During her recent campaign rallies, Vice President Kamala Harris has told supporters to say the name of Amber Nicole Thurman, a 28-year old mother who died of complications from sepsis because she could not get the reproductive health care she needed in her home state of Georgia. The scope of this crisis is clear from the growing sisterhood of brave women who have exhibited the courage to share similar stories how Trump’s abortion bans are anything but pro-life. The tag line is powerful. “We do not have to imagine the consequences of a second Trump administration. We are already experiencing them.” This shift from speculation to observation is compelling.
So let me add four more names I hope you will say.
ALLISON KRAUSE
JEFFREY MILLER
SANDRA SCHEUER
WILLIAM SCHROEDER
You are forgiven if you do not immediately recognize them. After all it has been 54 years. Maybe this picture (below) of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Jeffrey Miller will jog your memory.
Donald Trump says he will use the National Guard, and if really necessary, the military to handle people he calls “the enemy from within.” You know, American citizens like Krause, Miller, Scheuer and Schroeder, unarmed protesters who opposed Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia. So please, do not tell me calling out Trump for promising to order U.S. soldiers to take up arms against U.S. citizens is hyperbole. It has happened before. And can certainly happen again.
And do not assume there will be justice for the dead or wounded. Though charged with violating the students’ civil rights (not to mention their bodies), the eight National Guardsmen who fired their weapons were acquitted in a bench trial. After ordering their release, the trial judge gaslighted those in the courtroom.
It is vital that state and National Guard officials not regard this decision as authorizing or approving the use of force against demonstrators, whatever the occasion of the issue involved.
Bullshit! Someone authorized deployment of the National Guard to the Kent State campus. Someone approved their carrying lethal weapons. Yet, no one was held accountable. I am sure you are getting tired of my saying this, but the U.S. Supreme Court, because the Constitution says the president is also the commander-in-chief, now makes his use of that power “an official act,” completely immune from any legal liability. The only remedy is impeachment and conviction which we know is less likely than the earth being hit by an asteroid. Even then, the only punishment is removal from office.
So, when you vote this week, continue to say their names. These four long-dead Americans are ghosts of our past, imploring us to imagine an all too probable sequel to their “Back to the Future” story.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
Being of that era myself, I knew immediately of whom you were writing.😢
As did I.
But…
Those young people were killed becasue they expressed a political opinion that was, shall we say, unwelcome, and resulted from an inappropriate use of the National Guard. Their deaths were horrendous and uneccesaary and could have been prevented/should never have happened.
But…
To die in the hands of medical proessionals because a law, a legislature has decided that an unborn, undeveloped, possibly dead fetus is more important than the mother’s life is, in my mind, deserving of a whole different viewing, not really comparable to the sacrifces to which you refer. This is premeditated.
I would like to have expressed this better, but even these my first not fully processed thoughts needed to be said.