An Invitation to - and Preparation For -Violence
The President is purposefully goading both sides of his immigration roundup - because it is consisent with his inability to tell the truth and because a violent confrontation will be "good tv."
The Red Bench - Fascist Storm Rising
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming.
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.” ~ Neil Young
May 4, 2025
Today is a dual anniversary for me. . .
Most important, it is the anniversary of the killings at Kent State University during the Vietnam War. Followed by a similar tragedy at Jackson State in Mississippi a few days later.
It was also the turning point in my own young life.
Only a few months before, I had arrived at my new home in Gill, Massachusetts at the Mount Hermon School, a preparatory school that, two years later, would merge with Northfield School for Girls to become Northfield Mount Hermon.
I came to NMH as the result of parents who were - like many parents - dedicated to the proposition that the most sacred obligation of a parent was to imagine the brightest possible future for their children and to work for it every day. I was also fortunate to have a mentor/teacher named Everett Barnes who believed in me and went out of his way to help me map out a plan and find the scholarships that would make NMH possible.
My father was a barber on Main Street in Plymouth, my mom a nurse in Plymouth and Laconia. Both aspired to starting a real estate business together. They would work all day and most of the night. Mom would watch us during the day as she studied for her license before heading off to work as a nurse at Speare Hospital in Plymouth. At night it became my fathers’s task to watch us, feed us, as he, too, quietly studied for Real Estate certification after we were in bed. Each would grab a few hours of sleep wherever they could.
On the day I arrived at NMH, I had a suitcase, a photo of my family and my one material possession, a cheap record player and one record, Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muscogee”.
I never stopped loving Haggard . . . I can’t say the same about the song, though it serves as a convenient frame for the story of my metamorphosis from conservative country boy to anti-war activist and Radical Centrist.
I might have continued to listen to “Okie” until I had worn it out had it not been for May 4th, 1970, when my government killed four kids for protesting against the war in Vietnam1.
To my 13-year-old mind, it was terrible enough that we were waging a war halfway around the world for specious reasons, but now we were killing our own kids at home for speaking out for peace. 2
Within 48 hours, I was marching in the streets of Greenfield shouting “1-2-3-4- we don’t want your F*cking war.”
I have never regretted that change in my path, though I have written often about my regret for the fact that we, who opposed the Vietnam war, too often, took our frustrations out on our patriotic soldiers, sons and daughters, who were also victims of their country’s hubris.
Though we were only a high school and the real campus activism was largely focused on college campuses, the tensions at NMH ran high, as they did at a lot of other high schools.
Even as young as we were, the possibility of violence hung in the air. Were it not for an extraordinary Headmaster named Arthur Kendall and two students, Ken Witherspoon - a VERRY big African American senior who was the Resident Assistant in our freshman dorm where he ruled with an iron hand, and a sleight and quiet Jewish fellow named Don Reisman we quite lilely would have given in to that anger.
They knew we needed an outlet for our sadness and outrage, and they were determined to give us the opportunity, scheduling a massive multi-school rally.
All over America today, that same anger is on the rise, and Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to respond with deployment of the military, including the National Guard, “authorized” under the Insurrection Act.
The Insurrection Act was written to address violent riots, but there can be no doubt that the President will not hesitate to label even the most peaceful acts of civil disobedience as insurrection. His treatment of those already sent to the concentration camps of El Salvador is evidence enough. Trump’s plan to have a military parade on his birthday is another chilling signal that this is so.
Our Kent State moment is coming.
We the people, must be prepared to resist peacefully, with courage and non-violence.
Some of us may become the victims.
Now is the moment when military leaders in America must remind our young soldiers and National Guard that their oath has been sworn to the Constitution, not to an individual. Kent State was a tipping point for our country. Let us not ignore the powerful lessons of history here.
If an order is given to use violence against peaceful citizens, the correct American response to that order is to refuse to carry it out.
Footnotes
Most accounts of the killings at Kent State assert that at least 2 of the Students killed that day were simply walking to class - not even involved in the protest.
Victims
Killed (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
Jeffrey Glenn Miller; 265 ft (81 m) shot through the mouth; killed instantly.
Allison Beth Krause; 343 ft (105 m) fatal left chest wound; dead on arrival.
William Knox Schroeder; 382 ft (116 m) fatal chest wound; died almost an hour later in a local hospital while undergoing surgery. He was a member of the campus ROTC battalion.
Sandra Lee Scheuer; 390 ft (120 m) fatal neck wound; died a few minutes later from loss of blood.
Wounded (and approximate distance from the National Guard):
Joseph Lewis Jr.; 71 ft (22 m); hit twice; once in his right abdomen and once in his lower left leg.
John R. Cleary; 110 ft (34 m); upper left chest wound.
Thomas Mark Grace; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his left ankle.
Alan Michael Canfora; 225 ft (69 m); hit in his right wrist.[63]
Dean R. Kahler; 258 ft (79 m); back wound fracturing the vertebrae; permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Douglas Alan Wrentmore; 329 ft (100 m); hit in his right knee.
James Dennis Russell; 375 ft (114 m); hit in his right thigh from a bullet and grazed on his right forehead by either a bullet or birdshot; both wounds minor (wounded near the Memorial Gymnasium, away from most of the other students).
Robert Follis Stamps; 495 ft (151 m); hit in his right buttock.
Donald Scott MacKenzie; 750 ft (230 m); neck wound.
Of those shot, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m) away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet (105 m). The victim furthest from the Guard was 750 feet (230 m) away.[64]
In the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (pp. 273–274)[65] they mistakenly list Thomas V. Grace, who is Thomas Mark Grace's father, as the Thomas Grace injured.
All those shot were students in good standing at the university.[65]
Other notes and links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Insurrection Act of 1807
The Insurrection Act of 1807 is the U.S. federal law that empowers the president of the United States to nationally deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government of the U.S.[1] The Insurrection Act provides a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) that limits the president's deploying the U.S. military to enforce either civil law or criminal law within the United States.[2][3]
After invoking and before exercising the powers authorized under the Insurrection Act, Title 10 U.S.C. § 254 requires the publication of a presidential proclamation whereby the U.S. President formally orders the dispersion of the peoples committing civil unrest or armed rebellion. The Defense Department guidelines define "homeland defense" as a constitutional exception to the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act, therefore, the political, military, and police measures necessary to protect national security from external threats are exceptions to the restrictions of the act.About Wayne King and Anamaki Chronicles Substack
Wayne is a North American "mutt" with a family heritage that winds through his Native American, Canadian and US Colonial roots. His love for the philosophical founding documents and sacred stories and dreams of the Iroquois Confederacy, the US Revolutionary Founders, and the sacred artist, musicans, writers and poets whose works and images are a celebration of the circle of life are the source of his inspiration. His images blend the real and the surreal to achieve a sense of place or time that reaches beyond the moment into what he calls "a dreamlike quintessentialism" designed to spark an emotional response. Using digital enhancement, handcrafting, painting, and sometimes even straight photography, King seeks to take the viewer to a place that is beyond simple truth to where truth meets passion, hope and dreams. Join the mailing list and be first to see new images and to receive special offers on cards, prints, limited editions and more.
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