Cool Justice, Oct. 10, 2005
Government Fires New Warning Shots
By ANDY THIBAULT,
Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
Every once in a while the government sends a message.
The last time we had a serious anti-war movement, the police and
the National Guard killed protesting students at Jackson State in Mississippi
and Kent State in Ohio.
Michael Stein, now a professor of fine arts at Housatonic Community
College in Bridgeport, was a graduate student at Kent State on May
4, 1970 as soldiers on campus - with fixed bayonets - fired 67 shots
at protestors in 13 seconds. Four students died and nine were seriously
injured, some paralyzed. Stein's photos show National Guardsmen marching
with fixed bayonets on a college campus, firing their rifles at students
and wearing gas masks as they hurled canisters of tear gas.
Kent State became a turning point in the Vietnam War as the government
killed - many say executed -- its own citizens with impunity. Awareness
heightened about the lies that sent our young people to die and the
diversion of our country's resources from human needs such as health
care, housing and education to the war effort and corporate profits.
I talked with Stein recently about the photos he took 36 years ago
and about the mood of the country then and now. He said the government
has become much more sophisticated in selling its messages through
the corporate media while steadily chopping away at our basic constitutional
rights, particularly freedom of speech and assembly.
The iron hand that crushes protest nowadays is more subtle. Sometimes
it is unseen or hidden in plain sight.
In New York City last month, an antiwar speech by Cindy Sheehan was
halted as the organizer was arrested. His alleged crime: unauthorized
use of a sound device and
disorderly conduct.
"We did used to have a First Amendment," Stein said. "It's
more covert now. In terms of silencing kids, it's not like [former
Vice President] Spiro Agnew aggressively attacking kids. His rhetoric
was that the Kent State kids had it coming - that more should have
been shot."
Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, will be
marginalized by the modern techniques of public relations and government
influence.
"I'm sure the government is sending a message," Stein said. "I'm
sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes to make Cindy Sheehan
look bad. It's organized, but it's made to look like it's not organized."
On another front, the federal government aggressively prosecuted
four Iraq war opponents who had escaped conviction by arguing jury
nullification during their trial in New York state court.
The St. Patrick's Four spilled two cups on blood in a recruiting
station on March 17, 2003, just days before the United States invaded
Iraq. They argued that war was not a video game as portrayed on network
TV: "The blood we brought to the recruiting station was a sign
of the blood inherent in the business of the recruiting station … We
are obligated, as citizens of a democracy, to sound an alarm when we
see our young people being sent into harm's way for a cause that is
wholly unjust and criminal."
The government we allow to operate today sees this as treason. Opposition
to the so-called war on terror is unacceptable. Nine members of the
state jury, however, saw through that smoke. They voted to acquit.
Then, the federal case went to trial last month.
As for another Kent State, Stein doesn't want to think about it.
"I find it hard to believe it could happen now," Stein
said. "But, you never know."
Andy Thibault, author of Law & Justice In Everyday Life, is a mentor
in the MFA writing program at Western Connecticut State University, consulting
editor for the literary journal Connecticut Review and adjunct professor at
the University of Hartford's Hillyer College. He recently delivered the Pew
Memorial Lecture In Journalism at Widener University, Chester, Pa. Website,www.andythibault.com
