As we continue to endure this time of pandemic, the number of lives lost to COVID-19 is staggering. Last week virus related deaths surpassed 58,220, the number of Americans killed in the nearly 20 years of the Viet Nam war. Today is the 50th anniversary of four lives lost at Kent State University in Ohio when National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the extension of the Viet Nam war into Cambodia. An iconic photo of that day shows a grief stricken young women kneeling over the body of one of the victims. This painful episode reminds me of two lessons that still ring true 50 years later.
The first is that war is part of a cycle of violence that is used by nations to promise peace but which inevitably brings even greater levels of hatred, death, and destruction. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized this reality when he made the difficult and risky decision to publicly connect opposition to racism with opposition to war in general and the Viet Nam war in particular. In a major address at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967, Dr. King spoke these true and challenging words:
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
The second lesson is that engaging in protest is not a sign of being unpatriotic. Rather it is exercising a right guaranteed in the first amendment to the Constitution. Non-violent protest has often been and continues to be a way to challenge those in authority to live up to the ideals of freedom and justice for all. As Dr. King often said in reference to the goal of non-violent civil disobedience, “All we ask of America is to be true to what you said on paper.” The four young adults who were killed at Kent State 50 years ago today are part of that cloud of witnesses in American history who remind us that war cannot bring true peace and that standing up to injustice through non-violent protest is often patriotism at its best. The short video posted below commemorates what happened 50 years ago today. Please take time to watch it and reflect on what it means to stand up for peace and justice today, especially when that stand is criticized and unpopular.