KENT STATE KILLINGS: THE DAY HOPE WAS MURDERED

Henk Ruyssenaars - Fwd. Franklin's Focus

May 5th 2010 - I'm very sorry to say that according to my - senior foreign correspondent's view - both Franklin and Elaine Holstein are right in what they say. Elaine Holstein also writes about what she lost that day at Kent state University, and the following picture will always symbolize what the so-called administration did. It's horror which is upon us. Globally. - Url.: http://digitalrhetor.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/kent-famousphoto.jpg

Franklin's Focus 5/4/10

MARKING A SPECIAL DAY

Today marks a special day for me. Forty years ago, on this date, I was
teaching in the Humanities Program at the University of Minnesota. On
that day, a crowd of students suddenly gathered outside my office
door. They had rushed to tell me about a 'massacre at Kent State'.
Following a brief meeting with my students, I then proceeded to cancel
my classes for that day.

I happen to believe that America was never quite the same after that
moment in our history. I also believe that life was never quite the
same again for the many activist students in my classes. Kent State
took the wind out of their sails. Their entire world view and their
view of their native land in particular were shattered on that day.

As I watched any sense of hope disappear from my students, I lost a
good portion of my own hopes as I watched this relentless change.
Those young people might have become leaders in a humanitarian
American Renaissance if it had not been for that one day at Kent
State. The cultural offshoots of Kent State have never been studied,
but I believe the impact on young, idealistic students was huge.

I really don't feel like doing an ordinary Focus today. I am, however,
sending you a touching essay by Elaine Holstein, the mother of a son
who was murdered at Kent State. Her disillusionment came more slowly
and steadily over the coming decades when the courts consistently
defended the murders of four students on their way to class and the
attempted mass murder of antiwar protestors.

There's no single Kent State judicial decision that stands out as in
the infamous Dred Scott Decision, a racist judicial act that ranks
alongside the endless judicial defense of the mass murder of young
students who were legally protesting an American genocide.

Today should be declared a day of mourning by our president, who is
too busy illegally declaring a day of prayers, an event that has been
declared unconstitutional by a federal court. How many of those
prayers do you suppose will be directed to the families of the
murdered Kent State youths?

I'd like to see our president visit Kent State today and lay a wreath
at a memorial site as an act of sorrow over what happened on that day
40 years ago. Yet there is no sorrow, no repentance, no shame, no
front page reminders, no yellow ribbons — only the tears of the
parents and siblings of the dead.

Today is a day when I most deeply feel the deep chasm between what my
government in reality stands for and what I believe in.

Today's Quotation

'By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in
doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and
majorities, custom, and opinion.'

Lord Acton, 'The History of Freedom in Antiquity'

Lord Acton's view of freedom obviously conceived of freedom
differently than have our sacred courts.

Warmest regards,
Richard

=============================================

May. 2, 2010

What I lost at Kent State

by Elaine Holstein

[Elaine is a retired school secretary and social worker.]

On Tuesday, it will be 40 years since my son Jeff was shot and killed
on the campus of his college. He and three of his classmates were
murdered by the National Guard at an antiwar demonstration at Kent
State.

During a 13-second fusillade of rifle fire, Jeff, Allison Krause,
Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder were killed and nine of their fellow
students were wounded.

The students who had gathered that day - all unarmed - held a large
range of opinions about the seemingly endless war in Vietnam.

Some, including Jeff, objected intensely to the increasing escalation
of a war that had begun when they were barely in their teens. In fact,
Jeff had written a poem about the war titled "Where Does It End?" in
February 1966, shortly before he turned 16.

Others in the crowd had mixed feelings. Some were just onlookers.
Some, like Sandy, were on their way to their next class.

And so, May 4, 1970, became one of the blackest days in the history of
our country.

It was the day I not only lost my child but also lost my innocence.

I could no longer take on faith what I had been taught all my life
about my "constitutional rights," the rights that supposedly made our
country different from so many others.

The decade that followed was filled for me with grief, anger,
disillusionment, and lawsuits. At the end of our legal battles, we
were pressured by the judge and by our lawyers into accepting a
settlement in which the parents of the dead students discovered that
their sons' and daughters' lives were worth a mere $15,000 each.

It was never about the money for me. I wanted an admission of
culpability, and more than that, I wanted an assurance that no mother
would ever again have to bury a child for simply exercising the
freedom of speech. But all we got was a watered-down statement that
better ways must be found, etc., etc.

I also discovered what I perhaps should have known already: that so
many of my compatriots did not feel as I did. They believed that the
students who were killed or wounded got what they deserved and, as I
heard far too often, the National Guard "should have killed more of
them." And now - 40 years later - those wounded students are almost
senior citizens.

Jeff, however, remains in my memory forever as that bright, funny,
passionate 20-year-old.

I have spent 40 years watching my son Russ, Jeff's big brother, grow
older. I've valued (perhaps more than I would have if Jeff had not
died) the close, satisfying relationship we share.

I've had the great joy of seeing my grandchildren, Jeff (yes, another
Jeff Miller) and Jamie, evolve from cute little children into a couple
of the most admirable adults I know. I've danced at their weddings and
have been made happy by their happiness.

But, once in a while, I wonder about my son Jeff's future, which had
so needlessly been cut short.

What would he have been like now at age 60? What sort of career would
he have had? Would he have married? And what about those other
grandchildren that my husband and I might have enjoyed? Now, as I
watch the news on TV each night, I deplore the increasing ugliness of
politics, and I'm afraid. I know too well what can happen when hatred
takes over.

Please, let us lower the volume and be civil toward one another. For
Jeff's sake. And for all of ours.

[This article was written for the Progressive Media Project of
Madison, Wisconsin, my all time favorite

Kent State University 40th Commemoration of the Shootings‎

WYTV - It's these pictures, the stories, the sounds, that made the tragic events of the shootings at Kent State University on May 4,1970 real to millions all over ...
Video: Kent State Marks 40th Anniversary of Shootings The Associated PressKent State marks 40th years since Guard shootings‎ - Boston Herald
Kent State Massacre 40 years on: Why four died in Ohio‎ - National Post
Huffington Post (blog) - CNN
all 525 news articles » Google search - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/38joofj

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Henk Ruyssenaars
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Blog - Url.: http://forpressfound.livejournal.com/

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