Tin Soldiers and Nixon Comin'
55 years ago this week, students gathered on the campus of Kent State in Ohio to protest the illegal expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
Four people, two of whom were not attending the protest, would not leave the site alive.
Armed National Guardsmen marched towards the students at Kent State and opened fire. Most of the students were 100s of feet away. The Guardsmen claimed they felt threatened by the distance unarmed students. Every single one of them was acquitted on every count they were charged with.
Opposition to the Vietnam War had been growing and the backlash from the government had equally grown. Protests were met with violence nationwide. Kent State was not the only protest where civilians were murdered by the government but it became one of the most iconic. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young almost immediately recorded “Ohio,” in my opinion the most powerful of the Vietnam protest songs.
John Filo’s photograph of a terrified Mary Ann Vecchio crouched over the body of Jeffrey Miller ran on the cover of national magazines and earned him a Pulitzer. It became one of the most powerful symbols of the protest movement.
I was not born yet. Our view of Kent State today suffers from decades of bias.
While it became a rallying cry for those already opposed to the war, the protesters were not popular at the time. In a Gallup poll taken just a week after the massacre, 60% of respondents blamed the students for the deaths.
55 years later and we are having the same fights over free speech.
After the war in Gaza began, American students once again formed mass protests. And once again, the public was largely against them and the government responded with violence.
While I’m about to focus on several actions undertaken by the Trump administration, state violence against protesters happens under every administration, regardless of party. Are things worse now? Yes, but that does not absolve Biden, Obama, or Clinton of their own actions against protesters.
Mohsen Mahdawi attended some of the anti-war protests at Columbia. A permanent US resident, the government arrested Mahdawi AT his US citizenship interview, right in the middle of it. Mahdawi has not committed a crime. He was arrested solely because he protested Israel and the Republicans do not believe in protecting free speech. Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified his arrest by saying Mahdawi protesting had “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” If that sounds like authoritarian bullshit to you, the judge in the case agreed with you. Mahdawi has since been released.
Mahmoud Khalil helped organize the same protests Mahdawi attended. The US government arrested him for the explicit state purpose of disagreeing with what he said about Israel. The arresting officers told him they were taking that action because his student visa had been revoked. This was a lie as Khalil is a green card holder and not here on a student visa. They didn’t care and arrested him anyway. His wife is a US citizen and he missed the birth of his son as they would not release him from detention to be there. Like Mahdawi, Khalil has not been accused of any crime here. Khalil is still in custody though I suspect he will eventually be released. The judge today requested documentation of EVERY person deported by the Secretary of State for “undermining” foreign policy by stating an opinion in the last 50 years. This is going to be a short list as no administration has tried to use this power quite like Trump 2 has.
Rümeysa Öztürk is a Turkish student at Tufts. Ozturk was one of four co-authors of an op-ed which ran in the Tufts student paper. I suggest reading it all here. It’s short and pretty tame. This tame op-ed is the sole piece of evidence that led to her arrest. Ozturk was yanked off the street by unidentified masked government agents on March 25th. The government moved her and would not let her lawyers know where she was. They subsequently complained that her lawyers filed their habeas petition in the wrong jurisdiction - an understandable action given that the government would not tell them where she WAS. The government frequently moves detained immigrants to parts of the country with friendlier courts. There’s no need to forum shop when you can just move a detainee into the 5th circuit’s jurisdiction. A judge just today has ordered her return to the jurisdiction where she was arrested.
While these cases are some of the most prominent, they are not isolated incidents. Rubio has revoked over 300 visas and counting - not for any criminality or danger presented by the immigrants, but for protesting the government.
There is a straight throughline in America from not holding Nixon accountable in any way for his criminality to doing the same with Donald Trump. The right thinks they learned the great lesson of the Kent State massacre - attack protesters and the public will likely back you.
It is up to us to show them they are wrong.
While no one has been executed for protesting yet like at Kent State, it remains distinctly possible. It’s more urgent than ever that we fight back in every way possible.
Those who lost their lives because the US government could not abide by anyone daring to speak out against them…
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio” is possibly the most important protest song in history. I just wish it wasn’t so relevant to today.
Thank you for supporting my work. Please consider sharing these updates or giving a donation.