California National Guard in Downtown Los Angeles, LA Times 60825
Farah Siddiqi, producer/reporter, Ohio News Connection, a bureau of Public News Service.
A Kent State University shooting survivor is warning Ohioans and others to take note of the U.S. military’s involvement in immigration-related protests. She says it echoes a dark chapter in Ohio history – when four students were shot by the National Guard at Kent State in 1970.
Chic Canfora, then a student protester and now a journalism professor at Kent State, said the deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles to contain protests feels chillingly familiar.
“It’s just unconscionable that now the U.S. Marines, and not just the National Guard, are being deployed to an American city – not to respond to some foreign threat, but to stand in opposition to peaceful protests in Los Angeles,” she said. “That does not belong in a democracy.”
Anti-Trump Protests Nationwide
More than 350 protest-related arrests have been made across the country. California officials are suing for military withdrawal, while federal leaders defend the move as essential for public safety.
Canfora said protesters today – in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Austin, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere – are part of a long American tradition of speaking truth to power. She said they deserve protection, not repression.
“All of you who are doing this important work are part of a long line of Americans who have refused to be silenced,” she said, “and you are what democracy looks like.”
She also cautioned activists to stay vigilant, saying infiltrators may try to incite violence and discredit peaceful protests.
“It’s very, very important for activists today and for all the protesters out there to be aware of people among them that don’t belong,” she said, “to isolate and expose those who are trying to make them look violent when they’re not.”
Canfora said history is watching. She believes the use of military force against civilian protestors anywhere in the United States threatens democracy everywhere, and urged Ohioans not to look away.
