May 4, 2010, May 4, 2009, May 4, 2008 & May 4, 2007 KSU -- 37th & 38th, 39th & 40th annual commemorations.
Join us in Kent May 1-4, 2010. 40th Annual Commemoration. Sponsor: May 4 Task Force, http://m4tf.org/
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
Saturday, May 1, & Sunday, May 2:
National Student Activism Conference, "Roots of Resistance: Continuing the Struggle", sponsored by KSU student and Kent community organizations including Anti-Racist Action (ARA), Kent State Anti-War Committee (KSAWC), May 4 Task Force (M4TF), The Crooked River Collective and others.
May 1 focus: anti-racism student action;
May 2 focus: modern student activism.
NOTE: Mark Rudd & other local/national ex-SDS members & leaders will participate as decided by modern students at the conference. Former SNCC activists & Black Panthers are also welcome*
NOTE: please send all Student Action Conference unquiries to: rootsofresistance@gmail.com including all questions, workshop ideas, or anything else.
SEE ACTIVISM CONFERENCE SCHEDULE: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=114897455200965&ref=mf
Saturday, May 1:
off campus Kent State SDS (1968-69) Reunion, featuring many Kent SDS veterans & national SDS leaders including Mark Rudd & others.
Saturday, May 1:
7:30pm, KSU Kiva Auditorium, KSU Student Center: excellent new Kent State activism history documentary film premier, "Fire in the Heartland", by Danny Miller. Free.
Sunday afternoon, May 2:
2PM: KSU Kiva auditorium, KSU Student Center: Country Joe McDonald presents 3 films: "Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans", "Vietnam, The Secret Agent (Orange)" & "Vietnam Experience", followed by Country Joe McDonald & Vietnam Veterans Against the War (http:vvaw.org/) as leaders of a discussion session. All US military veterans are welcome to attend & participate in this healing educational event. Free.
Sunday evening, May 2:
The Kent Stage, 175 E. Main St., downtown Kent: Opening acts: 5pm, KSU Theatre Students play: "Blanket Hill";
6:30-8pm, Live rock band, MAYS GONE, featuring M4TF student singer Ashley Foster & band live onstage.
8pm: $5/ticket, Kent film premier, "Disturbing The Universe", tribute to America's most outstanding radical attorney, William Kunstler, documentary film by his daughters, Emily & Sarah Kunstler, followed by a panel discussion featuring the Kunstler sisters/filmmakers & Kent activists who worked with Bill Kunstler during 1970-1977.
Monday, May 3, 6pm-7:30pm, US Congressman John Lewis speech, KSU Ballroom. A KSU event. Free.
Monday, May 3: 8:00pm, Bobby Seale speaks, Pan African Affairs Dept., Oscar Ritchie Hall, a M4TF event.
Monday, May 3, 2010: 10:30pm, gather for 11pm Candlelight March & Vigil which starts at 11pm on the KSU Commons at Victory Bell.
Tuesday, May 4 morning,
8:30am: traditional private breakfast gathering of 1970 May 4 victims' families & May 4 Task Force students & May 4 Commemoration speakers;
10am: public news conference: families of 1970 KSU victims & May 4 Commemoration speakers, KSU Student Center.
Tuesday, May 4: 40th Annual Commemoration, KSU Commons, noon-3pm, featuring speakers/musicians, including: keynote speakers Black Panther leader Bobby Seale & Gerald Casale of DEVO; music by Country Joe McDonald & Shadowbox Theater; speakers: Mary Vecchio, May 4 eyewitness; John Filo, esteemed 1970 KSU photographer; Gene Young, Jackson State massacre eyewitness; Russ Miller, brother of KSU martyr Jeff Miller; Florence Schroeder, mother of KSU martyr William Schroeder; Joe Lewis, May 4, 1970 eyewitness/casualty; Chic Canfora, May 4 eyewitness; Buddhist Lama Surya Das, 1970 friend of KSU martyrs; Bernardine Dohrn & Mark Rudd, ex-SDS leaders; & Sanford Rosen, attorney for KSU casualties' families.
Tuesday, May 4: 3:30pm-5pm, open reception, Room 306, KSU Student Center.
Tuesday, May 4, 5pm: KSU Student Center, documentary film by KSU Prof. Drew Tiene, "The Story of the Kent State Shootings."
Tuesday, May 4, 7pm: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Comes to Kent: " . . . Next Stop Is Vietnam: The War on Record". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s Education Department will present a special edition of the monthly Rock and Roll Night School program on music and the Vietnam war. This panel discussion is geared toward adults interested in gaining more knowledge about rock and roll history and will explore the history of rock and roll from its roots to its current incarnations; special attention is given to the music’s impact on society, its reception by fans, and its most innovative practitioners. Also discussed will be the representation of the war in popular music throughout the 1960s, from music that is both explicitly about the war (e.g., Edwin Starr’s “War,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun”) to music that was adopted to represent conditions in Vietnam (The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”; Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Run Through the Jungle”). The program includes video, audio, and a content-rich Power Point presentation.
Included on the panel will be singer-songwriter Country Joe McDonald, a veteran himself and an activist against the war and Hugo Keesing, who has curated a cd box set that will be released by Bear Family records later this spring: …Next Stop Is Vietnam: The War On Record, 1961-2008, a thirteen-cd set of music and the war that also includes an extensive book on the subject. Dr. Keesing is a professor at the University of Maryland and a popular culture scholar. He has assembled all of the extensive materials for the box set.
8:30pm: LIVE PSYCHEDELIC CONCERT & DANCE PARTY featuring COUNTRY JOE McDONALD & THE SHADOWBOX THEATER, KSU Student Center Rathskellar. Free/donation.
See also, KSU official list of various events: http://www.kent.edu/about/May4Commemoration/Events-Listing.cfm
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May 4, 2009: JOIN US at noon -- Kent State University -- 39th ANNUAL COMMEMORATION of 1970 Kent State tragedy.
Join us at Kent State University, May 4, 2009, for the 39th annual commemoration of the May 4, 1970 tragedy. At noon, outdoors on the KSU Commons, join the modern KSU students of the May 4 Task Force and their invited guest participants/speakers, including:
May 4 eyewitness Mary Ann Vecchio; Pulitzer-prize winner photographer John Filo; 1969 Ann Arbor White Panther leader Pun Plamundon; Laurel Krause, sister of Allison Krause; May 4 casualty Alan Canfora; 1970 eyewitness Steve Drucker; May 4 eyewitness Chic Canfora; & other speakers & musicians.
May 3 evening events:
7pm: Kiva, Student Center, POETRY readings.
11pm: CANDLIGHT MARCH departs KSU Commons.
CANDLELIGHT VIGIL all night long: sign up with M4TF students to reserve your 30-minute vigil spot.
For more information, contact the May 4 Task Force students: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/
See also, regarding the 2009 May 4 Symposium sponsored by the KSU administration: http://www.kent.edu/About/History/May4/Democracy/index2.cfm
Finally, KSU is planning a new May 4 Site Visitor's Center in Taylor Hall:
http://www.kent.edu/may4/
JOIN US. All events are free & open to the public. *In case of rain, May 4 Commemoration will be held in the KSU Student Center Ballroom.
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May 3-4, 2008: JOIN US in Kent
38th annual Commemoration -- all events free and open to public -- sponsored by May 4 Task Force students at KSU: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/
May 3: 7pm, Kiva Auditorium of the KSU Student Center, RON KOVIC will introduce his film, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. Kovic will also answer audience questions after the film. A brief poetry reading session will occur to start the program.
May 3: 11pm-midnight: Annual candlelight march across the KSU campus. March culminates at Prentice Hall Parking Lot where our martyrs died in 1970. All-night vigil from midnight to noon. Contact May 4 Task Force students to sign-up for your 30-minute vigil reservation: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/
May 4: 11am-noon: pre-Commemoration music by Tropidelic Band.
May 4: Noon-2pm: 38th annual commemoration event sponsored by the dedicated KSU students of the May 4 Task Force.
Speakers include: Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector, expert on Iraq/Iran crisis; Ron Kovic, anti-war activist Vietnam Veteran and author; the family of revolutionary hero & attorney William Kunstler; 1970 KSU wounded students Dean Kahler and Joe Lewis, Jr.; other speakers to be announced. LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF KENT AND JACKSON STATE!
NOTE: the annual anti-Iraq War march from KSU to downtown Kent will follow the commemoration.
May 4: 6pm: The Kent Stage, East Main Street, downtown Kent: music event with several live bands and more.
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MAY 4 TASK FORCE
"Truth: The First Casualty of War"
May 2 - 4, 2007
Kent State University
NOTE: Mary Ann Vecchio will be the guest of the Kent May 4 Center in Kent, Ohio, during May 1-5, 2007. She will offer a comment on May 4 at the noon commemoration.
May 2: 3:45-5 p.m. Guided Campus Tours with Thomas Hensley and May 4th State Historical Marker Commemoration, Kiva, KSU Student Center.
INVITATION: Our dear friend, my blood-brother, Dr. Tom Grace, our esteemed comrade and historian, will deliver an oration upon the dedication of the Ohio state historical marker at the Kent State University campus on the afternoon of May 2, 2007. You are invited! Join us.
May 2 - 3
The 8th Annual Kent State University administration-sponsored "Symposium on Democracy" ...more info on symposium
May 3
May 3: 5:30pm-6:30pm, "Meet and Greet" wounded survivors of May 4, 1970, Kent State shooting incident. Robby Stamps, Dean Kahler, Tom Grace, Joe Lewis, Jim Russell , Alan Canfora and perhaps more will make a united statement against the Bush/Cheney war in Iraq. Public welcome. May 4 Room in KSU library.
TOM HAYDEN keynote speech, May 3, 2007, at 7:30-9pm in the Kiva auditorium, KSU Student Center. Tom Hayden, founder of Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, in 1962. See his excellent ani-war web site: http://www.tomhayden.com/ *** Arrive early, full-house certain.
Annual Candlelight March*:
Gather at 10:45pm near the Victory Bell on The Commons. Map of route.
May 4
Annual Candlelight Vigil*: Midnight - 12:24 pm - Prentice Hall Parking Lot.
Annual May 4 Commemoration -- noon-2pm, KSU Commons, outdoors -- theme: "TRUTH, THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR" -- featuring anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and Tom Hayden, as well as our US Congress Representative Tim Ryan. Also, Mary Ann Vecchio, Rosemary Palmer (son "Augie" was killed in Iraq), Joe Lewis and Jim Russell, wounded at KSU on May 4, 1970, will speak, as well as Gene Young, a Jackson State 1970 massacre eyewitness.
*If rainy weather, Commemoration in the KSU Student Center Ballroom.
*** annual anti-war march from KSU into downtown Kent will most likely follow M4TF noon-2pm commemoration. details to be announced.
ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
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JOIN US in beautiful Kent, Ohio -- May 2-4, 2007, for annual commemoration events sponsored by students of the May 4 Task Force as well as the KSU administration/faculty “Symposium on Democracy”.
KSU students of the May 4 Task Force have sponsored annual commemorations since 1976 when KSU administrators abandoned their annual events.
For M4TF updates, see the M4TF web site: http://dept.kent.edu/may4/
Details announced soon...
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The 8th annual KSU Symposium on Democracy is May 2-4, 2007. For details, see: http://www.kent.edu/About/History/May4/Democracy/index.cfm
For details re: their Student Essay competition with cash prizes, DEADLINE APRIL 6, 2007: http://www.kent.edu/About/History/May4/Democracy/contest.cfm
Classes at Kent State are canceled from noon - 2 pm to allow more students to attend these events.
* May 4 Task Force programs are funded with Undergraduate Student Fees.