Jose and I walked across campus around noon to the Commons area, where the commemoration is always held. Covering the commons were perhaps a thousand people, seated in a rough semi-circle around a small stage.  On the periphery were a number of booths and vendors, and many people holding signs with various messages.  Jose and I wandered into the crowd, finding a space of grass maybe a half-dozen rows back in the middle, just 20 feet or so from the media area.  Vanessa, another colleague, spotted us and joined us there.

The "main event" of the commemoration was on the stage.  When we arrived, they had already buried the Constitution at the Victory Bell, as is commemoration tradition.  They had progressed on to various speakers about the event.  Once we were seated, there was a young female student reading the official story of the shootings, detailing the events of 37 years ago.  This monologue is apparently the one agreed upon by the May 4 Task Force (yes, it does exist) since this is the same monologue as last year's.

As the monologue continued, I surveyed the grounds.  In front of us was, of course, the stage.  On the stage was a speaker and some various musical instruments at the ready for a performance.  Rumor has it that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came in 2000 for the 30th anniversary as a surprise.  That didn't happen this year.  A banner hung below the stage facing the crowd, reading "Never Forget Kent and Jackson State."  On each side of the stage in the grass were poster-sized headshot photographs of the victims of the shootings, two on each side.

To the left of us, from the stage toward the back of the crowd stretched a couple of banners held by a few people.  These banners read "Impeach Bush" and "Dissent IS Patriotism," things like that. These people formed what was the apparent left boundary of the commemoration, as no one really stood or sat on the other them.  Backwards from the stage from the banner holders were several booths of people pushing ideas and merchandise.  These groups ranged from the expected (May 4 Task Force) to the quaint (Kent Peace Coalition) to the wishful thinkers (Progressive Democrats of America) to the really wishful thinkers (College Socialists).

On the right was an incline called "Blanket Hill."  The hill acquired its name through the rather dubious way you'd expect, back in times where you'd have to go find a hill and a blanket to do things that college students now do in their dorm rooms every day.  Like the neighboring Commons, Blanket Hill had been ground zero for the protests during the spring of 1970.  Atop Blanket Hill is now the official May 4 Memorial, which is really quite lame and mentions nothing about the shootings.  From hearing what older alums have said, the school has changed the topography of the Commons and Blanket Hill from what it was back then.

Toward the back (remember, stage = front) of the Hill was covered with people watching the commemoration.  More toward the stage are some more booths, specifically the Eyes Wide Open exhibit from the American Friends Service Committee, who had been kind enough to place empty boots in formation up the hill, one pair of which represents one Ohio soldier death in the war.  There were 161 pairs.

Near the Quaker booth was a piece of artwork in which shotgun shells had been fashioned into a peace sign.  Again, 161 bullets.

Looking past the stage in the distance across the commons, the Kent ROTC alternative barbecue was in progress.  There are perhaps 20 or so people on a back patio of the ROTC building, most of whom were simply staring at the commemoration.  The barbecue there, according to Vanessa, was billed as "Hamburgers, not Hippies."  According to the Akron Beacon Journal, members of the ROTC decided that the commemoration had become too politically oriented.

I suppose that this is something like pigs finding the butchershop to be too politically motivated and refusing to appear. 

Speakers continued to speak, and we continued to listen.  After the monologue of the events, a second speaker took the podium to tell about the very similar events that occurred in May of 1970 at Jackson State, an historically African-American college in Misssissippi. There, too, students were gunned down as they protested.  This speaker, who was far more charismatic than the relatively bland Kent State appointed storyteller, quoted Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.  He set the mood.  And when he mentioned the possibility that anyone could forget the tragedy, a fellow walking with a sign that said "Four Dead in O-Hi-O, May 4 1970, Never Forget" interrupted by yelling "NEVER FORGET! NEVER!! FORGET!!!"

After this speaker's relation of the equally horrifying, yet surprisingly unknown and historically unmentioned story, it was time to ring the Victory Bell, a meeting place in 1970 and a place of symbolism ever since.  It was rang the normal 11 times, 4 for Kent students killed and 7 for the injured, another 18 for the Jackson State event, and 32 for the people at Virginia Tech, the newest tragedy of people getting killed at college.

Will VT ever overtake Kent in terms of supposed historical significance?  Probably not, since VT was just some psychopath and Kent was the National Guard.  Besides, the psycho has yet to be turned into some metaphor for a larger issue in American life, as much as the media is begging for the chance to do so in order to give their overcoverage larger some purpose.

After the ringing came the personal memorializations.  I'm sure this part of the commemoration meant a lot more a long time ago.  Today, it means so little that in most cases the speakers who talk about the killed victims never knew the people.  In fact, it made this part quite awkward.  It's hard to understand how someone can get up in front of 1,000 or so people and talk about someone as if there's a personal relationship, all the while adding the preface "while I never knew _____, he/she..."

Candles were lit for the victims.  According to the memorializations, two of them were innocent bystanders who weren't a part of the protests.  How scary is that?

After this, a mismosh of people spoke.  People who were shot but not killed, but afterwards left Ohio as soon as possible to escape the imagery.  Some wannabe hippy student who's "personally touched" enough by the May 4 deal (which happened some 18 years before he was born, probably) to have joined the Task Force and gotten podium time to say absolutely nothing in a dreadfully slow manner. 

Tim Ryan, the Congressman, spoke and said many good and encouraging things about promoting peace and ending neocolonialism.  It was encouraging until I remembered that he is a politician and is therefore a lying sack of shit willing to say anything for a few dollars or votes (but preferably both).  If this had been the ROTC "Hamburgers not Hippies" barbecue, he probably would have venerated death and guns and shit like that.  Being young, he may have meant what he said, but undoubtedly he's only a few weeks away from the corruption of being a politician. 

Washington could ruin Jesus Christ.

Somewhere along the line, Jose, Vanessa and I went to check out the booths and so on.  We gathered literature and stickers, I bought a cheap shirt from last year's commemoration, Jose bought a book from the Socialists and faded back to the crowd.  Vanessa and I wandered further, talking about Quakerism and peace and politics and other such things.  After seeing the booths, we returned to a slightly different patch of grass where Jose was already sitting.

Tom Hayden hit the podium and spoke, and said many things that made a lot of sense.  He's the guy who founded Students for a Democratic Society back in the 1960s and wrote some books but otherwise faded to obscurity.  He still has a head on his shoulders, at least, no matter how disenchanted he must be with the past 40 years.  A strange-looking young man rode his trick bike around the stage at various times during Hayden's speech, waving an Iraqi flag.  I say he is strange-looking from a very ethnocentric viewpoint, in that he was a very American-looking poindexter type, but waving an American flag.

As we sat, a cute girl came around wearing an apron, offering buttons for a dollar.  She had buttons with many of the usual suspects (such as Marx) and sayings (such as "No More BUSHit").  It was an ingenious way to market those buttons.   I hope she made a few dollars for her efforts.

After Hayden was some local musical act that wasn't much for the ears, to which some girls danced with giant hula hoops.  Cindy Sheehan, the soccer mom's Michael Moore, was up next. I split before then, because I had a meeting somewhere else.  I bid farewell to Vanessa and Jose and trucked up a slight hill, through the crowd and out of the Commons.

I guess after I left, Sheehan gave a pretty uninspired speech. She got cameras there, which meant she served her purpose, I'm sure. The commemoration continued as a peace march to downtown Kent.   This meant a trip past Frat Row, which, as I understand it after-the-fact from some of the local Quakers who were there, meant being diverted across the streets from the frats but still barraged with insults, epitets and obscenities.  Apparently there is no place for peace in the American fraternity system.

As I walked across campus, it seemed deserted until I got two buildings away from the event.  Once I walked around the corner of that second building, there was normal campus life again -- girls wearing too little, meatheads playing frisbee in the grass, etc.  Coming around the corner and finding life reminded me of the end of the movie Godspell when the cast rounds the corner after frollicking around an abandoned New York City and upon their disappearance, the city returns to life.

That's a dated reference... Yep, one from 1970.  Go figure.