"We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident"...

Some things never change...  

I clearly remember the assassination of JFK in 1963, especially the shock and the tears, the flags at half mast, and the endless television coverage, so that we all got to see quite clearly when Jack Ruby ran up to and shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death and the two detectives escorting Oswald simply made a lot of faces while it happened.  Nobody stopped Ruby or even tried.  Even as a child, it occurred to me that someone might not have wanted all the evidence to come out.

Things got worse.  Vietnam was going on, nightly on TV.  The My Lai massacre:

• Võ Suu's photo of the Saigon execution of a Viet Cong leader.  
• Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest, and the nightly battles and death counts on TV. 
• 1968, the Battle of Bến Tre, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."  
• The 1970s, the little Vietnamese girl running naked and screaming down the road because the napalm had burned all her clothing off of her.  

Vietnam had the 4th highest death toll in US war history.  Not to mention the troops who came back with PTSD, permanent mental and physical wounds, and addictions like you wouldn't believe.  Nightmares every night…

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) 

demonstration during the 1976 US Bicentennial 

celebration in Philadelphia

And back at home, Birmingham's Bull Connor unleashing firehoses and police dogs on protesters: 

http://apushcanvas.pbworks.com/w/page/125950658/Birmingham%201963

And the pictures of the aftermath the Birmingham 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing, in which these four little black girls were killed. 

 https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-6000-mourners-jam-r/138782787

BTW, the FBI did do an investigation into that bombing, and came up with the names of four white KKK men who committed the crime.  J. Edgar Hoover  promptly blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects, refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors, and then sealed the records in 1968. The files weren't reopened until 1977, when the first conviction was made by Alabama AG Bill Baxley.  The other three were tried by Federal Attorney Doug Jones in 2001 and 2002.  Justice can take a long, long time.*

1968 was a hard year.  Besides Vietnam, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and Martin Luther King, Jr. were both assassinated, followed by the incredible amount of police violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  And it wasn't just the police:  Mayor Robert Daly, who ran Chicago with a strangulating hand, had 12,000 police, 5,000 National Guardsmen, and 7,500 regular army troops out in the streets, and he unleashed them to do anything they wanted. And they did. There were protesters rioting, but even the news said the police were rioting, too. A very young Dan Rather got sucker punched and dragged by security guards on the floor of the Convention.  (Link)  To which Walter Cronkite tersely replied, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

And then on May 4, 1970, when the National Guard shot four students dead at Kent State in Ohio.  Four unarmed students, two of whom were walking to class, nine wounded, all unarmed…

"I survived the Kent State shootings. 

Why use force against college protests?"

The lies:  

• The chief military officer of the National Guard claimed that there had been a sniper firing on them, which is why they retaliated. 
• The guardsmen claimed they feared for their lives, but none of the students had weapons, and none of them were closer to the guardsmen than 71 feet. 
• Someone gave the order to fire.
• Initial newspaper reports had inaccurately stated that several National Guard members had been killed or seriously injured. 

A subsequent FBI investigation concluded that the Guard was not under fire and that the guardsmen fired the first shots. And while many guardsmen claimed to have been hit by stones that were pelted at them by protesters, only one Guardsman, Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, was injured enough to require medical treatment (he received a sling for his badly bruised arm and was given pain medication). In 1986, Shafer identified the person that he shot as student Joseph Lewis. Shafer nailed Lewis in his gut and in his leg.  

Kent State Victims

• Allison Beth Krause: A 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh, PA, she was participating in the protest and was shot in the chest.
• Jeffrey Glenn Miller: A 20-year-old sophomore from Plainview, NY, he was participating in the protest and was shot in the mouth.
• Sandra Lee Scheuer: A 20-year-old honors junior from Youngstown, OH, she was walking to class and was shot in the neck.
• William Knox Schroeder: A 19-year-old sophomore from Lorain, OH, he was an ROTC student walking to class and was shot in the chest/back.

Nine other students were wounded during the shooting. They were:

• Alan Michael Canfora: A junior who was hit in the right wrist.
• John R. Cleary: A freshman who was hit in the upper left chest.
• Thomas Mark Grace: A sophomore who was hit in his left ankle.
• Dean R. Kahler: A freshman who was shot in the back and permanently paralyzed from waist down.
• Joseph Lewis Jr.: A freshman who was hit twice, in the right abdomen and lower left leg.
• Donald Scott MacKenzie: A student who received a neck wound.
• Matthew J. McManus: A student (listed in one snippet, but specific wound details are limited).
• James Dennis Russell: A senior who was hit in his right thigh and grazed on his right forehead.
• Robert Follis Stamps: A sophomore who was hit in his right buttock.

"Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been gone long ago

What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?"

— "Four Dead In Ohio", Neil Young

"Afterwards a Gallup Poll showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion."  (LINK)  

None of this stopped me from joining in a couple of anti-Vietnam War protests.  But I knew what the risks were.  I still know what the risks are.  I just have too much arthritis to get out there.  

Meanwhile:  On social media, and this is a direct quote:  "Well, yeah, you can assemble peacefully but you can't protest!  Protest is unconstitutional!"  

Oh, p*** off.  Protest is not only constitutional, but it's the foundation of this country.  What do they think the Boston Tea Party was?  And I'll bet they never heard of the Boston Massacre, the Pine Tree Riot or the First Continental Congress which basically told the British Crown to go stuff itself.  

And the Declaration of Independence is a supremely radical manifesto saying:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."  READ THAT CAREFULLY.

BTW, also in the Declaration of Independence is summary from "The Crimes of the King":

• "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:"

Read the whole Declaration of Independence HERE.  It's worth a careful read.  Our Founding Fathers were, by the standards of their day and apparently ours, radical.  

Meanwhile:

 

The (hopefully) good thing that's happened out of this is that ICE Agents have received updates on what is and what is NOT legal procedure  (LINK):

 

****************** NEWS ALERT UPDATE *********************

"ICE memo allows agents to enter homes 

without judge’s warrant, legal group says"

"The memo, allegedly signed by Todd M. Lyons, acting director of ICE, tells personnel that they only require a Form I-205 to force entry into a private residence. A Form I-205 is signed by an immigration enforcement official and authorizes an arrest following a final order of removal, which is typically issued by an immigration judge.

The whistleblowers believe new ICE recruits have been directed to follow this policy “while disregarding written course material instructing the opposite,” the disclosure says.  

They were aware of multiple DHS employees who had faced retaliation for expressing concerns about the memo and one instructor who resigned rather than teach it, it says." (LINK)  

^* Doug Jones is currently running for Governor of Alabama. God bless you, Mr. Jones.