[May 3d] is an ugly anniversary in American history: 42 years ago, National Guardsman opened fire on anti-Vietnam protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students. Ten days later, Mississippi police fired on civil rights protesters taking refuge in a women’s dormitory at Jackson State University and killed two more students.
Four decades later, as police across the country deploy paramilitary tactics developed for fighting foreign terrorists on Occupy and some May Day protests, and as campus police ratchet up responses to tuition hike protests, we must ask, is this where things inevitably are headed—toward deadly confrontations between overly armed police and angered protesters, or just as likely, innocent bystanders caught in a crossfire?
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The Kent and Jackson State anniversaries underscore many questions. When and where will a fatal police overreaction take place? Who will be the victim? What will be the reaction, including from politicians who helped to unduly militarize the police?
This scenario is not an accident waiting to happen. Police use undue force all the time, where the consequence is the armed police shooter kills an unarmed victim. It has happened many times in 2012, according to statistics compiled by the government, just not yet at an Occupy or student protest.
Always Question Authority
One of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority. ~ Hitchens
Always Question Authority 
No, there won’t be any fatal overreactions. There will be a few near-fatal ones (people who will effectively have their lives destroyed by the effects of police brutality, brain damage or losing both arms or what-have-you, but who will still be alive), a large number of really serious ones (people needing months to recover), and vast numbers of temporary medical problems. The Powers That Be have been working on this for decades; remember reading about the microwave crowd dispersing device? The one which can be turned on a crowd and making everyone’s skin start to feel like it’s burning? (If you don’t, look up “Active Denial System” in Wikipedia.) That kind of device will soon be deployed against protests as a matter of routine, I’m fairly sure. The actual injuries will be made up of people who had disastrous reactions to the “harmless” devices, and people who got brutalized after they fainted in the face of the crowd dispersion stuff.