[Peace-discuss] 4 May 1970: USG kills students at Kent State

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Look at this.  It's more typical of what was happening in 1965, not 1970.
Obama writes about the resistance to the Vietnam War in his Audacity of Hope and
covertly promises that it won't happen again. His administration - and
university administrations, police forces, etc. - have not forgotten those
years, and they're making sure it won't happen again. --CGE]

	Univ. of Wisc. Cancels Antiwar Forum Over ‘Security Concerns’
	Posted: 25 Apr 2010 07:13 PM PDT

An Antiwar Forum was canceled at the last minute by the University of Wisconsin
(Madison) over unspecified “security concerns.”

The event was expected to draw a large audience to hear Cindy Sheehan,
Antiwar.com’s Angela Keaton, Ben Manski of the Liberty Tree Foundation,
Christina Tobin of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, and local activist
and elected official Sean Scallon.

The practice of canceling or prohibiting events based on “security concerns” is
not new, but hasn’t been used much recently. The U.S. Supreme Court has made
clear, in its Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement (505 U.S. 123, 1992)
decision, that “Speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be
punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob.”

Organizers of the event plan to hold it in an area outside the student union.

Following is the press release of the UW Campus Antiwar Network:

     UW Campus Antiwar Network: Antiwar panel scheduled for Monday at 7:00 at
Memorial Union featuring activist Cindy Sheehan cancelled by union staff due to
“security concerns”

     4/25/2010

     CONTACT: Steve Horn — (262)-705-5856, sahorn at wisc.edu

     To Members of the Press:

     An antiwar panel sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Havens
Center, Campus Antiwar Network, Middle East Interest Group, and the Wisconsin
Union Directorate’s Society and Politics Committee and scheduled for Monday,
April 26 at 7:00 PM in Memorial Union has been cancelled by the Union
Building/Event Management Director, Roger Vogts, due to a last-minute expression
of “security concerns” that would accompany antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan’s
visit. Vogts said that he could not contact security over the weekend because,
apparently, phones don’t work over the weekend.

     On top of that, those organizing the event would have to foot the bill for
the security, even though Sheehan never requested security to begin with, and
even though no organizations involved with this event had enough money to foot
the expensive bill this late in the game, either.

     The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear, in its Forsyth County v. Nationalist
Movement (505 U.S. 123, 1992) decision, that “Speech cannot be financially
burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might
offend a hostile mob” (emphasis mine). Since the Union’s Central Reservations
presides over a viewpoint-neutral limited public forum at the Union and other
facilities, the Union is necessarily bound by the same constitutional demands as
the local government in Forsyth County. In other words, it is unconstitutional
for any viewpoint-neutral limited public forum to deny any organization their
free speech rights on the grounds that they are unable to provide for extra
security costs related to the exercise of that free speech.

     Interestingly, these same concerns were not expressed when Norman
Finkelstein came to Madison on April 13 and spoke at UW, a man well-known for
being a strong critic of Israel’s and a man barred from visiting Israel until
2018 because the country considers him a “security threat.” Not a peep was
uttered about him being such a thing at UW.

     The panel features across-the-political-spectrum activists who believe it
will take massive electoral reform to engender a sustainable long-term antiwar
movement in the United States:

     * Christina Tobin: chair of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation
(www.freeandequal.org), a nonpartisan, nonprofit, public policy and advocacy
organization dedicated to protecting the rights of the politically marginalized
and disenfranchised, particularly third party and independent voters and
candidates. She is also the Libertarian candidate for California Sec. of State.
     * Teresa Amato: served as national campaign manager and in-house counsel for
Ralph Nader in his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. She’s the author of
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny.
     * Angela Keaton: development director for Antiwar.com, the Web’s leading
source of antiwar news, views, and activities, and the producer of the Scott
Horton Show for Antiwar Radio.
     * Ben Manski: attorney and pro-democracy advocate, he serves as Executive
Director for the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution, a
think-tank and organizing center he founded in 2004. He’s also a principal
attorney at Manski Law and Communications, LLC, and an associate follow with the
Institute for Policy Studies. In 2001-2002, he was active on the steering
committee that formed the major U.S. peace organization, United for Peace and
Justice.
     * Sean Scallon: author, journalist, blogger, and elected official in Pepin,
WI. He’s the author of Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political
Movements and the Parties of the Upper Midwest.

     Despite this cancellation, the organizing committee of this event and the
panel has decided that the event will still take place at the Union, only, it
will not be held in a reserved room, but instead, in one of three places: a.)
the front steps, b.) the Union Lobby, c,) Lakefront on Langdon in the Union.

     Event attendees are set to meet at the front steps of the Union at 6:45 PM,
and from there, the panel will either be held there, in the Union lobby, or in
Lakefront on Langdon in the Union. At the time this press release was written,
event organizers were still undecided as to whether they would bring a lawsuit
on the grounds of a violation of the First Amendment against the Union.

     For more information about the event, please visit the Facebook Event Page.

On 4/26/10 12:00 PM, John W. wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:40 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu
>> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> http://chronicle.com/article/The-Times-They-Changed/65192/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
>>
>> I remember that evening quite well. I was in my first year of teaching at a
>> large Midwest university. A friend, an American historian, and I we're giving
>> a series of talks in dorms on the war and American politics.  (He was in fact
>> the only other member of the university's history department who did not
>> support the war in Vietnam; we were both fired within the year.)  He met me
>> on the stairway to the basement room of one dorm between talks and said,
>> "Have you heard? The army has killed some students at a college in Ohio."
>>
>> I think I responded, "That'll change everything."
>>
>> In fact, as Lembke explains (and I'm not sure he's mentioned all the
>> mechanisms), the universities responded vigorously and in a few years were
>> able to stamp out student political awareness.  They convinced students that
>> they should beg for jobs and party in the meantime. Student politics didn't
>> die: it was murdered like Jeffrey Miller forty years ago.
>
> In the shorter term Kent State DID change quite a bit.  My campus went on
> strike for the rest of the spring 1970 semester.  Other did as well. There
> was some partying, sure, but there were also a lot of teach-ins and generally
> raised consciousness about the war and about a government that would murder
> its own children. Unfortunately human memory is extremely short.  And as I
> will explain in a future epistle, there are other reasons why the peasants
> generally don't revolt to any great extent.

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