Alan Canfora, more info

At Kent State University on May 4, 1970, I waved a black protest flag in front of kneeling, aiming Ohio National Guard triggermen during an anti-war confrontation under the noonday sun. Minutes later, when the "death squad" guardsmen marched away toward a campus hilltop, I was shot and wounded through my right wrist as I jumped behind an oak tree about 225 feet away from the shooters.

Four students were killed and nine of us were wounded during 13 seconds when 67 gunshots were fired into our crowd of unarmed anti-war students on the Kent State campus in Kent, Ohio. The killer guardsmen, armed mostly with powerful M-1 rifles, were ordered to shoot and kill. Then they turned and marched away from the bloody mayhem. The shooters got away with murder and never spent a day in jail.

How did I find myself in such a surreal, nightmarish situation? Why did I survive and live to tell the truth about our misunderstood 1970 Kent State tragedy? Why are you seeking information about one of the darkest chapters in American history?

Only 10 days before I was shot down, on April 24, 1970, I joined Kent friends and attended the funeral of my hometown friend killed in the war in Vietnam. At the cemetery, amidst our anger and despair, I joined my anti-war Kent friends and we swore a solemn vow to "bring the war home" when the time was right.

Our time for anti-war action arrived only six days later. On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced he was expanding the Vietnam war into another country--Cambodia. Our time for effective anti-war action had arrived. In the streets of Kent, Ohio, and on the Kent State University campus, our protests were so effective that only bullets could silence our young, angry voices.

We paid a very dear price with life and blood: four students dead and nine wounded. The youth of America then made President Nixon and the US government pay for the war in Asia and their war upon the students of America. From April until July of 1970, 11 US college students were shot and killed.

Immediately after the Kent State massacre, over four million American students joined the only national student strike in US history. Over 900 colleges and universities were shut down as the Kent tragedy and the massive national student strike became a major turning point against Nixon's war in Vietnam and Cambodia.

The national turmoil after the Kent killings proved the powerful potential of the voices of American youth. President Nixon was pushed to the point of physical and emotional collapse. Nixon promptly withdrew US troops from Cambodia. The tide of American public opinion shifted against the Vietnam war for the first time.

At Kent State in 1970, I found myself walking on the wild side of a dangerous turning point in America. I did not choose my place in US history and I cannot walk away from my duty to the doomed youths who suffered and died in Vietnam, at Kent State and elewhere.

If you seek acurate, factual information about the Kent State tragedy of May, 1970, you have come to the right place...

My name is Alan Canfora. I live in Barberton, Ohio, where I have been the chairman of the Barberton Democratic Party and an election official employed at the Summit County Board of Elections since 1992.

I have been politically active for over 35 years now. As a direct result of my lifetime of persistent, patriotic political activism, I have been shot by the National Guard at Kent State University in 1970, falsely arrested on several occasions & subjected to occasional attempts at character assassination.

Like many others, I have paid a dear price for my life of outspoken opposition to injustice. Alas, as the French people say: "C'est la vie pour les enfants terrible".

Still, I've moved forward and grown older and wiser in this sometimes *surreal world*. I also make it a point to attempt to enjoy this wicked world while I continue to fight for the common people.

Resistance to oppression is the imperative and meaning of life, I think. Meanwhile, education is our noblest goal & duty. Like the great romantic poet, Bryan Ferry, once sang: "...truth is the seed we try to sow."

Since my college years, I've been guided forward by many shining lights of wisdom provided by a variety of influences, including: Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allan Poe, Jimi Hendrix, Bryan Ferry, the Surrealists, Pre-Raphaelite artists and many others. In addition to political activism, I live for art and beauty.

I am a recognized leader of our longstanding May 4 Movement for truth and justice in Kent, Ohio. Since 1975, I have worked with the Kent State University students of the May 4 Task Force--a recognized educational student organization. Since 1989, I am also the volunteer Director of the Kent May 4 Center, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt, educational charity.