Hope this helps

[lcpd24]

Vietnam War Protests
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Many 1960s antiwar activists came to believe that the Viet Nam war was not a mistake but a deliberate attempt by a loosely-knit but powerful coalition that controlled the U.S. to retain a small but highly-regarded part of its empire, fueled by Cold War ideology.

It followed, then, that the real cause of the Kent State shootings had been the desire of the Nixon administration to suppress domestic objections to its Viet Nam policy so that it could have more of a chance of successfully retaining Viet Nam for the capitalist world.

Many in the antiwar and May 4th movements drew such conclusions; others did not. The antiwar movement of the 1960s was a broad and diverse coalition and many in it could agree that the war in Viet Nam was illegal and immoral without seeing it as a struggle to save Viet Nam for the capitalist world.

For seven years after the Kent State shootings, many liberals, for instance, struggled for accountability for the deaths and injuries of 1970, not because of the economic and political ramifications of the event perceived by radicals, but from a deep sense that human rights on that occasion had been denied.

Liberals and radicals came together in the May 4th Movement, and more particularly in the May 4th Coalition during the gym struggle of 1977, as they had during the 1960s to end the Viet Nam war. They shared the belief that there must be accountability for 1970 and that the May 4th site ought to remain intact as a historical reminder and as human memorial.

The small group of people which began the struggle against annex construction constituted a "critical mass" which organized and mobilized support to preserve the May 4th site. Different people had different reasons for joining both the critical mass and the Coalition, however. These reasons ranged from the broadly liberal belief that Kent State 1970 had been a tragedy and that the dead and injured should be memorialized to the radical belief that Kent State had been an example of suppression of opposition to imperialism.

A good many radicals hoped that in the course of the struggle to save the site, the public would gradually see the ramifications of Viet Nam and Kent State for American society and would become ready both to accept and participate in radical action.

There were also those apolitical and countercultural people primarily interested in anarchism and environ-mentalism who were opposed to the annex location because the site was beautiful and/or because the unresponsiveness of the Trustees symbolized for them the hierarchical and unaccountable nature of contemp-orary American society, though political Coalition members and nonanarchists also shared such concerns.

Such varied attitudes toward Coalition goals were bound to affect the strategy and tactics of the "critical mass" as it tried to mobilize mass support for annex relocation.

The struggle that developed within the Coalition between moderates and militants was in part a disagreement over the tactics most appropriate for the mobilization of mass support and in part a struggle based on different goals. Until July 12, such differences presented no major problems for the Coalition, even the marathon arrest debate ending in a display of unity. Once removed from its physical and community base at Tent City, however, the Coalition was bound to encounter more trouble holding itself together.

[lcpd24]

Vietnam War Protests
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This problem was only exacerbated by the rise of the Coalition's Maoist bloc, the evident refusal of the public to be influenced by the calls from the White House, some politicians and the media for compromise, and by the sheer stubbornness of the Board of Trustees. (The degree of official response to the Coalition may have made the public wonder why the group increasingly proclaimed the existence of a closed system.)

If the Coalition had only had to grapple with the problem of convincing the liberal community of the justice of its case, the gym struggle of 1977 might well have ended with annex relocation. But the Coalition was confronted with apathy and often hostility in the public which it lacked the means to overcome during the controversy.

Neither the antiwar movement nor the "May 4th Movement," the most important component of which was the May 4th Coalition of 1977, was successful in gaining public acceptance of radical interpretations of the Viet Nam war or May 4, 1970. The antiwar movement did succeed in gaining a public support for a liberal interpretation of the war, however, a feat which the more narrowly-based Coalition was unable to match.

Certainly if the Coalition was not going to persuade the public that the Kent State shootings needed to be memorialized by saving the site--even with the help of the media--it was not going to succeed even to the extent that the antiwar movement had. Yet the success of the antiwar movement on only a liberal level caused part of the Coalition's problems, just as the attempts of many of the leaders of 1977 to operate only on a radical level created serious difficulties for the Coalition.

The very traditions and intelligence that told the antiwar movement and some people in the May 4th Coalition at what levels they should speak to be comprehensible to the public worked against any basic emphases on radical analyses. The more these groups were able to communicate the existence of certain problems in comprehensible, everyday terms, the less likely it became that fundamental, thus-far largely alien and incomprehensible explanations would emerge.

The very willingness of a number of influential liberals within the political, academic, and journalistic communities to respond, for instance, to the issue of the annex site in 1977, whether it was presented by Coalition moderates or militants, discouraged the acceptance of radical arguments made by the Coalition as a whole that the site decision was the result of a plot engineered by a closed, conspiracy-prone system to suppress memories and insult the dead.

Media figures, liberal academics, and some politicians had gained enough perspective on the Viet Nam era by 1977 to have some sympathy with the Coalition's position. It was the public that seemed unwilling to grapple with the issues of the Viet Nam war and Kent State 1970/1977. The three mechanisms by which public sentiment could be gauged--letters to editors, letters to legislators and polls--showed a consistent majority arrayed against the Coalition.

The hostility became more obvious as the summer progressed, options narrowed and the Coalition moved left. Much of the public apparently felt threatened by the activities of the Coalition and also by the prospect of revival of painful and alien history which it wished to ignore or forget.

[lcpd24]

Vietnam War Protests
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So as the public exercised its informal vote by pressure to leave the annex where it was, legislature and government seem to have decided that it would be too risky to try to circumvent the expressed will of the Trustees, and the Board got its annex where it wanted it. One could call this outcome an exercise in democracy, if the use of that term did not presuppose independent thought and evaluation as the necessary grounding for votes.

In 1977, the May 4th Coalition took advantage of the contradictions it encountered--the sympathy of liberals, the media, academicians, politicians and judicial figures--to successfully delay for almost two and a half months the onset of construction. The Coalition succeeded in these delaying tactics without being heard seriously by the public, however.

Nor was the Coalition able to wage the sort of successful war of position that would have gained public acceptance of the radical view of both the Viet Nam war and Kent State 1970, partly because the public only agreed with the liberal interpretation of the Vietnam War (and largely disagreed with the liberal interpretation of 1970) and partly because the common ground on which Coalition leaders and sympathetic liberals approached the public on the annex question was too superficial to lend itself to some kind of ideological breakthrough.

The May 4th Coalition lost its battle to preserve the site of the Guard-student confrontation at Kent State of May 4, 1970, essentially because it failed to make itself an efficient enough critical mass to engineer a successful challenge of culturally-dominant assumptions and assertions about what the Viet Nam war, the antiwar movement and Kent State meant to the nation.

The group made a considerable effort to accomplish this, however, and a remarkable number of influential Americans responded to it on some level, even if the public at large did not. The Coalition needed to create a sympathetic counterculture to win its battle; the efforts to create one after 1970 and during the Tent City phase of the gym struggle were too small-scale to help in the end.

The Coalition did bring back before the public the issues of Viet Nam and Kent State 1970--even if that public failed to respond to the issues. It set an example of activism in the midst of the apathetic 1970s.

The publicity it helped to generate for the uncompleted story of Kent State may well have influenced the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision to order a new trial for Kraus v. Rhodes--one which ended in an out-of-court settlement in 1979, at least providing the May 4th families with compensation and an apology from the state.

The energy and commitment of the Coalition's legal collective set an example for the May 4th Movement, even if its words and behaviors were often contradictory. And the experience gained during the course of the gym struggle by the more thoughtful men and women of the May 4th Coalition was bound to guide them later in other, broader struggles for social justice and change.

[sn-e3]

I for one cheered when the national guard opened up at kent state. at the time I was living in Toledo ohio and I was at work when I heard about it myself and about 6 other vets high fived each other and yelled its about time. and the answer to your next question is NO. I don't feel sorry for them. I still feel that way and will fell that way all the way to my grave.

[Boats]

This hogwash sounds like communism. This so called May 4th movement was countering our efforts to succeed. Who wrote this trash?

[39mto39g]

Bill Oreilly asked Jane Fonda a question on national TV one time.
He said, After the US left Vietnam and the south Vietnam army got there butt handed to them by the North, Over 3,000,000 people were killed in retribution, what do you think about that. She responded to Bill, "It was the United States fault"

[MORTARDUDE]

"...I for one cheered when the national guard opened up at kent state. at the time I was living in Toledo ohio and I was at work when I heard about it myself and about 6 other vets high fived each other and yelled its about time. and the answer to your next question is NO. I don't feel sorry for them. I still feel that way and will fell that way all the way to my grave...."

I sure as hell don't agree with that. Shooting citizens down in cold blood makes us no better than all the dictators in the world.

Larry

[82Rigger]

Two of the four students killed at Kent State were NOT protesters, they were crossing the Prentice Hall parking lot on the way to class.

The nearest slain student to the guardsmen was 88 yards away.

If ya'll know any college students who can thow an object 88 yards and hit a person with it, please let them know that the Green Bay Packers want to talk to them.

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Kent State, My Lai same same. Cowards disgracing their country and military.

[Keith_Hixson]

When I heard and read about Kent State shootings I was shocked. I was apart of the riot control training team at Ft. Devens. The National Guard did many things wrong. The incident was very sad, mishandled, totally unfortunate and shouldn't of happened. Some of the students shot weren't even a part of the demonstration. It was a sad day in America when Americans shoot Americans.

Keith