Speakers
Youtube videos
of the May 9 zoom webinar, click here https://youtu.be/-f9YVzsA_8M
of the May 16 follow-up zoom discussion click here https://youtu.be/lwzZGf4LWEs
Interactive map of the National Student Strike
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2020/04/peter-yarrows-mini-concerts.html
Holly Near in Concert with Jeff Langley
"It Could Have Been Me" at 1:36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfNXhtvOMUk
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· 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. VPCC (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. VPCC
· 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, 50th 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 (VPCC)
Youtube videos
of the May 9 zoom webinar, click here https://youtu.be/-f9YVzsA_8M
Interactive map of the National Student Strike
Kent State
on line program
Took place
May 4, watch here
Chicano
Moratorium August 29
More info,
videos, readings
https://tinyurl.com/1970Anniv
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2020/04/peter-yarrows-mini-concerts.html
Donate to
support this webinar (tax deductible)
or by mail to Fund for Reconciliation and Development, 64 Jean Court, Riverhead, NY 11901
Organizing and promotional costs were about $3,000. Any amount is very welcome.
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Video Resources
Fire in the
Heartland, documentary about Kent State made by alumnus Daniel
Miller, description and preview here.
A new 56 minute version was shown on some PBS stations between May 1 and 4.
"Four Dead in Ohio" The classic song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is available in many versions on line with different compilations of video and photos. Among the best
Celebrating the Lives and Legacy of Phillip Gibbs and James Green, a documentary about the police shootings at Jackson State University here.
The Chicano Moratorium: Why 30,000 People Marched Through East LA in 1970, a short documentary about the killings at the Chicano Moratorium march here; more contemporary footage and detail in Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom here; Requiem 29: The Chicano Moratorium is a documentary work print with powerful footage of the march and of the court inquest on the murder of LA Times columnist Ruben Salazar here
The Year that
Trembled, film that dramatizes the effect on young people of the draft
and Kent State; made in 2002 by Jay Craven, based on the novel by Scott Lax;
trailer and description here. Jay is a long time friend of
VPCC and is offering DVDs to our network for $10. Contact him here.
Days of Possibilities
by Rich Orloff, documentary-style
play adapted from letters and interviews with students who attended Oberlin
College in Ohio; explores the impact of the Vietnam War, from small and polite
demonstrations in 1964 to the campus-wide response after Kent State. It can be seen on Youtube here
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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Introductory Remarks by John McAuliff
Today is the 50th
anniversary of a march in Washington with 100,000 people, part of a tumultuous
four month period set in motion by the expansion of the Viet Nam war into
Cambodia by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
None of us
could have imagined that fifty years later we would be in the midst of a national
crisis affecting everyone, already
taking in two months 20,000 more American lives than the Viet Nam war did in
fifteen years.
We could not
have imagined that 50 years later the US and Viet Nam would have warm
diplomatic and political relations, that
the US would be the largest market for
Vietnamese exports and the second largest source of tourists, and that Vietnamese
would be the sixth largest cohort of foreign students in the US, more than
24,000 in 2019. Nor that the biggest threat to
Vietnamese sovereignty and security would be China which has asserted military and economic control over most of the South China sea.
So it is a
reasonable question to ask why have we come together today to recall and honor
the National Student Strike, students who died at Kent State and Jackson State
and the marchers killed at the Chicano Moratorium half a century ago.
I will conclude with the words of a founder of the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee, the late
Tom Hayden:
"The 1965-75 peace movement reached a scale that threatened the foundations of the American social order, making it both an inspirational model for future social movements and a nightmarish narrative that our governing elites have tried to wipe from collective memory ever since...
...those who opposed the war are needed now more than ever, now and tomorrow, to prevent the dimming of memory and to keep history from repeating."
--Tom Hayden, "Hell No, The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement"
The detailed recollections of the webinar speakers brought back vivid memories of that time. I experienced the events in a different way than most viewers -- an an NROTC midshipman opposed to the war and trying to block a military ceremony at my school in the middle of the national student strike. Five years later, I became a colleague of Tom Hayden in political organizing in California. I write about all that in my new book Becoming American.
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