I keep hearing, “Why can’t Occupy UC Davis be like those great protests of our past? Like the peace protests? Everyone was behind those students at Kent State.”

A Gallup Poll conducted one week after the Kent State shootings found that 58 percent of the public blamed the students themselves, while only 11 percent blamed the National Guardsmen (Newsweek, May 18, 1970, p. 30). They got what was coming to them.

We look into the past at successful social justice movements and idealize them. Of course, the civil rights movement was right. Of course, women should have the right to vote. Of course, abolitionists would prevail. We take these things for granted; who could ever have disagreed with these sentiments?

We forget that these movements had an uphill battle for a reason, that, in their time, their heroes were condemned as radicals, thugs, troublemakers, dirty bums, agitators and more, just as protesters of today are condemned.

We also have a very selective memory. Many people mention Kent State, but have you ever heard anyone invoke the massacre at Jackson State University, just 10 days later, where police indiscriminately barraged a student dormitory, killing two students of color? When creating our glorious narrative of that era of civil disobedience in the name of social justice, how easily we gloss over certain events and emphasize others.

We must remember, after the pepper spray wears off and the necessary inconveniences of these protests continue, not to apply the standards of an idealized past to the activists of social conscience of today and tomorrow.

Bernie Goldsmith
Davis

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