I am a kid of the tragedy at Kent State University. I wasn’t there, but I had a front-row seat to the awful aftermath of Ohio National Guard troops firing on protesting unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine others.
Fifty-five years ago, my father, Robert Giles, was the managing editor of the Akron Beacon Journal at the time of heightened national conflict over U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
A child at the time, I still have strong memories of the campus standoff between the armed troops and the anti-war students. The events and fallout impacted dad for the rest of his life. He wrote a book about his professional experiences during those unsettling days in May of 1970, titled “When Truth Mattered: The Kent State Shootings 50 Years Later.”
It isn’t difficult to close my eyes and see how the scene now unfolding in Los Angeles with protesters and deployment of the National Guard and U.S. Marines is uncannily similar to Kent State. Large crowds protesting what they see as government overreach and the government responding with armed troops to control them.
I fear a dreaded crack down inching toward confrontation. Nothing good will come from this. The events of May 4, 1970, at Kent State bear witness to potential tragedy.
But will we look back and learn?
It wasn’t just the chaotic, awful day of the campus shootings; I also remember the phone calls my dad fielded nightly at home from the parents of some of the student victims.
The shock, misery, and sorrow of those conversations reverberated around our breakfast nook as dad, phone to ear, listened to the grief, the human toll of the armed response on students who gathered to protest, but not to die.
I hope the defiant people who are burning cars and spraying graffiti in protest of ICE arrests in Los Angeles and the armed soldiers who are there to ensure order let cooler heads prevail.
Don’t take steps that can’t be revoked. Protesters stop burning cars, vandalizing buildings and don’t spit on troops. And military leaders, don’t rattle the situation by threatening to shoot citizens who have a constitutional right to free speech.
Can we please prevail with reason so we don’t repeat the mistakes that were of such national consequence in the past?
We have many records of the event that happened at Kent State, including the lyrics “Four Dead in Ohio.” The events burned like the words from the Crosby, Stills and Nash song that laid out the mess — civil unrest, armed National Guard troops, confusion and death.
Collectively, we can’t afford another heartbreak in Los Angeles. No good comes from hot-headed and violent conflict.