1ºI remember May 4th, 1970. I was a student at Harvard, and the news that American troops had shot and killed four students hit our campus like an earthquake. In an instant, our fundamental sense of safety was erased and everything we thought we knew about what it meant to be an American was thrown into question.
I recognize that same unsettled feeling in the faces of students today – particularly at the encampment at @WUSTL, where my team and I were violently arrested alongside the students.
54 years later, we are days - if not hours - away from a completely avoidable repeat of the Kent State Massacre. While I pray it never happens, we won’t have peace or justice until we wrestle power from the parties that brought us back to this brink. Young people standing up for Gaza today deserve a president who hears them and stands with them.
2ºJoe Biden
included trespassing in his description of violent and disruptive protest, saying it was not okay.
In 1960, four young black men refused to leave Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in violation of the law.
They were trespassing on private property and being disruptive. MLK was arrested for the same thing in Atlanta.
Those arrested were charged with trespassing. MLK was sentenced to 6 months hard labor.
If Joe Biden were president then, he would have told the protesters to go home.
JFK was a Senator running for president then- he actually made phone calls to get MLK out of his jail sentence.
The point of protest is to be disruptive. Civil Disobedience literally means breaking the law.
Kudos to the protesters of the 1960s and of today who understand what it takes for justice to prevail.