How many more Kent States?

May 4, 2024 is the 54th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State University when the Ohio National Guard opened fire upon peaceful protesters against America's military attacks upon Cambodia. Four students dead, nine wounded, one paralyzed for life.

Miss Allison Krause, 19, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Miss Sandy Lee Scheuer, 20, Youngstown, Ohio; Jeffrey G. Miller, 20, Plainview, N.Y., and William K. Schroeder, 19, Lorain, Ohio.

The invasion of Cambodia and killings at Kent sparked an unprecedented national student strike. Over 400 campuses were shut down and occupied by the students. Millions of people joined street demonstrations demanding an end to the war. 

Over 58,000 US soldiers died in Vietnam. Over 300,000 were wounded. Over 2,000,000 Vietnamese, Laotians and Kampucheans died under 15,500,000 tons of bombs and millions of gallons of defoliants that devastated an entire part of the planet.

Ten days later, Mississippi state police opened fired into a dormitory at protesting students at Jackson State University that left two dead and many wounded.

On May 11, 1970, in Augusta, Georgia the burned and tortured body of an incarcerated 16-year old black youth was dumped by his jailers at a local hospital. The resulting protest left six African-American men dead.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/01/sanitizing-the-kent-state-massacre/

 https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2020/05/remembering-kent-state.html

‘They’re sending a message’: harsh police tactics questioned amid US campus protest crackdowns'

'More than 1,400 people have been arrested across the US during a week of intense police crackdowns on a sprawling campus movement of pro-Palestine student demonstrations.

As Joe Biden defended students’ free speech rights but warned them that “dissent must never lead to disorder”, colleges across the country brought law enforcement to campus to arrest dozens or even hundreds of protesters and clear away their encampments.

But the level of force with which some of these law enforcement agencies have responded to protests, which in the overwhelming majority of cases have been peaceful.' The Guardian 4 May

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/04/police-tactics-us-campus-protest-crackdowns

Fifty four years on and students, and others, are still protesting at the killing of innocent people in armed conflicts. 

In 1965, folk singer Donovan's song Universal Soldier propounding the idea that if soldiers refused to fight for their countries ten they would be no more war. 

His lyrics concluded with ,'He's the universal soldier, and he really is to blame His orders come from far away no more They come from here and there and you and me And brothers can't you see This is not the way we put the end to war?'

The only way to put an end to war is for you and me to realise that it's not te universal soldier wo is to blame, it's capitalism.  And things will only change when we universally decide to replace capitalism wit socialism.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY AGAINGST ALL WAR