Campus Antiwar Network History

What is it about Ohio that brings its officials to the edge of insanity?

When Governor Rhodes ordered the National Guard troops onto Kent State University campus in 1970 to suppress a legal and non-violent antiwar protest, one of the charges made against the student demonstrators was that they “didn’t care about the soldiers in Vietnam.” Of course that was not true at that time, and it most definitely is not true today.

Ah yes, today. Today things are reversed; officials, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to spit on, arrest and assault former soldiers for caring about STUDENTS in the U.S.

Now, just who is it that has no respect for our returning veterans?

A former U.S. soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq David Airhart, climbed a military recruiter’s rock-climbing wall at Kent State a few weeks ago just like everyone else. He unfolded an antiwar banner across the top of the wall and then, like everyone else, he climbed down. He alone was arrested, assaulted and fined. The administration is threatening to expel him from school.

NICE WAY TO TREAT ANYONE, LET ALONE OUR RETURNING VETERANS! For shame!

Many moons ago, I served on the national student strike coordinating committee that was formed on May 2, 1970 at the huge demonstration in New Haven CT to oppose Nixon’s secret invasion of Cambodia and to support Black Panthers Erica Huggins and Bobby Seale, who were on trial there,. The strike erupted into the biggest student strike in U.S. history following the shootings at Kent State two days later.

I have been back to Kent State a number of times over the years; I have personally experienced the ongoing and systematic disregard on the part of the administration there for the rights of students and nonviolent antiwar activists to speak out. I was there when they ordered the arrests of dozens of people, including wheel-chaired Vietnam Vet Ron Kovic, for crossing an arbitrary line in a field where the administration was planning to construct a new building on top of the hallowed ground where the students were killed in 1970. I was also there on another occasion when the administration decided to respond to peaceful protests by sending in police on horses, trampling students and tear gassing everyone and everything in sight. So, while administrations come and go at Kent State, the prevailing attitude remains the same _- antiwar students have no right to dissent, to nonviolently challenge official policy.

As Voltaire once wrote: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” The absurdities are the rationales given for this war. The atrocities … well, upwards of 100,000 civilians killed in Iraq along with 2,000 U.S. soldiers (actually, much much more, but they’re not counting those who died in hospitals in Germany and elsewhere after having been removed from Iraq).

The university has priorities reversed. It’s not the banner that should be verboten, it’s the wall — installed as a device as a sort of enticement to students to join, test their physical strength, as though war is a sport. Instead, I’d ask: “By what authority did the administration approve of the military recruiters’ construction of a climbing wall beneath David Airhart’s antiwar banner?”

Every campus, including Kent State, should inscribe South African Freedom Fighter Steve Biko’s words upon the entrance to the campus: “The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

We – the movements for social justice, ecology, and against war – do not seek to conceal our aim: to deny the U.S. government and the Kent State administration that weapon, the weapon of ignorance, so that they can sell us their absurdities and send us as cannon fodder for this and future wars.

David Airhart, we’re proud of you – and thank you for your commitment and passion, for helping to save the lives being squandered by the regime in Washington. It would be healthy for students at Kent State to convince the administration there to do likewise.

Mitchel Cohen
co-coordinator, New York State Greens, and co-editor of its newspaper, “G”