It’s different now. Everything has changed in 2011. A government can fall in days if the people that government ‘serves’ can be mobilised in sufficient numbers for the armed forces and police to be overwhelmed; or more likely that they see which way the wind of change is blowing, and make a tactical decision to follow the winning side.
Commentators tell us it’s the Twitter Revolution, the Facebook Foment, indicating that thousands, if not millions, of citizens have been stirred to gather in city squares and on roundabouts by instructions or comments on social network sites.
A more prudent explanation is that whilst these lines of communication have their place (hard to imagine people in Tahrir Square were busy checking how many ‘Follow Friday’ mentions they achieved), it is the knowledge, the reassurance, that television cameras, and to a degree, mobile phone footage through YouTube, are cascading the images, sights and sounds around the world, that impels people to risk everything to bring about change in their country.
As I write this, on Friday evening, February 18th 2011, the BBC is reporting that Bahraini security forces are firing at their own people. Indications are that similar scenes are building in Libya and Yemen.
President Obama and Mrs Clinton have expressed their deep concern.
It is often useful to reflect on the past to gather a sense of place about the present and the future.
Richard Nixon was elected to office in 1968, on a ticket that included a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, a unit of the U.S. military executed approximately five hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. In early 1970, Nixon announced that United States forces had invaded Cambodia.
Although there was widespread concern across America and the rest of the world, as usual it was the young people who had the energy and the will to get together to express their outrage at what was being undertaken in their country’s name.
At Kent State University (oddly, on a grassy knoll), several hundred students gathered to rally and protest against the expansion of the war in Asia. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, banged his fists on a table and said of the students, “"They're the worst type of people that we harbour in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
At 12:24 pm on May 4th 1970, twenty-nine of seventy-seven National Guards who were present at the university fired sixty-seven rounds of live ammunition at the students.
They were firing at their own people.
Four students, aged 19 and 20, were killed. Nine were wounded, including one who was permanently paralysed.
They shot their own people.
Five days later 100,000 people rallied in Washington to demonstrate against the war, and the deaths and wounding at Kent State.
There was television, but no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. It was different then. For the young people (and I was one of them) repulsed by the horror of the Vietnam War and the Kent State murders, the protests were organised through the underground press; we grew our hair to stand out, to show we were part of the counter-culture, the peaceful side of the trenches.
Immediately after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote a powerful and angry song, ‘Ohio’.
Music doesn’t bring about revolution in 2011, and it didn’t in 1970, but it gives a voice to dissenters. It can add to our understanding.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
They shot their own people
This week I have:
Learned that Chrissie Hynde was studying at Kent State and was on campus at the time of the massacre in 1970.
So was Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Realised that Gill Scott-Heron was wrong. The revolution will be televised.
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
Commentators tell us it’s the Twitter Revolution, the Facebook Foment, indicating that thousands, if not millions, of citizens have been stirred to gather in city squares and on roundabouts by instructions or comments on social network sites.
A more prudent explanation is that whilst these lines of communication have their place (hard to imagine people in Tahrir Square were busy checking how many ‘Follow Friday’ mentions they achieved), it is the knowledge, the reassurance, that television cameras, and to a degree, mobile phone footage through YouTube, are cascading the images, sights and sounds around the world, that impels people to risk everything to bring about change in their country.
As I write this, on Friday evening, February 18th 2011, the BBC is reporting that Bahraini security forces are firing at their own people. Indications are that similar scenes are building in Libya and Yemen.
President Obama and Mrs Clinton have expressed their deep concern.
It is often useful to reflect on the past to gather a sense of place about the present and the future.
Richard Nixon was elected to office in 1968, on a ticket that included a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, a unit of the U.S. military executed approximately five hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians. In early 1970, Nixon announced that United States forces had invaded Cambodia.
Although there was widespread concern across America and the rest of the world, as usual it was the young people who had the energy and the will to get together to express their outrage at what was being undertaken in their country’s name.
At Kent State University (oddly, on a grassy knoll), several hundred students gathered to rally and protest against the expansion of the war in Asia. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, banged his fists on a table and said of the students, “"They're the worst type of people that we harbour in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
At 12:24 pm on May 4th 1970, twenty-nine of seventy-seven National Guards who were present at the university fired sixty-seven rounds of live ammunition at the students.
They were firing at their own people.
Four students, aged 19 and 20, were killed. Nine were wounded, including one who was permanently paralysed.
They shot their own people.
Five days later 100,000 people rallied in Washington to demonstrate against the war, and the deaths and wounding at Kent State.
There was television, but no Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. It was different then. For the young people (and I was one of them) repulsed by the horror of the Vietnam War and the Kent State murders, the protests were organised through the underground press; we grew our hair to stand out, to show we were part of the counter-culture, the peaceful side of the trenches.
Immediately after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote a powerful and angry song, ‘Ohio’.
Music doesn’t bring about revolution in 2011, and it didn’t in 1970, but it gives a voice to dissenters. It can add to our understanding.
“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”
They shot their own people
This week I have:
Learned that Chrissie Hynde was studying at Kent State and was on campus at the time of the massacre in 1970.
So was Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Realised that Gill Scott-Heron was wrong. The revolution will be televised.
Terence Dackombe, February 2011
