Descendants of May
By Niall Twohig
UCSD students occupy department conducting war research (May 1970)
On the third walk to the May 1970 Peace Memorial,
we encounter student activists walking towards a rally.
Gaza is hell right now. It’s on fire. Children have been burnt to ash.
And here we are in paradise. A paradise built on such hells.
What can we do from paradise?
These students teach us:
The students of May 1970.
And these students – their descendants.
The student activists feel their brother’s and sister’s pain – the pain of those pulverized by bombs made in the U.S.A. Bombs made by brains produced by our university.
Feeling this pain does not mean they turn a blind eye to the pain of their Israeli brothers and sisters. But they know the violence causing that pain grew out of soil poisoned by the Monster, by its imperial doctrines, by its bulldozers, by its barbed wire and bombs, by its walls and pipelines.
Seeing the Monster, feeling the pain it inflicts, the students put their bodies on the line, do whatever they can to stop Its hell fire.
My students and I walk in the opposite direction as these students, but I hope we are walking the same path.