Alex Pretti’s killing reminds me of the Kent State shootings. Will this lead to something better?

Will ICE’s grotesque killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, coming less than a month after Rene Good’s equally horrific death at the hands of ICE, stop Trump’s lawless reign of terror? 

Unlike after Good’s death, bipartisan outrage exploded after Pretti was killed, fueled by multiple videos that definitively showed agents shooting Pretti multiple times after he was restrained on the ground. But will it finally be enough?

In 1970, I was a 22-year-old senior at the University of Washington. I had seen a lot over the previous seven years. The assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luthur King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Protesters savagely beaten by Mayor Richard Daley’s police force at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Black Panthers targeted and murdered by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. And of course, the Vietnam War, which by 1968 was killing over 500 American soldiers every week. 

Then came Kent State. 

On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire without warning on Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. Student photographer John Filo captured what has been called one of the most important photographs of the 20th century. Now known as the Kent State Pieta, the image shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of student Jeffrey Miller, her arms outstretched, screaming for help. 

Surely this will be enough to move us to stop the war that was tearing our country apart, we thought. But it wasn’t. The war ground on for five more years, as brutal as ever. 

Back then, war protesters were despised by “the establishment.” The Greatest Generation had returned from World War II and built the American middle class during a golden time of shared prosperity and a feeling of common purpose. The Vietnam War shattered this moment in history. War protests increased in lock step with the escalations in Vietnam. And the Greatest Generation turned on its children.

Polling after the Kent State massacre found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths. President Richard Nixon privately called them “bums” and publicly said they had invited the tragedy. No national guard personnel were held accountable. Federal charges were dismissed, and the state of Ohio refused to prosecute. 

I’m cautiously hopeful that this time might be different. But I’ve seen enough in my long life to understand it may not.