Thanks

nicely done

That was a very interesting article. I noticed it was on Apple News not behind the paywall.


In the last year or so, I read an account of what the National Guard troops did, where they were, when they fired, and the aftermath.

This was a completely different perspective.


I was seven years old at the time; too young to understand it as "current events" and too old to read about it in history books. My understanding of the "May 4 Massacre" was mostly from the Crosby Stills Nash and Young song and the photo. My understanding was that is was a national shame, a major stumble between the government and the citizens. I knew little about the war, about the protests, and about the response to the protests. Through my teens and in college, my impressions were more of veterans being spit on and called "baby killers" when they got home, huge swaths of PTSD, and finally some healing when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened shortly before I left DC.

I had no idea about the "four fingers" held up to mean "we got four of them... and that's a good start." I had no idea that Morley Safer declared Mary Ann Vecchio a symbol of nothing. And no idea of the hate and vitriol she and her family experiences in the aftermath... so the response ranged from "meh" to outright anger toward the one person who encapsulated the shock and horror of U.S. troops shooting and killing U.S. kids on a U.S. college campus. "It was their own fault for getting shot."

Of course, with recent events, all of these responses are disappointing and even disgusting, but they are not surprising. Today, states are making it perfectly legal to run over protesters in the street. Or as one columnist put it, "we are one bill away from making it legal to shoot a protester if you don't like the message on his sign."


Among so many other disturbing images in the last year or four, we saw the video of the 75 year old man deliberately slammed to the ground by Buffalo police in riot gear marching up the sidewalk. And they kept marching right past him as blood started to trickle from his ear.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ohio - Neil Young

quote:

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio (four dead)
Four dead in Ohio (four)
Four dead in Ohio
Four dead in Ohio (how many more?)
Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio (oh)
Four dead in Ohio (oh)
Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio (why?)
Four dead in Ohio