Kent State Shocked a Generation—A Perception in a Murfin Memoir

 

John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of 14 year-old Florida runaway Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller.

Note—May 4th is one of those dates that stop us in our tracks when they roll around each year.  At least it does for an ageing generation who were young and radical fifty-six years ago.  When the Ohio National Guard opened fire on campus anti-war protestors at Kent State University killing four and injuring several it was a shock of vulnerability for privileged White kids flirting with revolution.  Black students, although outraged, were not at all shocked by killings at Jackson State University in Mississippi days later. If you are a member of subsequent generations, the date may have no meaning for you at all—just another of the Boomer things.

Memoir stories like this are intended purely as the observations and reminiscence of a single participant.  I don’t exaggerate my importance.  I was a foot soldier in the movement in those days neither a leader nor central figure.  In this instance I stumbled upon an unusual role by happenstance and then faded back into the woodwork universally unnoticed.  The story here is just a hopefully interesting angle on a moment in history.  

My Own Private Kent State 

I must have been at my brother Tim’s (later known as Peter) apartment on Sheridan Road near the Morse Ave. Beach when we got the news of the shooting.  Oddly, unlike other Great Events, I can’t fix in my mind the moment I heard the news. 

Rather than hopping on the L to get to my own school, Columbia College, then a small communications college located on a few floors of a commercial building at Grand Ave. and the Inner Drive north of the Loop, my brother convinced me to go with him and his friends to his campus, Kendall College in Evanston.  Kendall was then a small, private two-year college mostly drawing students from the northern suburbs.  Neither the school nor my brother was particularly politically active.  Tim was the center of acid dropping spirituality and the self-appointed guru to a circle of acolytes, many of them fellow students at Kendall.  He said he left the Revolution to me. When we arrived on campus, students were in full possession of the buildings and the administration was nowhere to be found, although some faculty was on hand mingling with the students.  There was no police presence; it was as though the administration had simply abandoned the school to the students. 

Students rallied on the Northwestern campus.  The night of May 4 they erupted onto Sheridan Road and erected barricades that stayed in place for days.  Some students from near-by Kendall College went over to join them.

Some folks had gone over to join Northwestern students at barricades erected on Sheridan Road.  Others milled about trying to figure out what to do.  One student was working a Ham Radio and gathering information from actions at campuses across the country.  We soon realized that this could become an asset.  

Phone connections were somehow made with students from campuses across the Chicago area and we fed them news gleaned from the Ham operator.  Not all of that information was reliable, some turned out to be wild rumor, but enough was good so that it became apparent that we were part of a spontaneous nationwide student uprising that was growing by the hour.  

Besides participating in the phone network, I started posting the news on large sheets of paper, updated regularly throughout the night to keep students informed.  I called them the Joe Hill Memorial Wall Posters and had about a dozen of them lining hallways by the time the night was over.  

There were also informal discussions all night.  I was considered a real live activist because of my connections with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and my input was probably given more credence than I deserved.  By morning I had agreed to return to campus later and set up some educational programs, which I did do, although Kendall never became a hot bed of radicalism.

In the morning, running on adrenalin, I headed down to Columbia.  Columbia was a commuter school specializing in communications and the arts—broadcasting, photography, theater, dance, and writing.  With no one living on our non-existent campus, I was not sure what I would find.  There were no classes, but it wasn’t exactly a strike either because the administration was totally supportive of the student cause and offered the facilities of the school free to the movement.  

I headed down to the print shop in the basement, where I worked as one of two printers.  We ginned up our little A.B. Dick 360 and Multilith 1250 offset presses and were soon turning out hundreds, even thousands of flyers, posters, handbills, and other material advertising actions across the city and region.  

                                            In the basement Columbia College print shop we produced copies of posters and flyers like this.

I have no recollection of how, but I was selected as one of two representatives from Columbia to a citywide student strike committee.  I believe it was Wednesday when a couple of hundred folks met at the Riviera Theater in Uptown to plan coordinated actions.  

The meeting was a perfect example of sometimes chaotic participatory democracy, but a consensus was reached to have a unified, city wide march and demonstration downtown on Saturday.  I was named to the demonstration organizing committee with students from University of Illinois Circle Campus, University of Chicago, and Roosevelt, among other schools.  Many of the other members were in SDS.  Some were Trotskyites, who made something of a specialty of organizing big demonstrations.  There was a sprinkling of Anarchists as well.  But the ideological wars that wracked campuses were suspended—mostly—in the face of the common emergency.  Another meeting the following day was held at Circle Campus.

Again, I have no memory of how, but I was selected to try and negotiate with Chicago Police in what most felt was the vain hope of avoiding an attack by authorities the day of the March.  Given the background of the Police Riots against demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention, at protest marches connected to the trial of the Chicago 7, and the virtual street warfare around the Days of Rage in October ’69 there was little reason to hope for a better outcome.

Late Thursday afternoon I was escorted through an eerily quiet Police Headquarters to the office of Deputy Superintendent James Riordan.  I believe I may have been taken through a route intended to keep rank and file police from seeing that the brass was meeting “the enemy.” 

Riordan was cordial.  We shook hands.  We both clearly understood the potential volatility of the situation.  I told him that organizers intended an entirely peaceful march and pointed to some earlier mass marches that had gone off without a hitch.  I also pointed out that there had been no significant violence on any of the Chicago area campuses even at Northwestern with its barricades or the building occupations at other schools.  I said that we would have marshals to keep our demonstrators in line and moving and to discourage break-away marches.  Although others were trying to obtain a parade permit, I said that we intended to exercise our free speech rights and march with or without one.  

Riordan said he understood and said that the police did not want to provoke a confrontation and would be as “restrained as possible.”  I told him that we expected police would line the route of march, but that putting those officers in full riot gear or having them stand with batons conspicuously exposed might be provocative under the circumstances.  Riordan made no explicit promises but indicated that if we kept our people in line there would be a kind of truce.  I got the distinct impression that higher-ups had already decided to try to avoid more bad national press.

A peaceful Kent State student strike march much like the one in Chicago.

All during this period, although I was known to be a Wobbly, I was not acting in any way as a representative of the union.  I did inform the Chicago Branch of developments and the branch decided to participate in the march.  That Saturday rather than joining other “leaders”—and I use that term in the loosest possible manner—in the front of the march or joining with Columbia or Kendall college contingents, I marched as a rank-and-file member of the IWW behind our black and red banner.  Although riot equipped police were on hand, they were kept largely out of sight.  Officers lining the route wore standard blouses and soft caps.  Their batons were kept under their coats.  The march and rally went off without a serious hitch or any violence, which is more than can be said of marches in other cities.

Later, I reported on the events in the pages of the Industrial Worker.

How Winfield Scott’s Plan to Put a Fatal Squeeze on the Rebellion

A Civil War era illustration of Winfield Scott's  Anaconda Plan to win the war against the Confederacy.

On May 3, 1861 aged Lt. General Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, presented President Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet, with his Anaconda Plan to conduct the war against secessionist rebel states.    The plan was widely derided by the press and public, which believed that a quick, decisive battle with the main Confederate army in Virginia would win the War of Rebellion.  Scott knew better.  He anticipated a long and bloody conflict.  

Lincoln may have wished for a short, glorious war, but the former Black Hawk War militia Captain read everything on military strategy and tactics that he could lay his hands on in the Library of Congress and sensed that his Commanding General may be right. Although he did not accept Scott’s proposal in every detail, questioned his timeline, and felt he had to order a major attack on Richmond to keep public support, from that point on despite the public ridicule and outcry the President conducted the war broadly on Scott’s plan.

The plan called for:   

1. Blockade ports in the Atlantic and Gulf to reduce foreign supplies and cotton and tobacco exports from Confederate ports.

2. Blockade the Mississippi River to reduce grain and meat shipments from the western to eastern Confederacy and foreign supplies through neutral Mexico. 

3. Control the Tennessee River Valley and a march through Georgia to prevent cooperation among the eastern Confederate states. 

4. Demonstrations against Confederate capital to keep the main Rebel Army pinned down and on the defensive with a campaign by Army troops with Navy support along the James River. 

And that is pretty much exactly how the war was won by the Union.  

Commanding General of the Army Winfield Scott presents his plan to Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet. 

The Navy successfully blockaded most Confederate ports and captured key ports like Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans.  Western troops, experiencing much greater success than the ponderous Army of the Potomac in the East, secured the length of the Mississippi with the capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 (coincidently the also the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg) splitting the Confederacy in two.  Another Yankee Army drove down the Tennessee River protecting the loyal border state of Kentucky, splitting divided Tennessee, and setting up Sherman’s campaign through the railroad and industrial heart of the South in northern Alabama and Georgia, including the capture of Atlanta, which cut off the lower South.  

Campaigns in Virginia and along the James, under incompetent leadership were long, bloody, and inconclusive until the end, but without the logistical support of the rest of the nation, Lee’s legendary Army of Northern Virginia was doomed.  Just about the way Scott foresaw.  

In 1861 Scott was winding down a 47-year Army career serving 14 presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln.   He served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars, Black Hawk War, and Mexican War.  He was the Commanding General of the Army for twenty years, longer than anyone before or since and was the first officer since George Washington to carry the rank of Lt. General.  No other officer in American history served with such distinction at every rank—militia enlisted man, artillery captain, infantry regimental commander, leader of a victorious army in the field, and Commanding General.  He has been called the greatest American soldier ever.

General Scott in full regalia at the beginning of the Civil War.

Yet he also cut something of a ridiculous figure.  His once powerful 6-foot 3-inch frame frame ballooned to over 300 pounds.  Notoriously vain, he swathed that mass in outrageously gaudy uniforms with gigantic epaulets, extravagant gold braid and decoration, every medal he was ever awarded, topped off with a great Napoleonic Era plumed hat.  Ailing from both gout and narcolepsy—uncontrollably lapsing into sleep—he knew that he would not be able to take command of his troops in the field. 

Instead, he offered field command to fellow Virginian Col. Robert E. Lee, universally regarded as the ablest officer in the service.  Unfortunately, unlike Scott, who unhesitatingly placed his loyalty to his nation over that of his native state, Lee chose Virginia and the Confederacy.  

Scott had to entrust the command of the rapidly swelling Volunteer army to the untried hands of Brigadier Gen. Irvin McDowell.  Scott despaired of both McDowell and the ill trained, short term enlisted Volunteers.  During his whole career he advocated for a highly trained professional army with militias and volunteers called to service and thoroughly trained before introduction to combat.  

Instead of ending his career abruptly, young artillery Captain Winfield Scott's clash with the Army's Commanding General James Wilkinson in 1808 enhanced his reputation when Wilkinson was exposed as a Spanish agent and treasonous plotter.

In 1808, as a young Virginia lawyer and a corporal in the militia cavalry, he secured an appointment as a Captain of Artillery in the tiny Regular Army.  He made his mark early by crossing his superior, Commanding General James Wilkinson, a corrupt scoundrel and innervate plotter.  Wilkinson had him court-martialed for insubordination and suspended for a year.  After Wilkinson was exposed as Spanish secret agent—just one of his many intrigues that included plotting with Aaron Burr to set up an independent inland republic—Scott was able to resume his duties with his reputation enhanced.  

In the War of 1812, he made his mark as a commander and a hero.  Captured in the Battle of Queenston Heights in 1812 when the New York Militia refused to cross into Canada in support of his Regulars, Scott was paroled and went to Washington to appeal to raise regiments of regular troops. 

The following year as a full colonel he planned and led the amphibious assault on Ft. George which required a coordinated crossing of the Niagara River and a landing from Lake Ontario, which was considered the most brilliant American maneuver of the war.  

In 1814 as a brevet Brigadier General Scott commanded the American First Brigade in the Niagara campaign.  He trained and drilled his Regulars to a fine edge for months.  But unable to secure regulation blue cloth for their uniforms, outfitted them sharply in gray with tall shako caps.  When the British saw them marching in disciplined ranks into battle, a horrified officer exclaimed, “That’s not the Terrytown militia.  Those are by God Regulars!”  

American Regular Army troops trained by Col. Winfield Scott proved that they were the match of British veterans at the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane in the American attempt to invade Canada during the War of 1812, but Scott was grievously wounded in action.

Those regulars soundly whipped veteran British troops at in the Battle of Chippewa and then held the battlefield at fiercely fought Lundy’s Lane, where Scott and overall American commander Major General Jacob Brown were both severely injured.  

Although the invasion of Canada was stalled, Scott was hailed as a hero for showing that American troops could beat British professionals in a stand-up battle.  The battles were commemorated at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, where the Corps of Cadets still wears grey uniforms and shakos.  And the Confederate Army, dominated by West Pointers would, ironically adopt a gray uniform.  

In the years after the war, Scott turned to the routine occupation of a Regular Army Officers—Indian wars.  Scott was assigned command of 1000 Regulars and Volunteers from the East to relieve expiring volunteers units in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Unfortunately, the men brought the cholera with them, not only rendering them unfit for service, but unleashing a deadly epidemic in the West.  Although Scott never got to the battlefield, he arrived on the scene to play a critical role in negotiating Black Hawk’s surrender and drafting a peace treaty.  

Three years later he was commanding a large column fruitlessly chasing hostiles in the Florida swamps during the Second Seminole War.  

No sooner was that bit of business concluded than President Andrew Jackson called on Scott to be the Federal brawn behind the Force Act, meant to compel South Carolina to honor the Tariff of Abominations in the face of Nullification threats.  Sent with reinforcements to the garrison at Ft. Sumner at Charleston, South Carolina, Scott had to juggle the bellicose desire of the President to “Hang the traitors,” and Joel R. Poinsette’s delicate task of rallying South Carolina Unionists while a new tariff acceptable to the state was moved through Congress.  

He got high marks for both his strong military resolution and for local diplomacy.  When the city caught fire, he dispatched troops from the garrison to help quell the blaze—and improved relations with the locals. 

With the crisis passed Jackson’s successor President Martin Van Buren turned to Scott to enforce the Cherokee Removal from the Eastern states.  Scott disapproved of the policy but did a soldier’s duty.  He considered it the low point of his career.  He was able to negotiate the voluntary removal of a large number under the leadership of Chief John Ross and managed to round up other bands with a minimum of bloodshed.  He tried, as far as possible, to make conditions on the march tolerable, ordering rides, assistance, and extra rations for children, the elderly, and infirm.  Where his reliable Regulars were in charge, things went relatively smoothly.

But many bands were escorted by undisciplined volunteers who abused, harassed, and stole from their charges without mercy.  Scott meant to personally accompany the first body of evacuees on the march west from Athens, Georgia but was recalled to Washington for a delicate diplomatic mission upon reaching Nashville.  

Scott was sent to the Maine/Canada border to negotiate a peace in the bloodless Aroostook War which threatened to erupt into another shooting war with the British.  For his success and service, he was promoted to Major General, the highest rank active in the Army.  

Scott repeated as a diplomat when he negotiated a solution to another border crisis with Britain, this one over St. John Island in the Pacific Northwest in 1859. 

                                

                                            Major General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz in the Mexican War.

But first there was the Mexican War.  President James Knox Polk forced the war on Mexico by moving troops into disputed land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. This army, made up mostly of volunteers under the command of Scott’s service rival Zachary Taylor scored victories in heavy fighting at Monterey and Buena Vista but was hundreds of miles north of the capital city, separated by daunting desert.  

Scott conceived of a second attack by a sea landing at the port of Veracruz and driving quickly to Mexico City.  He executed the first major amphibious assault in American history when he successfully landed 12,000 Regular Army, Marines, and well-trained Volunteers and all their artillery and baggage outside the fortified city.  

In coordination with the Naval Squadron under the command of Commodore Mathew Perry, he laid siege to the fortified city, which was reduced by Army artillery and naval gunfire and surrendered after 12 days.  With the port open to keep his supply line clear, Scott began his march west, roughly following the route of Cortez.  Yellow Fever struck the Americans and Scott was only able to move with 8,500 healthy troops, among them many future Civil War generals including Lee, U.S. Grant, George Meade, and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson.  

Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna moved from the Mexico City at the head of 12,000 well-armed and trained troops.  He entrenched across the road at Cerro Gordo, roughly halfway to the city.  Instead of a frontal assault, Scott sent artillery into the rugged mountains and enfiladed the Mexicans in deadly fire and flanked the dug-in Mexicans, who were routed with heavy casualties.  

Several other sharp engagements marked the march to the capital, culminating in the attack on the Mexican Military Academy at the Castle of Chapultepec.  When that fell, Scott negotiated a peaceful entry to the city. 

The Duke of Wellington upon studying Scott’s campaign declared him to be “the greatest living general.”  The offensive is still studied and much of later Army combat doctrine was drawn from the experience.  

The President appointed Scott the Military Governor of Mexico City, where he drew praise for enforcing bans on looting and molestation of citizens.  He threaded the thorny issue of what to do with the captured San Patricios—Irish deserters from the U.S. Army who took up the Mexican cause.  He was appalled when a court martial sentenced 72 of them to hang.  The former lawyer scoured his law books to find excuses to vacate the sentences of as many as possible.  He objected to the death penalty in 22 of the cases and later pardoned or commuted the sentences of 15 more.  

With Scott still on administrative duty in Mexico City, his rival Taylor arrived back in the States and won the Presidency on the Whig ticket.  Scott was sure he would have been a better man for the job.  Taylor died leaving Millard Fillmore to complete his term.  

Shattered over slavery, the Whigs took 54 ballots to nominate Winfield Scott as their candidate in 1852.  He was trounced by the handsome non-entity Democrat Franklin Pierce, a subordinate Volunteer general in the Mexican War.  Despite the loss, he served the new President loyally as Commanding General of the Army.

When the Democrats in 1852 nominated handsome, dashing Franklin Pierce, one of Scott’s less distinguished subordinate Volunteer generals in Mexico, the Whig convention stalemated before finally dumping Fillmore and nominating Scott on the fifty-fourth ballot.  

The party was split on slavery, particularly the issue of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.  The Party platform endorsed enforcement over Scott’s objection leading to loss of support of the Whig ticket in New England, and disillusion with the candidate among pro-slavery Southerners who jumped en-mass to the Democrats.  Despite his personal popularity Scott carried only four states.  It was also the last hurrah of the shattered Whigs as a national party.  

Scott, his vanity bruised, none-the-less went back to work as Commanding General.  

It is fortunate for Lincoln and the Union that he stayed as long as he did.  But after McDowell’s raw and ill trained volunteer army was routed at First Bull Run, Lincoln had to turn to the ambitious Democrat George McClellan as his field commander.  McClellan, popular with the troops and with the press, was openly insubordinate to the Commanding General and plotted to replace him.  Seeing the writing on the wall and in ill health, Scott finally retired in November.  McClellan got his job while retaining field command.  

In the classic but wildly inaccurate Warner Bros. Custer bio-pic They Died with their Boots On Sydney Greenstreet portrayed Winfield Scott still in command deep into the Civil War, seen here listening to an appeal from Olivia de Haviland as loyal Libby Custer.

McClellan would be just as insubordinate to the President as he was to Scott and despite assembling a massive, well trained, and well-appointed Army proved too timid.  Lincoln replaced him as Commanding General with General Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, a plodding administrator who did not get in the way of the field commanders like Grant and Sherman who could actually win battles.

Winfield Scott, Old Fuss and Feathers, as he was known by his men, died at West Point in 1866.

  

Black Baseball's Birth, Bloom, and Bust

 

National Negro Baseball League founder Rube Foster with his Chicago American Giants.

On May 2, 1920, the first game between teams of the brand-new National Negro Baseball League (NNL) was played in Indianapolis.  The league was the brainchild of Rube Foster, a pitcher who had been managing Negro teams, semi-pro and professional since 1907.

The league was formed that February at a meeting held in a Kansas City YMCA.  The charter teams were the Chicago American Giants, Detroit Stars, Kansas City Monarchs, Indianapolis ABCs, St. Louis Giants, Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos and Chicago Giants.  Foster’s own Chicago American Giants dominated the league in the early years, winning the first four consecutive championships.

Blacks had been playing organized baseball since at least the early 1870s.  Most clubs were amateur or had one or two paid players on the team.  Local and regional leagues came and went.

In the days of virtual apartheid in sports, only a handful of Blacks played on White teams.  Oberlin College players Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday were signed with the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings and stayed with the club when it moved up to the old American Association, a short-lived Major League in 1884.  A few other players who could pass or who claimed to be Native American or Hispanic also briefly played.

Black and white teams sometimes met in off-season exhibition games.

United States Postal Service first class stamps honoring the Negro Leagues and Rube Foster.

In 1885 the first all-pro Black team, the New York based Cuban American Giants was organized.  It played in local eastern leagues and barnstormed, mainly in the South until it was dissolved after the 1899 season.  Famously, they twice beat white major league teams in exhibitions.

From the turn of the 20th Century to the formation of Foster’s league, Black professional baseball was most famous for barnstorming—touring the country, most small towns, and taking on all comers.

Although the roster of teams changed, the NNL was concentrated mostly in the Midwest and Boarder South.  In 1923 Eastern professional teams organized as the Eastern Colored League (ECL).  From 1923 through ’27 the two leagues held their own World Championships.  The ECL folded in early 1928 but re-emerged with most of the same teams in 1929 as the American Negro League.

Neither league, however, could survive the Depression.  By 1932 both were out of business, although Black minor leagues like the Negro Southern League continued to operate.  Some of the stronger teams in the defunct majors continued to play, reverting to the barnstorming model.

A second league operating as the NNL opened in the 1933 season.  It struggled but climbed back to a major league status.  In 1937 the competing Negro American League (NAL) was formed leading to another annual championship series and All-Star games, known as the East-West Games.  It was in these leagues that legendary Black ball players rose to national prominence.  The level of play was so high that white professional teams began to wish they could recruit from it.  But the color bar seemed insurmountable.

In the 1940s and '50s the Kansas City Monarchs were the dominant team in the Negro Leagues with some of the most legendary stars including some who finally helped break the color barrier to play in MLB.  This is their team in 1942.

In 1947 the NAL absorbed the NNL.  From then on, it was the only remaining Black major league.

When Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke the color line by putting Jackie Robinson on the field in 1947, it spelled eventual doom for Black baseball.  It took a few years, but by the mid-1950’s virtually every Major League team was stocking up on Black players, either from the NAL or signing them directly.  Black fans followed the best players to the Major League parks.  The NAL sputtered out of existence after the 1960 season.

Satchel Paige at his 1971 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Several players including Robinson who got their start in the Negro League were enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  But it was not until 1972 that the hall inducted a player who spent most for his career in Black baseball—the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige who was brought up to the Majors long past his prime briefly by Bill Veek and the Cleveland Indians.

This diamond at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City features 12 life size bronze statues of Negro League greats including Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, and Buck O’Neil.

Black baseball got its own shrine in 1990 when the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was founded.  In 1997 it moved into a permanent home in a complex it shares with the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Vine Streets in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for May 1, 2026

Communities, Not Cages roadside rally in McHenry. Part of a nationwide day of action to oppose the expansion of ICE warehouse detention centers and the attack on the due process rights of immigrants and all Americans.

Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

 Walking the Walk  

Friday, May 1, May Day roadside rally from 3 pm to 5 pm. on Route 31 at McCullom Lake Road in McHenry. May Day is a national day of action that includes a national strike, boycotts, and protest rallies--a virtual General Strike. No shopping! No work! No school!  Here is the registration link:  https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/931824/.

May Day 2026 Friday, May 1 at 12pm at 1919 W. Maypole Avenue in Chicago. Join the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) members and the immigrant rights contingent on to commemorate May Day and say: abolish ICE, free them all, and fund ALL of our communities, NOT war!

Born in Chicago, May Day, also known as International Worker’s Day, has been a historic day of action across the country and across the globe. With the attacks against our communities by ICE, CBP, and the Trump administration, May Day is a moment to show the strength of our full movement to make clear that we will not be silenced or intimidated.

RSVP at the link below to let us know you’ll be joining our March to May Day Immigrant Rights rally After our rally, we’ll march to Union Park together to join the full program and march through the streets of Chicago to make the immigrant rights movement’s presence known. See you on May 1st! https://icirr.quorum.us/campaign/160977/

Briefly looking ahead to a busy June:

Woodstock Pride Fest--June 13-14 Annual family-friendly events celebrating the LGBTQIA+ Community. Multiple special events.  Pride Parade and the Festival on the Square 11 am to 4 pm.

Ride/Walk to Leave a Light On--On and around  Woodstock Square, Friday, June 19 7 pm.  Benefiting Break Crystal Lake Teen Center,  Compassion for Campers, Community Connection for Youth, IMC--employment, education, health, and housing services, Jail Breakers, Lemonade & Advocate, Live4Lali, and Woodstock Pride.

The McHenry County Juneteenth Festival will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 3 to 5:30 pm on Woodstock Square Woodstock.

After our last Compassion for Campers (C4C) distribution at Community Resource Day 9CRD) at Willow Crystal Lake, we received an email from leadership newly appointed by top Willow Creek Church officials announcing, "We've made the decision to pause Community Resource Days for the summer."  It is unclear if and how it may return in the fall.  This is devastating news for the un-housed and housing at risk in our community.  This is no reflection on the former local Crystal Lake leadership team or all of their dedicated volunteers.  The last date will be this Friday, May 1 and our last on Friday, May 15.  

More disappointing news--Sue Rekenthaler reported: " McHenry County denied our request because our compassion seemed to just be making our homeless friends more comfortable! That was the point exactly! Give someone shelter from the rain, a warm sleeping bag, a stove to heat up a can of soup. County funds were low, so I guess don't help the most vulnerable in our community. Am I angry? Somewhat. Am I surprised? No. In a republican county like this-not surprised. Am I defeated? No way. Our Compassion for Campers program will explore over sources. For now, I am very sad and disappointed. The video of the committee's comments can be seen online on the meeting portal."  Sue is gratgeful for an outpouring of support and offers to help as the news sread

C4C hopes to continue our service to the unhoused.  Sue , Chaplain Dave Becker of Tree of Life, and existing and potential church partners are consulting to consider options going forward and potential church partners will be meeting to consider options going forward.  Meanwhile, your continued support is critical. Until we find a new venue, we will not be able to accept material donations due to lack of storage space.  The best thing you can do is offer your critically need financial support to get us through this emergency.  Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .

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