Friday 4 May

A young woman came to stand with us saying she'd been thinking about Kent State, 42 years ago today; how the students killed had been about her age.  It seemed right to her to join a protest on this day.  I had not thought about Kent State in many years; yet as we talked my mind was filled with those tragic images.
 My conversation with our new companion ranged wide but circled back frequently to how is it that people who are paid by state taxpayers to help in time of crisis take up weapons and, claiming that they felt threatened by the protesting students open fire upon them.  Why, she asks, is it a crime or a sign of mental instability if a student or other civilian brings a gun onto a campus and opens fire on students?  How is that different than Kent State May 4, 1970?  Also, she asks, why is it the same generation as those Kent State students who are still leading protests today?  What happened to create an apathetic gap?

She was an exchange student in Mexico and Estonia.  Her perspectives are flavored by those exposures to other cultures and their politics.  She spoke with some surprise of the presumption that the United States government was manipulating elections in Mexico.  I tell her I am  no longer surprised by the many manifestations of harm our government embodies.