British Students Protest Turns Violent: Flashback to Chicago 1968

Tens of thousands of students marched noisily through London on Wednesday against plans to triple university tuition fees, and some tried to occupy the headquarters of the governing Conservative Party, in the largest street protest yet against the government's sweeping austerity measures. Organizers said 50,000 students, lecturers and supporters were demonstrating against plans to raise the cost of studying at a university to 9,000 pounds ($14,000) a year — three times the current rate.

Violence flared as a handful of people smashed windows in a high-rise building that houses Conservative headquarters, as others lit a bonfire of placards outside the building. Office workers were evacuated as several dozen protesters managed to get into the lobby, chanting "Tories Out," while outside police faced off against a crowd that occasionally hurled food, soda cans and placards. "We are destroying the building just like they are destroying our chances of affording higher education," said Corin Parkin, 20, a student at London's City University.

I was a teenager in 1968 but I recall vividly the news coverage of Chicago Cops beating the crap out of hippies in Grant Park and around Chicago. This was Mayor Daley's attempt to get rioting students under control as the Democratic Convention was hosted in Chicago and he was trying to get a Democrat in office. He failed as Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey by a small %, but the real spoiler was that George Wallace got around 13% of the vote and skewed the election for Nixon.

Julienne Lauler from the Blogsite The Sixties said " Forty years ago, Kent State University went from a virtually
anonymous Midwestern college campus to the infamous university at which four students were shot and killed while protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia.

On the day of the shooting, thousands of students flooded the university commons, delivering fiery speeches and calling for a definitive end to the Vietnam War. Provoked by protesters who were yelling and throwing rocks, Ohio National Guardsmen suddenly fired their rifles and pistols in what they claimed to be "self defense," killing four students and injuring nine. To some students, the Kent State shootings epitomize an era of student activism that no longer exists and has been replaced by a generation of students who are increasingly cynical about their ability to effect social change.

I flashed back to these dates and did some digging on the web for some real life bystanders and found Mr. Schultz, ''I was standing right here,'' Mr. Schultz remembered, as if 28 years ago was yesterday, positioning himself by a bush. ''The park was absolutely jammed, thousands of people. ''The cops were beating a kid there, and the first camera was broken right beside me. A newspaper photographer was taking the picture, and a nightstick came down, and he said, 'They got my lens,' astonished. They had a kid across a car here; there were beatings, clubbings, screaming everywhere.''

It is good to see British Students protesting things they believe in, I hope they are organized and avoid any police actions, but our society has revolved around social activism thru history and it usually takes the voice of a younger generation to enact change.