I know this is really bad of me, but

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am not wrong about your race.

Nor about your egocentric mean-spiritedness.

There is no peace without justice.

americanme:

As Yoda said to Luke, “So certain are you?”  You were wrong about my gender.  What if you are also wrong about my race?  What would you have to say THEN?

Peace.

Tobysgirl:

I don’t know if you misunderstood my point or if you are simply recycling it.

When people in the US are objects of violence by the authorities it is becayse the authorities are TREATING them as if they were not white.

In this case, the targets were students—ergo, young people without money and power.

Since non-whites are automatically seen to be poor and powerless, the eqaution was easily made.

That was the POINT of the movements of non-whites such as AIM and the Black Panthersin the 60s:  to CLAIM POWER, so that the pigs would back off with the violence.

Of course we all know that they didn’t back off—they murdered non-whites, arrested them on bogus charges and slapped them into prison in order to destroy those movements. 

The fact that white students were protesting the invasion of Cambodia, a dominantly non-white country, made the students not white anymore.

Just as rape doesn’t have anythng to do with sexual pleasure, murder by authorities doesn’t have to do with one’s REAL skin color.

As for this site, I assume that almost all of you are white because of the attitudes presented here.

Maani:  I do believe that I was quite clear that you and I have nothing in common with which to create any alliance.  You are not on my side and I am most assuredly NOT on yours.  We cannot be allies, period—and it doesn’t matter one whit if I have “positions that you can agree with”.  Our sets of beliefs and our goals are in no way congruent.

What is it about whites that they always keep trying to browbeat everyone around them into a consensus of views?

I’ve wondered why it is assumed that people one cannot see are white.

I don’t think anyone saw the students at Kent State as anything other than what they were. When a group of people, in this case European-American, turn a blind eye to violence towards African-Americans, native Americans, Asians, whomever, they forget that they may be the next target.

For example, the Cleveland police had a habit of beating up black people who were walking home at night from the movies, etc. When this did not elicit a community response, they started beating up white people.

And I’ve never noticed that white people refuse to assault, shoot, rape, or murder other white people. Maybe they don’t do it with the same enthusiasm as lynch mobs, but I never heard that the lesbians in Indiana who had their breasts cut off were women of color.

Something Has To Change

  by Attila Gyenis

I sit here at Kent State
after viewing the four open spaces,
each lit at night,
that mark the emptiness,
and empty lives,
where four died
on that sad day,
the 4th of May in 1970.
And I have but one thought in my mind
and that is,

  Something Has to Change

I refuse to accept these actions as inevitable, unavoidable,
or just a consequence

  Something Has to Change

It is not acceptable.
I refuse to go along and accept these events
  as just a fading memory.
Because it is more then just a headline
said in passing.
It is an indictment:
  Of what we are,
  Of what we allow to happen to us,
  Of what we allow to happen to others.

  Something has to Change

Because if we are not moving forward,
and progressing to where we want to be
then we are remaining
Stuck
where the human condition
allows any of us
to be struck down
at any moment,
for any cause, at any time.

  Something Has to Change

I refuse to compromise any more
when truth, justice, morality
and mortality
are attacked as a non-important consequence.

Where blind rage, force, and oppression
  are allowed a free hand,
Where we create the weapons
  that will bring about the end of our existence,
Where we allow for societies based on violence
  if the bottom line is profitable,
Where freedom is based on a popularity contest,
Where the fate of clean air and clean water is decided
  in board rooms,
Where happiness and contentment is measured
  in corporate dollars.

  Something Has to Change

If we are unable to chose which path we want to be on
if we allow ourself to be dragged onto the path
  that leads to our own destruction
If we are unable to realize the inevitable outcome
  of our actions
If we continue to be blind to everything that is around us,
If we don’t start having truth and justice be our guiding light
then those four empty spaces will have been in vain.

  Something Has to Change

Because I’ll tell you this,

Money may be the cause of my death,
  but it will not be the purpose of my life.

Kent State, Ohio - On May 4, 1970, twenty eight Guardsmen opened fire on students, shooting between 61 - 67 shots in thirteen seconds. Four persons lay dying, nine were wounded.

The people who were killed:

Allison Krause
Jeffrey Miller
Sandra Scheuer
William Schroeder

The people who were shot:

Alan Canfora
John Cleary
Thomas Grace
Dean Kahler (permanently paralyzed)
Joseph Lewis
Donald MacKenzie
James Russell
Robert Stamps
Douglas Wrentmore

Reason for demonstration: US bombing of Cambodia.

Alan Canfora’s excellent website on Kent State:  http://alancanfora.com

americanme:

You seem to use these boards as a place to vent, to express your hostility and anger, and to spew racism thinking it is an antidote to other racism.  You have shown not a single modicum of respect for anyone here; have presumed that almost everyone here is white (and thus a legitimate target of your opprobrium and counter-racism); and then broad-brushed every white person as a racist who knows nothing, cares for nothing, has no knowledge of history, and basically isn’t worth two cents - while you, of course, are worth millions.

No, you may not have meant that Native Americans have a monopoly on suffering and historical anger, but you strongly implied that only their suffering and anger is “righteous,” where any one else’s is not.  (Re-read your post; you state this almost directly.)

You have some very legitimate positions, ideas, concepts, etc., but they are buried under tons of hostility that clouds your ability to engage in any rational discussion without presuming that everyone here is “lesser” than you - no matter their age, race, background, education, etc.  Only YOU know what is going on, only YOU know history, only YOU have a right to your “righteous” anger.  All of this would be laughable - like a petulant child who has learned to say “no” - were it not so sad.

You do yourself no credit - and only undermine the legitimate and constructive things you have to offer - when you refuse to employ even the most minimal constraints on your anger and hostility.  You may well be entitled to them, but if you cannot harness them and make them work FOR you - rather than working AGAINST you, which is what they are doing, whether you see it or not - you will not even win any allies in places where you believe you are more likely to find them.

And perhaps if you stopped treating me like an enemy - or, perhaps more accurately, SEEING me as an enemy - we COULD be allies, since underneath all that anger and vituperation, I see positions that I can agree with.

BTW, I am not female, though that should not matter.

Peace.

With “allies” like you I wouldn’t need any enemies, now, would I?

You just do not get it, girl.

And you do not want to get it.

So you will never get it.

We have no common ground of reality, as I see your environment as a toxic waste dump of self-agrandizing fantasies and denial of the way things really are on this planet.

To make change, first you must be able to face up to reality and eliminate denial as your knee-jerk response to anything that doesn’t make you feel like you are the creme de la creme.

You are not WILLING to even consider that as a possibility. 

One thing I have seen about whites in the settler colony you call the US, is that, starting with the pilgrims, they have insisted on biting the hand that feeds them—and then whining that they are hungry and complaining that they don’t know how to feed themselves.

That doesn’t speak directly to the topic of this threat—which was the Kent State atrocity that scared the shit out of Middle America because they saw it as the first time that whites were treated like non-whites—but it speaks directly to those whining threads of comments by people who have no survival skills and therefore feel that they must DENY REALITY because it’s too threatening to their fantasy of continuing to squat at the top of the food chain forever.

This is not about YOU, and how you need to have everybody clap for you and tell you what a hero you are.Compare your little pajama party of one night in jail to the time that Leonard Peltier has spent there, and learn some humility.

Now, that’s going to have to be it for you.  If you cannot discuss things on the plane of reality instead of white-washing everything, then we simply do not have anything to talk about.  I’m sorry about that, but

there is no peace without justice.

overreactive americanme:

You called me “hateful.”  I suggested that it is up to others to decide who is more “hateful,” you or me.  (That is a simple statement of obviosity.)  That is a FAR cry from a “call to the other white racists on the site to band together against someone posting from a non-white perspective.”

Your hostility and paranoia make it near-impossible to conduct anything even resembling a constructive discussion or debate with you.  That is apparently the way you want it.  But as I noted earlier, that is hardly the way to “win friends and influence people,” if part of your “goal” is to get all us “racist white folks” (LOL) to see your point of view, much less become “allies” in common causes.

Peace.

Reading challenged maani:

You posted the following:  “I will leave it to others to decide, based on our various comments, who is the hateful person here”.

Got Alzheimer’s?

I said we were DONE.

Do not come with your racist baiting to bite my ankles again.

There is no peace without justice.

americanme:

“As for your call to the other white racists on the site to band together against someone posting from a non-white perspective—that’s more than sufficient evidence of your meanness and bullying behavior.”

Huh?  Please show me where I made any such suggestion.  Now you are moving from hostile anger to outright paranoia.  I don’t care WHAT your ethnic background is: you have issues, and clearly need help.

Peace.

There is no peace without justice.

Folks like you stand proudly in the way of justice and tell us how compassionate and liberal and committed to changing the world they are.

It’s a complete crock.  Your empathy wall for non-whites is thicker than the Great Wall of China.

As for your call to the other white racists on the site to band together against someone posting from a non-white perspective—that’s more than sufficient evidence of your meanness and bullying behavior.

And we are DONE here.

americanme:

I will leave it to others to decide, based on our various comments, who is the hateful person here; indeed, a person who is displaying sadly ultra-racist tendencies.  Or don’t you recognize the extremism and stereotyping in your own voice?

As for your statement that you have been here and changed posting names, if that were true then you would know, of a certainty, that your accusations against me are as phony as a four-dollar bill.

I am not hateful.  However, I do have both sadness and pity at the almost frightening depth of your anger, distrust, condescension and dismissiveness.  I know you will tell me you don’t “need” that, but, well, there it is.

Peace.

Maani:

You are really a hateful person. 

I am not new here.  I change internet posting names on sites that I frequent with some regularity due to threats received from racist goons.

Too bad your being arrested every 15 minutes didn’t teach you a bit of empathy for non-whites.  Or did they put the white elite go-through-the-motions folks in white only cells?  If you had been non-white at the latest the second time they arrested you they would have thrown away the key.

But you don’t see that reality, do you?  You’re too busy patting yourself on the back for being a bigshot arrestee who is changing the world for the better and therefore much too high and mighty to exchange any civilized comments with non-white folks in internet.

I’ve got news for you, tootsiepop:  The only folks doing anything to make the planet a better place are indigenous people—because they didn’t turn it into a toxic waste dump and spraypaint it with gulags and defoliates in the first place.

And we do not expect you high and mighty whites to form any alliances with us.  We are only hoping to stay far enough away from you that you don’t take us down with you.  But it isn’t easy, as you keep getting in our faces.

americanme:

“1.  Bullshit, baby.  You are white and you have no idea what you would do or say or feel or think if you were not, as you have zero compassion of empathy for any other point of view.”

You are new here.  So I forgive you your absurd accusation about my compassion and empathy.

“2.  My point about Gandhi and MLK being killed is that so long as non-whites are being killed because they have had some success at securing respect (or at least in the legal sense) for their people, nothing has really changed one whit in the dominant color group.”

They killed RFK and Lennon, too, and they were white.  And they were not the only white leaders also “put down” for their political views.

“3.  When your life is really on the line, post a link to the photo in the newspaper.  I don’t believe a word you say.”

Not believing a word I say is, of course, your prerogative.  But it would be hopelessly incorrect, since I do not lie.  Again, because you are new here, you have very little to go on where me, my politics, etc. are concerned.  Among other things, I jumped the fence at the Shoreham Nuclear plant, and was arrested along with hundreds of others.  I was violently assaulted when I chained myself (along with two or three dozen others) to a dence at the General Dynamics nuclear sub plant in Groton, CT.  And I have been arrested numeroius times for NVCD actions, including spending a night in jail with the Berrigan brothers, among others.  And that is just a short list.

“4.  And yeah, I am angry—but it’s righteous anger, not YOUR anger that is resentment because being white wasn’t enough to put you on the Forbes list of billionaires (which, btw is currently topped by a non-white guy, Carlos Slim—a Mexican of Lebanese descent).”

That is simply the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read here.  Yet again, because you are new, you have very little reference re who I am, what I believe and what I’ve done.  You are forgiven.

“5.  And don’t LIE about what I posted.  I would never, as an indigenist activist select out Native Americans as the only indigenous folks—or folks in general—with a monopoly on anger.  It’s clear from most of the posts I have seen on this phony leftist sites that you whites who don’t own half of Goldman Sachs are the ones trying to monopolize anger.  The non-whites in the South Bronx began their OWS campaign with a tribute to the indigenous folks in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas who inspired them.”

I did not lie about what you posted.  You made a comment that could easily be perceived as ethnocentrically selfish.  If that is not the case, fine.  As for whites trying to monopolize anger, that type of absurd and insupportable broad-brushing is not going to win you many allies in whatever your cause happens to be.

Peace.

gerard:

It won’t come to gestation in my lifetime, anyway.

Maani:

1.  Bullshit, baby.  You are white and you have no idea what you would do or say or feel or think if you were not, as you have zero compassion of empathy for any other point of view.

2.  You have no idea whether I am cut from the Malcolm X mold or not—as I am not black, it’s relatively doubtful.  My point about Gandhi and MLK being killed is that so long as non-whites are being killed because they have had some success at securing respect (or at least in the legal sense) for their people, nothing has really changed one whit in the dominant color group.

3.  When your life is really on the line, post a link to the photo in the newspaper.  I don’t believe a word you say.

4.  And yeah, I am angry—but it’s righteous anger, not YOUR anger that is resentment because being white wasn’t enough to put you on the Forbes list of billionaires (which, btw is currently topped by a non-white guy, Carlos Slim—a Mexican of Lebanese descent).

5.  And don’t LIE about what I posted.  I would never, as an indigenist activist select out Native Americans as the only indigenous folks—or folks in general—with a monopoly on anger.  It’s clear from most of the posts I have seen on this phony leftist sites that you whites who don’t own half of Goldman Sachs are the ones trying to monopolize anger.  The non-whites in the South Bronx began their OWS campaign with a tribute to the indigenous folks in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas who inspired them.

Retrograde racist white folks like you who claim to have a monopoly on The Left make me puke.

americanme:

“1.  You whites always want to tell non-whites how to behave.”  I would have said the same thing to you were I Native American, Black, green or purple.

“2.  MLK and Gandhi were shot and killed trying to secure basic human rights for non-whites.”

Actually, both had largely succeeded before they were shot.  But then, Malcolm X is more in your mold, and he got shot, too.

What the hell does getting shot while “doing the right thing” have to with it?  Does that mean we shouldn’t do the right thing - because we m,ight get shot?

I don’t know about you, but I am willing to put my life on the line for the things I believe in (and have done so - and will continue to do so), without compromising my principles in order to fit the type of myopic, anger-zealotry you espouse.

And by the way, Native Americans do not have a monopoly on anger, historic or otherwise.  Your implication that they do is at best hopelessly selfish, and at worst borderline racist.

Peace.

americanme The UN guy has the right idea!  Let’s do it!  As to the rest, give it time. It isn’t even born yet.  In fact, the mothers of the world only just now know they are pregnant.

Sorry, gerard, but I don’t see that your new secret strategy is bearing fruit.

Not even here on td.

James Anaya has recommended giving native folks some of the stolen land back and treating us as equals—that’s the beginning of his recommendations resulting from his 12-day visit to the US on behalf of the UN.

Without implementing THAT strategy, you guilty whites are simply sunk, as the folks in a position to survive this endgame debacle are not on your side.

There is no peace without justice.

PS:  Emily Post, There is no peace without justice.

Folks like you stand in its way.

Maani:

1.  You whites always want to tell non-whites how to beahve.

2.  MLK and Gandhi were shot and killed trying to secure basic human rights for non-whites.

3.  Piss off, Emily Post.

Americans kill Americans everyday. And in many forms. From street crime to corporate crime, but don’t all get the same attention. But they have the same result. Isn’t it murder of our own people when we send them so fight in a war whose only purpose is to promote and support corporate interests, and has nothing to do with national security?

I visited Kent State a few years ago and had sickening feeling about what happened there. It inspired the poem, Something Has to Change (see link).

Something has to change, otherwise we stay the same.

http://www.wordsareimportant.com/poemandpoetics.htm#Something Has To Change

americanme: Lots of people confuse nonviolent tactics with “turning the other cheek.”  Nonviolent responses (and there are many, some as yet undiscovered) have more in common with Asian martial arts than with anything else except for experiences in India and in South Africa. Nonviolent tactics attempt to “get there fastest with the mostest” in pre-emption by stopping the battle before it gets started.  If that fails, the follow-up involves any of a number of tactics that attempt to turn the opponents’ force (psychological, spiritual, physical) against themselves, as in jiu-jitsu.
  The first step toward understanding is to get outside of, and beyond, the history and the psychology of war.
  Nonviolence requires new strategic planning and thinking, a different attitude that enables people to understand possibilities that usually get overlooked, and to manage negative emotions such as desire for revenge, belief in the efficacy and the inevitability of violence, and taking advantage of openings to avoid violence and substitute reconciliation.
  It’s a new ball game entirely.  Takes time. Takes understanding. Takes willingness to experiment. Takes learning by experience.  Takes open mindedness.
Takes sincere will to renounce force. Takes courage.
Has possibilities as yet undeveloped. If and when it works—and it has, in many cases—the after-effects are much less destructive.
  Worth serious consideration.

Americanme:

While your historically-based anger and passion are understandable and even laudable, your dismissiveness of others is not.  Gerard has been here ALOT longer than you have, and understands that respectful discussion and debate - and a touch of humility - go a MUCH longer way than constant bitterness.

I would remind you, as well, that Gandhi freed an entire nation from the grip of an empire using exactly the method Gerard suggests.  And MLK et al turned this country around on civil rights using the same methodology.

Peace.

ALWAYS a COVER UP with EVERYTHING in the United States of America where you get shot by your OWN GOVERNMENT and NOBODY gets in trouble for ANYTHING!!!!

Oh, gerard, you still want to turn the other cheek, don’t you?

They crucified Jesus Christ—if he ever existed, even.

My people taught yours how to plant corn and potatoes and squash so that you wouldn’t starve to death.  And you shot us and scalped us and took our land and turned it into a toxic waste dump.

I think your string has just plain run out.

You cannot undo the undoable with love that springs from white guilt.  Most whites do not feel guilty at all, and would do everything bad they have done over again.  Many are just waiting for an opportunity—and many of those folks go into the military, the policy, organized crime—or form whites-uber-alles survivalist groups.  Even Rambo was too brown for those guys….

One key question deserves deep thought, discussion, and a reasonable answer:  Why is “the military” (and the leadership behind it) so quick to take the offensive, so eager to repress—and to beat up, taser or shoot?
  For one thing, they are paid to support a “system” that is afraid of losing power, money, prestige, obedience. Fearful people do fearsome things automatically—unless a different method is used to intervene between them and their opposition. Their violent resistance is trained-in, knee-jerk impulse, not well thought out, not sensible, and doesn’t even get the results they want. It lives on
because possible alternatives are cast aside as “falternatives” and hence undeveloped.
  Police are trained to control, to fight, to force compliance. They can only do what they know. Their employers are the same—and all of them are motivated by fear.  Reach out into the heart of that fear of losing power, the guilt that follows, and reinforce the core of the human soul.
  We are being led toward this choice and only this choice:  Giving up violence and choosing non-violence. It is acts of love going out to meet and overcome acts of deadly fear. Occupy Tomorrow!

Maani:

Perhaps you should have read my post, in which I said:  When you question and protest, you are no longer considered white.

Ergo:  crosshairs.

No questions remain . American soldiers shot down unarmed American students, and no one was prosecuted . Much like the JFK assassination , business as usual in America.

Going to Eric Holder, the Attorney General for anything having to do with
enforcing law is a total waste of time and energy.  He knows that the evidence
supports a case against Bush/Cheney et al for war crimes but refuses to
prosecute.  It’s that “old set of two laws” operating, one for the rich and well
entrenched, and one for the rest of the people.  But, we’re a nation of laws!

The killings at Kent State represented a critical turning point as well: it was the incident that began making people afraid to protest at all, for literal fear of their lives - at the hands of their own government.  Yes, there had been deaths during protests before - including during the civil rights era.  But this was different: it was WHITE people getting killed, on a college campus, during a peaceful protest.

Along with the violence and death at Altamont only months prior - another watershed event that affected the youth culture - and the assassinations of MLK and RFK a year prior to that - Kent State was the final nail in the coffin of “the 60s as we knew it.”  And while protests against the Vietnam episode continued into the early 70s, things would never be quite the same.

Peace.

I remember that day very well.  I was on the faculty of a large state university not all that far away from Kent State.

The students on our campus decided to protest in sympathy with the dead and wounded.  The national guard showed up at our campus, too.  Students put up barricades.  The guard demanded entrance.  There were a couple of nights of threats, and a number of students were arrested—and as several of them were members of the graduate student union, my husband and I were sleeplessly bailing them out of jail.

The students and faculty voted to strike.  That was the day that my department chair announced that in our large department of 125 fulltimers, only this poster took academic freedom seriously.

And I still do.

Kent State had aftershocks—students were killed by the guard at Ole Miss and other universities that participated, as we did, in the strikes.

As far as a shot or shots being fired BEFORE the guard started shooting—wouldn’t surpise me a bit that the COINTELPRO guys were there and did it.  Those fuckheads were everywhere back in the late 60s early 70s—in Chicago murdering Black Panthers in their beds, on Pine Ridge shooting at folks’ houses (and finally being killed—and their murder blamed on a guy who wasn’t even there:  Leonard Peltier).

The thing is, back in those days, is¿n the eyes of the US government university students were NOT WHITE.  The fact that they protested Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, in this case, or the genocide being committed in SE Asia in general, meant that they could not have possibly been white—and therefore they were fair game as targets.

I was 20 years old and in the Air Force when the killing at Kent State took place.  I remember sitting the Day Room watching the news and, at the same time, observing the reactions on the faces of the other Airmen in the room. 

The intelligent ones looked outraged; the “good ol’ boys”, of which I had been a part of, were feeling the power.  That was the moment I started feeling the shame; it was the beginning of my rebirth.

tobysgirl - Not that any of the “youngins” remember or even care about Kent State, but your comment really gets at the heart of what so disturbs me about America…it has for a long time and recently, I’m alarmed by the incredibly uncompassionate, almost sociopathic flavor of our culture.

We are, indeed, our own worst enemies. In reality, we deserve whatever ugly fate that befalls us.

A Gallup Poll taken a week after the Kent State shootings showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion.

For reference see “A Newsweek Poll: Mr. Nixon Holds Up,” Newsweek, May 18, 1970, p. 30.

A friend of my mother’s, a teacher at Kent State, was put on trial for conspiracy. I can’t remember how many others were charged, but I do remember the governor and the military were charged with nothing.

And I will never forget what a friend told me. Her mother was having her hair done and heard a woman in the salon say, “How come they didn’t kill more of them?”

What a lovely country, the froth of viciousness bubbling out of our mouths, the same mouths which are constantly congratulating ourselves on what wonderful, generous people we are.