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The Whole World Is Watching
posted by Melissa on July 09, 1900 at 13:11:47:

: By the way, I just wanted to share this, I've always been aware of this event since I was very young because of my parents, and with the anniversary this year, I've been thinking about this a again: Kent State (hah! someone from the younger generation caring! It really does happen!)When my dad (Capt. Jach)came back from Kent State this year, he showed me some of the video footage he took. I saw Alan Canfora (sorry if spelled wrong)giving a tour of that horrible day, where everyone was shot(including himself), etc..and it had a VERY powerful effect on me. The next day I called off from work(I had a blinding migraine), and to take my mind of of the pain, I jumped onto the net. I spent the next 6 hours studing from the FBI website, the info they released about the Kent State
Massacre--all 1,146 pages of it. Well, first of all, most of it(of course)was blacked out, but I did manage to learn something about our govt.: they don't give a rats a** about those innocent people they targeted and decided that they and their families were going to have a completely changed life from that moment on...(I.E. dealing with the injury's of themselves and loved ones, and dealing with the deaths of those four good people). Growing up in a very "active" family, I have always known of the facade that we call our freedom, but after reading those FBI files my eyes have been burned open with red hot pokers. I simply don't understand why only about 150 of those FBI pages had anything to do with the shootings, the rest of their investigation was about the previous burning of the ROTC building, which even they decided that it was probably not burned down by the people they were accusing. Interesting how our govt will take the information gathered by their own employees, and twist it around to whatever they want it to be. I am utterly shocked and appalled to see the truth of our lack of freedom...what do they really mean when they say "innocent until proven guilty"? We're only innocent if they are in the mood to say we are? I for one am sick of "them" using our Constitution as their toilet paper, I think they have long since spit on the memory and hard work of the people who gave their lives to write that document. As my dad said, and I agree, that one day I spent learning about the Kent State Massacre is like only one day of a really good history class, and there is so much more for me to learn. But now that my eyes have been scorched open by this sick and very sad reality, I believe that I am now more willing to learn and help out than ever. I'm glad I'mold enough to really get a grasp of what I'm seeing. Time for me to get off my soapbox now, but I leave with this statement said by some great and terribly misunderstood people:
THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING. Don't forget that, and don't stop watching.

and
Jesse slokum : Thank you, Melissa, for posting (sharing...) your thoughts...painful things aren't pretty, for sure, and that may be one reason people shy away from the painful reality of remembering.
As a youth, my dad was beat up in the Ruhr valley of Germany during the mid-twenties by rampaging "brown shirts" who ran Germany for 12 years between '33 and '45...even though it didn't happen to me, I refuse to forget, not because it can't be forgiven (the hardest of all, when things are as Heinous as we are talking of), but because we work together to make sure it never happens again...the saddest thing of all for a Woodstock-er like I am, is that these last few years, it's other teenagers who are shooting teenagers in schools...yet the root cause is the same...in a song of mine called Business as Usual, I sing, "The only cure for the will to war IS THE WILL TO PEACE" I brought up my father for same reason I now will mention my ROTC experience and the Draft Board - when I went to college in '63, ROTC was mandatory...if I had gone along with that, I might have been one of those officers in Kent that week-end...(I didn't) when I was drafted in the fall of 67, the psychiatrist at the board in Newark, NJ, got red in the face and accused me of lying to him when I told him I had taken LSD after I dropped out of Seton Hall U that spring (he was also the "shrink" for that college) I couldn't convince him that I hadn't done so before a counseling session with him...He had some IRRATIONAL NEED to believe I lied...and I, callow youth that most 22 year
olds are, yet was having MY eyes opened! THIS is the best the "mightiest(?)(!) government on earth" could come up with? OH, NO, MR BILL!!! - and I don't mean willy clean-tone that
saxaphonist from Hope, Arkansas, neither...I mention these things because it was a fellow with these memories who was filmed in the Woodstock audience when Richie Havens sang "Clap Your Hands!" during the FREEDOM Medley...right after "Handsome Johnny" who was dying in the fields of Vietnam, even as Richie sang the song...He KNEW it, I KNEW, and as you say the WORLD WAS WATCHING! (Below, you'll find a link to my web page). Since Woodstock, while hitch-hiking, in the early eighties, I was offered a chance to visit the person who gave me a ride east thru Ohio, when I returned from the east...this I did, so, I myself have stood in that parking lot where Sandy Scheur caught a richochet bullet that went thru a car and was STILL lethal...I stood on that green where the final face-off occurred...THE NEED "ordinary" citizens have to assume those killed are to blame goes deep into why folks have EVER scapegoated one another...So, I am relieved that you and your father are keeping the memory of what needs to be kept alive, alive...as painful as it is to do so...LEST WE FORGET
jesse

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