Kent State

I was thinking about recent disruptions in citizen participation with regard to the guaranteed rights as provided in the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let us go back to Ohio in 1970!

http://www.nrbooks.com/kent-state-newinfo-fourdeadinohio.htm

If you line up the sides in this massacre, you will discern that 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds and 20 year- olds for the most part, are challenging 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds and 20 year-olds.

One side is in uniform (duly payed and sponsored by the government) whilst the the other side is made up of other folks with different types of uniforms that are non-military in composition.

I believe the newspaper links demonstrate that someone on the military side freaked out and took a shot thinking that there was violence coming his way.

And as soon as the military teen took a shot, the other members in his militia also took aim and shot.

And the rest is history. I can think of only two or three other pix taken in the 20^th century that expressed the horror that this picture portrayed:

Three years prior to this confrontation an obscure group called Buffalo Springfield came up with a song that hit the top forty for no other reason than to alert the youth of this nation that something is happening here and there is a man with a gun over there!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=f5M_Ttstbgs

In other words, the entire massacre was a misunderstanding of sorts.

That Steven Stills predicted this massacre is beyond dispute! And then his companion Neil Young gives the eulogy.

Supposedly, even in the face of arguments related to the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre takes precedence as the igniter of the American Revolution.

It is 1770 and there is some confrontation on a bridge in Boston, Massachusetts.

The crowd continued to press around the soldiers, taunting them by yelling "Fire", and by throwing snow balls and other small objects at them.[24] Richard Palmes, a local innkeeper who was carrying a cudgel, came up to Preston and asked if the soldiers' weapons were loaded. Preston assured him they were, but that they would not fire unless he ordered it, and (according to his own deposition) that he was unlikely to do so, since he was standing in front of them. A thrown object then struck Private Montgomery, knocking him down and causing him to drop his musket. He recovered his weapon, and, angrily shouting "Damn you, fire!", discharged it into the crowd. Palmes swung his cudgel first at Montgomery, hitting his arm, and then at Preston. He narrowly missed Preston's head, striking him on the arm instead.

As you get past Wiki and look into the matter further (which is why you begin with encyclopedias anyway) you discover that mistakes were made. Kids were dressed up in military uniforms because back then as now, most soldiers are kids.

And kids make mistakes; no matter which side they are on.

There are so many ironies in the Boston Massacre that it is no wonder that history might focus upon a small incident that caused the death of five people. Hell in Massachusetts alone in those days there were most probably 5 miscarriages, five dead from dysentery and another five dead from accidents related to domesticated animals; that all most certainly occured on the date of the Boston Massacre.

Irony 1: The first person to be killed in this confrontation (and therefore it could be argued the first man killed in the Revolution which was formalized six years later) was a Black Man—a Free Black man. This all has to do with facts that would take away from my theme here including the fact that ¼ to 1/3 of all sailors were Black at the time).

Irony 2: Both sides were at fault. Both sides included young folks who were afraid and mad at the same time.

Irony 3: There was absolutely no rational explanation for that confrontation.

Irony 4: One of our Founding Fathers ended up representing the several British soldiers involved in the confrontation who had been charged with murder by the Crown (for chrissakes). John Adams was absolutely hated by his neighbors for getting these soldiers off from any real punitive measures demanded by the Crown; the locals were so enraged at his performance that his office was stoned by the locals.

So, two hundred years later, we have a general protest under First Amendment guarantees taking place on college campuses against government dictated slavery. (The draft is slavery; you can debate it on and on, but it is pure slavery)

If you are 18 years of age or older you must sign up for the draft. And if you have no proper exemption you shall be sent to Vietnam or go to prison.

So these kids are Peaceably Assembling; since they were forced to read their Rights in these Bill of Rights in school provided in English by liberal professors.

While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot which was about 100 yards away. At one point, some of the guardsmen knelt and aimed their weapons toward the parking lot, then stood up again. For a few moments, several guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. The guardsmen appeared to be unsure as to what to do next. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left, but some stayed and were still angrily confronting the soldiers, some throwing rocks and tear gas canisters. About ten minutes later, the guardsmen began to retrace their steps back up the hill toward the Commons area. Some of the students on the Taylor Hall veranda began to move slowly toward the soldiers as the latter passed over the top of the hill and headed back down into the Commons.

At this point, at 12:24 p.m.,[1] according to eyewitnesses, a Sgt. Myron Pryor turned and began firing at the students with his .45 pistol.[24] A number of guardsmen nearest the students also turned and fired their M1 Garand rifles at the students. In all, 29 of the 77 guardsmen claimed to have fired their weapons, using a final total of 67 rounds of ammunition. The shooting was determined to have lasted only 13 seconds, although John Kifner reported in the New York Times that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer."[25] The question of why the shots were fired remains widely debated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Somebody shot his pistol and other soldiers seeing that as some sort of cue, began firing theirs.

So it became Four Dead in Ohio!

Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Occupy Wall Street protests assailing income inequality, joblessness and big banks may have some unintended consequences. They’re hurting nearby merchants as police barricades deter shoppers.

“If this doesn’t stop soon I will be out of business,” said Marc Epstein, 53, president of Milk Street Cafe on Wall Street, less than a block from the New York Stock Exchange.

Sales have dropped about 20 percent since the protests began last month and the 103 jobs created by the cafe’s opening in June are now at risk, said Epstein, who is not alone. Caroline Anderson, general manager of Boutique Tourbillon, a Wall Street jewelry store, said customer traffic is down about 20 percent, and Vincent Alessi, a managing partner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse on Broad Street, said his lunch business has been cut in Half.

This protest has expanded in this country to urban centers across the globe.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Dozens of police in riot gear and hundreds of protesters supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse in downtown Oakland on Tuesday, with authorities using tear gas to respond to demonstrators' repeated agitations.

The latest such skirmish came around 11:15 PDT in front of City Hall, where a haze of chemical smoke still hung in the air following several similar clashes at the site over the course of the night.

The scene has repeated itself several times since. But each time officers move to disperse the crowd, protesters quickly gather again in assemblies that authorities have declared illegal. Tensions rise as protesters edge closer to police line and climax when someone throws a bottle or rock and authorities response with volleys of gas.

As you pursue the rest of this Huffpo article and check the links provided therein, you can see that there are disputes as to what happened; who did what; when did he or she do what.....

Same pattern seen in Boston 240 years ago; same pattern seen 40 years ago at Kent State. (Not to mention the scores of massacres initiated by the Pinkertons or the KKK or...)

Somebody will fuck up.

Somebody will shoot and others will shoot and....

FOX will blame the commies.

MSNBC will blame the police.

Wolf Blitzer will tell us all to make up our own minds.

NOTHING IS REVEALED.