Editor’s note: The Portager publishes letters to the editor from the community. The opinions expressed are published not because they necessarily reflect those of the publication but because we feel they contribute meaningfully to the local discourse on matters of public interest.
Who are Kent city police serving and protecting? I ask because they were present on Kent State campus on Monday, April 1 to protect Israeli occupation forces soldiers from… who, exactly? Unruly, violent, agitators? Well, no. In fact, they were apparently called by the Students Supporting Israel student group to protect their guests, three Israeli soldiers, from peaceable, anti-genocide, tuition-paying students who raised their voices in opposition to having soldiers of a military force wanted for war crimes on our campus.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the First Amendment. It covers everything but hate speech they say. What is hate speech? Is it the personal detailing of the day-in-the-life of a soldier in an army that the international court has accused of war crimes? Is it one of the soldiers saying that Palestinians and terrorists were “one and the same”? Is it a soldier talking about the “big tank” he gets to drive every day, the same ones that roll over civilians who are attempting to block the destruction of their family home from the occupying forces?
Those are some of the things I heard these soldiers talk about while I sat in a Kent State meeting room as a community member who was a registered attendee of the event. I didn’t hear the latter half, however, because I was removed by members of my own city’s police department for disrupting the meeting. I stood up and told the soldiers that they were the terrorists, and that there is no pride in genocide. They were not to be lauded or even welcomed to our community, and yet there they were, and their right to speak was protected while my right to speak was stolen because I didn’t deign to follow the rules of the organizers who deemed that no one was allowed to dissent or even to speak or ask questions while the soldiers spoke. I had just attended a Palestinian funeral for a young father, two teenage girls, and six children who were bombed by Israeli forces in their home during a birthday party, so no, I was not going to be silent.
We talk a lot about May 4 in Kent and on our campus. We commemorate it every year, but we have forgotten to tie it to what is happening in our current times. Decades ago, the National Guard was called in, and they killed four students who were part of the movement of university students against the Vietnam War. Now, on the same campus, the police are called in, armed to the teeth, to serve and protect soldiers who are being protested by peace-loving, anti-genocide, anti-apartheid students. They brought their guns to a group of unarmed teenagers and young 20-somethings and at one point, corralled them into a small space, using their bodies and a barricade. The KSU chief of police told the students that if they spoke above a normal volume, they would be arrested for trespassing. On their own campus in their own student union. This is getting way too familiar.
Shame on Kent City PD.
— Jen Case, Kent
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