on May 9th march in Washington

https://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/student-strike-1970-vietnam-cambodia-kent-state-10075782

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Books

Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) by Thomas Grace, Adjunct Professor of History, Erie Community College, wounded as a student at Kent State

Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College by Nancy K. Bristow, Professor of History, University of Puget Sound

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Fifty Years Ago This Spring, Millions of

Students Struck to End the War in Vietnam

BY STEVE EARLY

The strike brought together a wide range of undergraduates, faculty members, and administrators — despite their past disagreements about on-campus protest activity. Thirty-four college and university presidents sent an open letter to Nixon calling for a speedy end to the war. The strike also united students from private and public colleges and local public high schools in working-class communities. On May 8, in Philadelphia, students from many different backgrounds and neighborhoods marched from five different directions to Independence Hall, where a crowd of one hundred thousand gathered outside. City high school attendance that day dropped to 10 percent, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hamilton College professor Maurice Isserman, coauthor of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, believes that it was the more moderate students, those “who were anti-war but turned off by the rhetoric of the late ‘60s New Left” who “emerged as the leading force” in the aftermath of the upsurge. Indeed, many new recruits did gravitate toward anti-war lobbying, petitioning, and electoral campaigning rather than further direct action.

Yet the Scranton Commission viewed the politicization of higher education as a victory for student radicals. According to its later report, “students did not strike against their universities; they succeeded in making their universities strike against national policy.” To prevent that from happening again and get campus life back to normal, the commissioners agreed that “nothing is more important than an end to the war.”…

Universities and high schools are now experiencing a shutdown of their campuses, albeit of a very different kind. But when these institutions open back up, conditions will require a new set of political demands. A return to normal will not be good enough. When school is back in session, the history of a strike occurring after the shadow of death fell on campuses fifty years ago, thanks to Richard Nixon, may become more relevant to challenging “national policy” under the equally toxic Donald Trump.

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/kent-state-shooting-vietnam-war-protest-student-organizing

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Additional Reading

LA Times Project on the Chicano Moratorium

https://www.latimes.com/projects/chicano-moratorium/chicano-moratorium-participants-discuss-movement/

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We Must Not Forget The Jackson State Massacre

Fifty years ago, the police fired into a crowd at the historically black college, killing two.

By Robert Luckett professor of history at Jackson State University New York Times May 14, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/opinion/Jackson-state-shooting-police.html

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UCSD Student George Winne Burned Himself to Death in Protest of the War – May 10, 1970

by FRANK GORMLIE OB Rag MAY 8, 2020

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A kaddish for Kent State -- and Jackson State

by Jeffrey Salkin Religion News May 5, 2020

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Four Dead in Ohio

by Frank Joyce Counterpunch May 4, 2020

The enduring challenge to the history and role of the anti-war movement by a webinar panelist who was visiting North Vietnam at the time of Kent State.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/04/four-dead-in-ohio-2/

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Four Students Were Killed in Ohio. America Was Never the Same.

The Kent State shootings marked the end of the 1960s, and the beginning of our era of political polarization.

By Richard M. Perloff, Cleveland State University.

May 4, 2020 New York Times Opinion

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/opinion/kent-state-shooting-protest.html

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Column: Haunting photos from Kent State made me wonder: Where were the black students?

Sandy Banks

Los Angeles Times OpinionMay 3, 2020

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50 Echoes of Protest

Will Bunch column in Philadelphia Inquirer about Kent State May 3, 2020
https://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODN/PhiladelphiaInquirer/Default.aspx

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50 years later, how should we remember the Kent State massacre?
by Benjamin Ivry Forward.com May 3, 2020

As the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970 approaches, the question arises, what should the Jewish response be today to what was, in some ways, a Jewish tragedy?

Three of the four students fatally shot on May 4, 1970, by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio were Jews: Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and Jeffrey Miller. The fourth victim, non-Jewish, was William Schroeder.

This is a statistical oddity, as in 1970, a student population of about 15,000 at Kent State only included about 750 Jews, or five percent of the total.

https://forward.com/culture/440835/50-years-later-how-should-we-remember-the-kent-state-massacre/

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Sure, Let's Talk About the Vietnam War

By Connie Schultz April 30, 2020

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/04/20/sure-lets-talk-about-the-vietnam-war

Links to the corona virus crisis from a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University's school of journalism

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50 Years Since the Rebellion of May of 1970

by FRANK GORMLIE OB Rag APRIL 30, 2020 ·

Opening article for a series about historic events of the anti-war and civil rights movements.

In 2014 the author also published a web site devoted to May 1970 here and here with descriptions of protests on more than fifty campuses.
https://may1970project.wordpress.com/
https://may1970project.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/a-retrospective-college-campus-activism-1968-1970/#more-41

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Kent State and the War That Never Ended

The deadly episode stood for a bitterly divided era. Did we ever leave it?

By Jill Lepore The New Yorker April 27, 2020

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/kent-state-and-the-war-that-never-ended?

The article links Kent and Jackson State as different but related. She concludes:

"No one has been punished, and no one is going to be. Except everyone’s been punished, the whole nation has suffered, and will keep on suffering, until the shooting stops. That will take a political settlement, a peace, that the nation has needed for a half century. And it will require a history that can account for Greensboro, and Berkeley, and Kent State, and the Hardhats, and Jackson State, all at once. King made a prediction: “If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.” It turns out that the corridor of time is longer than he could have known."

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In Just Months, the Coronavirus Is Killing More Americans Than 20 Years of War in Vietnam

by Nick Turse The Intercept April 27, 2020

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/27/in-just-months-the-coronavirus-kills-more-americans-than-20-years-of-war-in-vietnam/

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13 Seconds; 67 Shots
by Jeff Schober Buffalo Tales April 14, 2020

Fifty years ago, these four Western New Yorkers were under fire during the Kent State shootings

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Becoming American: a Political Memoir
by Cary Lowe

Excerpt on how the National Student Strike intersected with dissidence among NROTC cadets by a colleague of Tom Hayden in the Campaign for Economic Democracy. Book description here

https://carylowewriter.com/excerpt-about-national-student-strike-and-nrotc/

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Tragedies 50 years apart affect JSU Class of 1970

Shaleeka Powell Apr 16, 2020 WAPT TV

JACKSON, Miss. —

Fifty years ago, a tragedy canceled a Jackson State University graduation ceremony. This year, the graduating Class of 1970 was to receive special honors, but this year’s ceremony has been canceled because of COVID-19.

In May 1970, a fatal shooting broke out on the JSU campus, days before graduation.

“I don’t call it a riot. I call it a massacre. It’s obvious that God had to be with us because more students would have been killed and wounded,” said JSU alum James Lap Baker. “James Green was killed on the side of the campus where I was by B.F. Roberts Dining Hall. Phillip Gibbs was shot and killed on the opposite side, that’s where you had most of the students wounded at Alexander Hall.”

Play Video

Several others were wounded in the tragedy witnesses will never forget.

“They removed pellets, shrapnel from my hands, my arms and of course my legs,” said JSU alum Gailya Porter.

https://www.wapt.com/article/tragedies-50-years-apart-affect-jsu-class-of-1970/32175776

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"The Girl in the Kent State Photo"

In 1970, an image of a dead protester immediately became iconic. But what happened to the 14-year-old kneeling next to him? The Washington Post magazine

A moving account , with a fascinating side-bar about how a Kent State / Jackson State commemoration at Emerson College led to a healing reunion between the girl, Mary Ann Vecchio, and the photographer, John Filo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/

Previous VPCC Newsletters

Previous VPCC Newsletters

July 9, 2020 update https://conta.cc/3fgDBdk

July 2020 NL https://conta.cc/2VIPzEN

April 29, 2020 https://conta.cc/2SkQf1z

April 8, 2020 https://conta.cc/2VcsN6Z

February 2020 https://conta.cc/32oB1fB

Peter Yarrow's Mini Concerts

A Covid-19 Meditation

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans

Stop. Just stop.

It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.

We will help you.

We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt

We will stop

the planes

the trains

the schools

the malls

the meetings

the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and "obligations" that keep you from hearing our

single and shared beating heart,

the way we breathe together, in unison.

Our obligation is to each other,

As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.

We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,

to bring you this long-breaking news:

We are not well.

None of us; all of us are suffering.

Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth

did not give you pause.

Nor the typhoons in Africa,China, Japan.

Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.

You have not been listening.

It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time, hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.

But the foundation is giving way,

buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.

We will help you.

We will bring the firestorms to your body

We will bring the fever to your body

We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs

that you might hear:

We are not well.

Despite what you might think or feel, we are not the enemy.

We are Messenger. We are Ally. We are a balancing force.

We are asking you:

To stop, to be still, to listen;

To move beyond your individual concerns and consider the concerns of all;

To be with your ignorance, to find your humility, to relinquish your thinking minds and travel deep into the mind of the heart;

To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?

To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition: how does its health contribute to the health of the sky, to the air you need to be healthy?

To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition: clear, clean, murky, polluted? How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?

How does its health contribute to the health of the tree, who contributes to the health of the sky, so that you may also be healthy?

Many are afraid now.

Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you.

Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,

listen for its wisdom.

What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk,

beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?

As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about quality of your own health,

what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky,

and all of us who share this planet with you?

Stop.

Notice if you are resisting.

Notice what you are resisting.

Ask why.

Stop. Just stop.

Be still.

Listen.

Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing, about what might be required so that all may be well.

We will help you, if you listen.

--Kristin Flyntz

Kristin Flyntz is the assistant editor of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing (darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com), which publishes writing and visual art in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological collapse. It is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world, especially those with messages for how we might heal our broken relationship to the earth.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

If Trump were Captain of the Titanic:

“There isn't any iceberg.”

“There was an iceberg but it's in a totally different ocean.”

“The iceberg is in this ocean but it will melt very soon. Very, very soon.”

“There is an iceberg but we didn't hit the iceberg.”

“We hit the iceberg, slightly, but the damage will be repaired very shortly.”

“The iceberg is a Chinese iceberg.”

“We are taking on water but every passenger who wants a lifeboat can get a lifeboat, and they are very beautiful lifeboats.”

“Look, passengers need to ask nicely for the lifeboats if they want them.”

“We don't have any lifeboats, we're not lifeboat distributors.”

“Passengers should have planned for icebergs and brought their own lifeboats.”

“I really don't think we need that many lifeboats.”

“We have lifeboats and they're supposed to be our lifeboats, not the passengers' lifeboats.”

“The lifeboats were left on shore by the last captain of this ship.”

“Nobody could have foreseen the iceberg."

anonymous