Kent State, 1970, When the Country Was Even More Divided

KENT, OH: Visiting the campus where four students were killed by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest, you can’t help but recall how divided America was 45 years ago. Strolling the grounds where America’s Asian war came tragically home, the rhetoric of Donald Trump and the gulf between political parties appear manageable when contrasted to 1970.

The issues then were civil rights and stopping a war that had gone on for more than five years, each month costing more lives including college age men drafted into the military.

A cultural divide pitted young against old, draft resisters against patriots, free thinkers against straights, militant blacks against entrenched power. Most protesters saw themselves as taking a public stand against injustice.

When President Nixon on April 30^th, 1970 ordered American troops into Cambodia protests erupted on scores of college campuses. At Kent State an ROTC building was set ablaze and burned to the ground. Shop windows downtown were broken. A panicked city mayor asked for troops to restore order and Ohio’s governor obliged, sending in 700 National Guardsmen who occupied the campus.  Governor James Rhodes called the demonstrators worse than Nazis.

commons and victory bell where protesters assembled

Despite the planned May 4^th rally being banned, at noon that day some 1,500 students assembled anyway on the university commons. Five hundred feet away stood 100 guardsmen wearing gasmasks and carrying loaded M1 rifles. When the crowd ignored the order to disperse tear gas was fired. Then the soldiers advanced as students fled ahead of them, up Blanket hill, past Taylor Hall towards a parking lot and practice field.

At 12:24 p.m. from atop the hill near the pagoda next to Taylor Hall, several guardsmen opened fire in the direction of the parking lot. In 13 seconds 67 shots were fired. Four students were killed, nine others injured.

photo montage at the memorial  

  

iconic photo following the shooting

where the shots were fired

the pagoda, today

This part of the campus is much as it was then. A May 4^th Visitors Center is situated in Taylor Hall. There is a memorial to the victims and walking tour. Beverly Warren, the president of Kent State, which today has 28,000 students, writes in the commemorative brochure that, “this learning facility transports you to one of the most turbulent times in American history.” It offers,” she writes, “compelling evidence of the never-ending need to appreciate and protect the democratic values of free expression, civil discourse and nonviolent social engagement.”

The memorial is well done, sticking to the facts as best they are known.

 A visit here is sobering, providing an opportunity—as the words engraved onthe memorial suggest—to inquire, learn, and reflect.

I departed believing that the tragedy at Kent State 45 years ago could  have occurred at any number of campuses across the country.

December 2015

Should you wish to visit, the small city of Kent is 30-miles southeast of Cleveland, near the Ohio Turnpike that crosses northern Ohio from east to west.

Congress Set to Finally Approve IMF Reforms

WASHINGTON: The massive $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill presented to lawmakers Tuesday night contains provisions for new funding and governance reforms at the International Monetary Fund. The House could vote as early as Thursday on the package, which is expected to pass. Approval is also likely in the Senate and President Obama’s signature is assured. The president pushed hard for the IMF deal, calling it vital to US leadership and security.

The measure doubles to $670 billion the resources available to the IMF to lend to countries in distress like Ukraine or Greece.  The US contribution is put at $300 million.

The legislation gives key developing countries like China, India and Brazil a bigger share of the weighted votes in the IMF while preserving the sole veto power of the United States. The US has 16% of the votes in the 188-member Washington-based IMF. China’s share rises from 4% to 6%.

The governance reforms date from 2010 but because 85% of IMF votes are needed for implementation it has been blocked by US inaction. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers blamed US delay for creating space for China to create alternative institutions that challenge the IMF. Despite US opposition, China this year led in the formation of a China-based Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank. Last year it joined other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa) in forming a new development bank as well as an arrangement for mutual financial support should it be needed.

Despite being the dominant player in the IMF, which was founded in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, congressional support for the powerful agency has always been lukewarm. In recent years some lawmakers have accused the IMF of bailing out big banks that made loans that couldn’t be repaid. Others argue that US sovereignty is diluted when US money is pooled into IMF lending.

Randall Henning, a professor at American University and specialist on the IMF, rejects that critique saying, “the IMF reflects US economic policy preferences more faithfully than perhaps any other international organization.” Henning says the IMF promotes free markets and requires borrowers to put in place appropriate, prudent economic policies. The IMF played a central role in resolving the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s and the Asian crisis in the late 1990s.

Former IMF official and financial analyst Mohamed El Erian has argued that US approval was overdue. He says the recalibration of votes “better reflect the realities of today’s global economy and entail neither new US funding commitments nor any dilution of its power within the institution.” Economic historian Liaquat Ahamed says it is absurd that tiny Belgium has had as many IMF votes as Brazil, or that Belgium and Holland together had more votes than China.

Policy makers including Chinese vice central bank governor Yi Gang and British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne lamented the long delay in US action. Yi called “failure to deliver this reform a threat to IMF legitimacy.” Osborne said recently in New York that “it is a tragedy that an agreement reached across all the members of the IMF was being blocked by the US congress.”#