Recordpub.com - Events to mark May 4 milestone

By Matt Fredmonsky

Record-Courier staff writer

The 40th commemoration of the May 4, 1970, shootings on the campus of Kent State University has brought with it numerous events on and around campus throughout this weekend and next week.

As part of the May 4 Voices Community Arts Project, a community story quilt will be stitched together with contributions from Kent residents and others interested in depicting their memories with thread and material. A quilting workshop will be held from noon to 2 p.m. today at the KSU School of Art’s Downtown Gallery, 141 E. Main St.

“Roots of Resistance Conference: Continuing the Struggle,” will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and Sunday on the third floor of the Kent State Student Center. The two-day conference will include workshops and discussions on topics ranging from student activism to combating racism and sexual assault.

Participants will include Dr. Gene Young, an eyewitness to the Jackson State Shootings; Mark Rudd, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and a former member of the Weather Underground; and Dr. Staughton Lynd, a veteran organizer of labor, peace and prisoner solidarity.

All conference events are free. A complete listing of workshops and film screenings is available online at RootsofResistance.wordpress.com.

The play “Voices — A Staged Reading,” will premiere at 7 p.m. Sunday in the E. Turner Stump Theatre on campus. David Hassler, director of the KSU Wick Poetry Center, drafted the script based on excerpts from the May 4 Oral History Project.

“I think the oral histories give us an incredible opportunity to hear the other, in an effort to get outside our own skins, and hear the emotional truth,” Hassler said.

Monday afternoon, the university will dedicate the marker acknowledging the placement of the shootings site on the National Register of Historic Places. The university also will cut the ribbon on the May 4 Walking Tour, which directs visitors around the 17-acre site with seven plaques and an audio tour. The dedications begin at 3 p.m. in Room 214 of Oscar Ritchie Hall.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, will speak at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Kent Student Center Ballroom.

The May 4 Task Force will lead the annual candlelight vigil and march from the Commons to the Prentice Hall parking lot and the memorials of the four students shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen. The vigil starts at 10:30 p.m. Monday.

The May 4 remembrance day observation will begin at the Commons at noon Tuesday. Speakers include: Gerald Casale of DEVO; former Black Panther Bobby Seale; photographer John Filo; May 4 eyewitness Mary Vecchio; and Florence Schroeder, mother of William Schroeder, one of the students fatally shot on May 4, 1970.

Laurel Krause, sister of Allison Krause, who was among the four killed in 1970, will set up the Kent State Truth Tribunal at 110 S. Water St. today through Tuesday. The tribunal will record personal narratives of witnesses to the events of May 4, 1970.

“We’re really calling for all people that were the original participants of the 1970 Kent State shootings ... we’re going to ask them to come forward and share their truth,” Laurel Krause said.

6.	Posted by The Voice of Reason May 2, 2010
	Isn't it about time to get over this dark period of Kent State history. Doesn't Kent State have so much more to be proud of and other problems to take care of? Time to get over all of this, and try to lift this stigma off Kent's back? But I guess there has to be someone to keep drumming up some sort of protest, because this is what they want to live for, and have never had anything else going in their lives. It happened, we put up a memorial for the shooting, let us let it go, already! ] I can't help but believe that there are some radical nutbags driving these meetings. Probably the same people that invited that convicted cop killer Mumia to speak from his prison cell several years ago. And now they dredged up this old SDS member who probably couldn't find his butt with both hands. Time to get a life and get over it. Like Yankie said - let kids do what kids do best at Kent.

1.	Posted by YankieBlue May 1, 2010
	Ya'll need to read up on the Underground Weatherman's activities: NOT support them just cause their leaders are now old folks trying to make some cash out of their books. This bum needs jail time, not book signing Check them out for yourselves "Mark Rudd, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society and a former member of the Weather Underground"-- FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Castro's Cuba, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare. So let's have this turd on campus to inspire our young minds. God Help us and God Save the Queen.

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