Tin Soldiers and Trump Is Coming

Will this be Trump’s Kent State?

Mary Ann Vecchio, taken at Kent State University immediately following the Ohio National Guard opening fire upon student demonstrators. 4 May 1970. As published in the 5 December 1976 edition of the Appleton Post-Crescent. Via Wikimedia Commons

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio--Neil Young, 1971

The awful possibility that the National Guard and active duty military could open fire on peaceful protesters looms on the near horizon, as Trump stages his North Korea-style military parade to celebrate dear leader’s birthday. And organized, peaceful No Kings protests are planned across the country. These juxtaposed events will occur in just a few hours. Trump commandeered the California National Guard, was ruled against by a federal judge, but stayed on appeal—so Trump continues today to control the Guard in California. Trump also deployed 700 Marines to California in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military on domestic soil.

I’m posting this ahead of my normal Sunday at noon GMT schedule because I want to register my horror at what may happen in the context of Trump’s North Korea-style event on Saturday, and the peaceful uprising called No Kings. I hope when the day dawns Sunday I will have overreacted.

May it be so, se Deus quiser. After years living with one foot in the Latino culture and the other in the dominant White Anglo Saxon milieu of my heritage, I have internalized many beliefs and superstitions. One is to avoid wishing something positive without saying, if God wishes. In full disclosure, a South American friend once told me: “Justine, you are a Latina trapped in a gringa body.” And in further full disclosure, I consider this culture shift one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Though I can’t say I was aware of the progression when it was happening. Like most things in life, it makes sense in retrospect. A benefit of aging.

So I write today in sorrow and in hope. And aching with so many memories. It’s another thing that happens to you when you are blessed to live for seven decades, along with arthritis and trouble sleeping.

I’ll take us on a trip, dear reader, in the wayback machine to May, 1970. The days when National Guard troops had been activated because of unrest at Kent State University in Ohio and the tragic shooting of students that ensued, when I was a student at the University of Colorado.

Then I will reflect on my deep love and respect for immigrants, especially my many cherished patients from Mexico and Central America during my decades of clinical practice as a physician associate (PA). The horrifying experiences that led them to immigrate, their work ethic and their love for the country that gave them the opportunity to make a life and future for their families.

So, come with me, dear reader, to Boulder, Colorado, 1970. I was a theater student at the University of Colorado; my primary career goal was to be an actor. Although I was only a freshman, I had snagged a lead role in a main stage production. Bus Stop is William Inge’s prairie drama about a group of misfits who get stranded at a diner in the Midwest during a blizzard. It had been a popular 1956 film starring Marilyn Monroe as one of the people on the bus. I was cast as Grace, the 50-something owner of the diner. Despite my youth, the local newspaper reviewer said I laced my speech “with the crust of having ‘been around’.” The show was a big success.

Bus Stop, University of Colorado, 1970

On April 30, 1970, during our Bus Stop opening night, President Richard Nixon announced a massive expansion of the War in Vietnam to Cambodia. Let me now provide background on the events that led up to the shooting at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970.

Nixon had been elected in 1968 in no small part because of his promise to end the war in Vietnam. Instead, in April 1970 Cambodia was invaded. Nixon announced this on TV and radio at 9 PM on April 30.

The next day, protests erupted across the nation, especially on college campuses. Campus buildings were taken over by students, and many universities cancelled classes. At Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, an anti-war rally was held and a copy of the Constitution was buried to memorialize the fact that no war had ever been declared in Vietnam, a violation of constitutional requirements. That night, violence erupted in downtown Kent as bonfires were lit, police vehicles were hit with bottles, and store windows were broken. The mayor declared a state of emergency and tear gas dispersed the crowd.

On May 2, the National Guard arrived on the Kent State campus. On May 3, Sunday, a group of students set fire to the ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) building and cheered as it burned. Rocks were hurled. Governor James Rhodes addressed the situation, saying the protesters were “the worst type of people in America.” It’s important to note that at this point the students were more expressing their rage at the National Guard occupying campus than the original protest of the war in Vietnam.

On May 4, Monday, a rally had been called for noon on the Kent State campus. University administration announced that gatherings were prohibited, but communication was chaotic, and protesters thought the Guard, not the university, was in control. A crowd of about 3,000 gathered amid rising tensions. The National Guard’s leader drove across campus in a jeep and told students they had to disperse. When that failed, the students surged up a hill followed by guard members. In the ensuing minutes, 28 of the 70 guardsmen, who all had M-1 rifles locked and loaded, fired on the crowd. More than 60 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students were killed and nine wounded.

Imagine with me, dear reader, how people my age felt when we heard that news. Let me set the context. All men between 18 and 26 years of age were eligible to be drafted into the military, most likely to be sent to Vietnam. There had been deferments for military service for full-time students, but these were eliminated in 1971. The draft was a lottery, and men my age lived in fear of “their number coming up.” Men had difficulty escaping being drafted unless they registered and worked for two years as conscientious objectors to war (like my friends who worked for two years as orderlies in a psychiatric hospital in Montana), or were able to get medical deferments. Like bone spurs in the feet, for example.

… and it's 1, 2, 3, what're we fighting for?
don't ask me, I don't give a damn
next stop is Vietnam
and it's 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates
well there ain't no time to wonder why
whoopee! we're all gonna die

Country Joe and the Fish

The reaction of us late teens and twenty-somethings to an expansion of the Vietnam War after Nixon had promised to end it? Fuck, no!

And there we sat on the early evening of May 4, 1970 in the green room of the University of Colorado theater, devastated by the news, amid a campus largely shut down, weeping and wringing our hands. How could we go on stage in the midst of the devastation of America? Four students senselessly murdered? In the end, we adhered to the theater adage, “The show must go on.”

In the inexplicable sorts of twists and turns that life throws at us, my acting scholarship ended, and I visited New York City and hated it (it was different then—I love it for a visit now). So I dropped out of college and took a job in a doctor’s office. And I fell in love with medicine.

Many years and twists and turns later, my experience as a PA student at Duke University provided me clinical experiences in Florida and Colorado with migrant agricultural workers, and my first paid clinical position was at a migrant worker/community health center in Greeley, Colorado. That was the beginning of my experience with immigrants to the US.

So there I was at the Sunrise Community Health Center in Greeley, Colorado as a newly minted PA. The first shocking experience was in 1982, when the Reagan administration enacted policies to tighten immigration. There was an unexpected raid on a nearby chicken farm, with INS (a precursor to ICE) casting a wide net to capture undocumented immigrants with the purported goal of making more jobs available to US citizens. In the tumult of the raid, a worker ran across a road to escape agents and was hit by a semi-trailer truck and killed. In the weeks to follow, Americans went to check out the job opportunities and said, “Hell no, I’m not mucking up chicken shit.” And the chicken farm languished until workers found their way clandestinely back across the border and the chicken farm returned to full operation.

My career then took me to Brazil, and back to the US where I worked in obstetrics and gynecology in Austin, Texas, then in public health and primary care in Durham, North Carolina. In those early days from the 1990s on, the demographic shift to Latino workers in North Carolina was rapid and profound, and I was often the only person in the clinical facility who spoke fluent Spanish. Over the years I gained boundless love and respect for the people who pick our crops, clean our hotels, serve our food and care for our elders and children.

I’ll recount just a few of the stories my patients shared with me over the years, which helped me understand why people take the arduous journeys and tolerate the poor working conditions they often face. I’ll do my best to blur personal details of the many heartrending experiences I learned about from the people I loved and cared for as their primary care provider.

One woman came into the US illegally from Central America. Cartel gang members murdered her son by slitting his throat in front of her. She left for the US.

Another woman from Central America had gang members enter her home and threaten to kill her children, who were hiding under a bed, if she didn’t turn over her business to them. She took her children and left for America the next day.

A successful CEO from Central America had to flee his country because of cartel demands that he turn over his business to them or be killed. He left everything and came to the United States. Despite his skills and experience, he had to work as a janitor because he was undocumented and didn’t yet speak English.

A profound moment: a medical assistant who had roomed one of my regular patients asked me: “Does she work at Medieval Times?” I had no idea what she was talking about. Medieval Times was a dinner theatre venue in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina that featured horses and jousting. Why do you say that, I asked? “Well, she’s dressed like it.” I had cared for my patient and her extended family for many years, and I knew she worked in agriculture. I entered the exam room. My patient was wearing a loose shift, with a rope belt, a cape, and rough shoes. “How are you, Maria (not her actual name)? Your dress is very different from the usual.” She sighed and said: “My mother was dying in Mexico, but if I leave the US I can’t come back, and I can’t leave my kids. So I made a promise to the saint that I would dress in his likeness for a month if he saved my mother’s life. She survived, thanks God.”

One of my most gratifying experiences was a recent contact from a young man who was the son of one of my prenatal care patients, and then my pediatric patient as he grew up. He contacted me through LinkedIn to let me I had inspired him to pursue a career in public health because I was a clinician “who treated us like people.”

Immigrants really are the heartbeat of America. We are America because of them. They are us. Our ancestors fought these same battles and came to this country to build a better life.

And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune

American Tune, Simon & Garfunkel

How can we be so short sighted as to deny ourselves the future these wonderful people represent, in the promise of America? And how can largely peaceful protests of illegal captures and kidnappings, even of US citizens, be met with the occupation of a sovereign state by unconstitutionally federalized forces?

We are on the precipice of disaster. Not just because of the cruel and nonsensical immigration policies. But because we may be about to witness an authoritarian takeover of American democracy.