On May 4th, 1970, members of the United States National Guard opened fire on a crowd of unarmed student protestors at Ohio’s Kent State University. These students were protesting the United States’ continued involvement in the Vietnam War — these shootings injured a total of 9 people and killed 4.
To be frank, it’s hard for me to even fathom the fact that these shootings — the Kent State Shootings - were something that actually occurred in the United States.
It’s the sort of thing that should be constantly talked about and used as an example of just how quickly state apparatuses (like the military or police) can flip a switch and become violent toward those they’re supposed to protect. As a citizen of any country, there’s a certain feeling of helplessness and despair that these incidents can invoke. Unless you live completely “off the grid”, pretty much everything that you do is under the thumb of your nation’s governing body.
And if you don’t like the decisions that your governing body is making — like the Kent State Students protesting the Vietnam War- well, your country’s armed forces can just kill you.
I don’t want to imply that peaceful protesting is useless or ineffective, but rather, the culture of violence that underpins life in the United States would likely never allow such a movement to make any real progress.
This is in stark contrast to other countries, like South Korea, where collective action and peaceful protesting by citizens have literally ousted presidents.
I also can’t help but wonder how much of a difference the highly individualistic culture of the United States plays here — Americans are just not used to standing as a united front against our government, nor do many of us feel like we have the means or time to do so (people are busy and need to work!), which makes it painfully easy to stamp out any attempts to do so.
Additionally, I would wager that plenty of Americans just don’t believe that collective action is even effective — and we can’t blame those who think this way, since there aren’t many strong examples in recent (2000 and onwards) history.
Just 4 days after the Kent State shootings, some 1400 miles away, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, there was another bloody clash between armed military forces and students that’s even less remembered.
On May 8th, 1970 members of the New Mexico Army National Guard used their bayonet rifles to rush a group of unarmed activists at the University of New Mexico (UNM) — guardsmen stabbed and slashed indiscriminately, even chasing after those who were fleeing or had already been stabbed. In total, 11 people were either sliced or stabbed, with there luckily being no fatalities.
The descriptions of the attack from the survivors were terrifying, and truly give off a sense of cruelty from the attackers:
“He [John Dressman] jumped about four feet to the ground below, ‘where a couple of other soldiers broke rank and came running after me,’ he said. Dressman parried one rifle thrust toward his upper torso and then turned ‘to get the hell out of there,’ but not fast enough. He was stabbed from behind in his thigh. Losing blood quickly and nearly unconscious….”
“Former KOB-TV reporter and photographer Bill Norlander was bayoneted in his chest and arm. ‘I was thinking I’ll just stand there and let these guys go by and I’ll film them walking past me, only I didn’t realize they saw me as part of the problem.’
Stephen Part, then a writer for the Daily Lobo, recalled that ‘anybody who had a camera or could write was sent out to cover it — sort of all hands on deck.’ He was bayoneted in the back as he bent over to help another injured person.”
Rather than be used as painful examples of the crushing weight of American military violence (and sometimes just the threat of it), these horrific incidents seem to be a mostly forgotten part of American history.
While the 1960s was a decade of massive change, collective protest, and relentless optimism in the United States, the 1970s were ushered in with a concentrated backlash to all of that change; the Kent State and UNM incidents tragically symbolize that backlash, while also highlighting the immediate danger that accompanies martial law.
These awful acts of violence committed against ordinary Americans might have also symbolized the end of a very particular, grittily political version of this country. One where the clash between state and citizenry was constantly played out in the open. Before 1975, it seemed as if politics was much more intertwined in everyday life than it is now.
When you compare the UNM and Kent clashes to more modern situations, like the 2011 UC Davis pepper spray incident, it’s almost difficult to accept that this is the same country.
50 years ago, the local jurisdictions responsible for those bloody 1970s events saw peaceful, anti-war protestors as such a threat that they were willing to kill them — and our government backed them. Now, our collective power as citizens has been stifled so much, that student protestors no longer warrant a military response (which, of course was never warranted). A police officer just needs a can of pepper spray and some tear gas to stamp out the beginnings of a protest.
The way that our military and law enforcement responds to these types of protests has changed — precisely because the stakes are so low for them, given how little power we truly have to combat them — physically or otherwise.
There was a clear-cut, politically progressive culture that permeated the period between 1955 and 1975 in the United States, collective struggle was truly met with collective action.
Slowly but surely, life in the U.S. has changed in such a way that makes most of us today ambivalent towards the idea of fighting for what we still lack. Or — maybe the standard of living for the average American has improved so much, that what we lack pales in comparison to what we now have. Since a good portion of us are clothed, fed, housed, and employed without issue, we don’t see a reason to go march on behalf of those who still struggle with one — or all — of those things.
Even though the specific incidents mentioned here are over 50 years old, their effects - among many other contemporary events (such as the assassinations of JFK and MLK) - on the collective spirit of the American struggle cannot be understated or dismissed.
There are, unfortunately, those out there who believe that the students in these situations were actually in the wrong and were responsible for provoking these assaults. Personally, concerning the capacity for violence, I believe that no valid comparison can ever be drawn between citizens and their state.
Military technology improves at a faster rate than nearly anything else in this country — our government funds new ways to kill people at an astonishing pace, and it seems like we have never stood a chance.
