Dear Friend,

I remember May 4th, 1970.

I was a student at Harvard, and the news that American troops had shot and killed four students hit our campus like an earthquake.

In an instant, our fundamental sense of safety was erased and everything we thought we knew about what it meant to be an American was thrown into question.

I recognize that same unsettled feeling in the faces of the students I’ve met at the encampments I have visited – particularly at Washington University in St. Louis, where my team and I were violently arrested alongside the students.

When you look at these two pictures, I have to ask – what exactly has changed?

A few things HAVE changed. American police forces have become hyper-militarized. Police today have more techniques and more advanced technology at their disposal to wound, maim, and kill Americans with impunity. And in the digital age of warrantless wiretapping and mass surveillance, college students today are risking potentially life-ruining consequences just to follow their moral conscience.

What hasn’t changed are the two major political parties who encourage and even facilitate this police violence in order to protect their power and the power of their donors.

The young people standing up for Gaza today deserve a president who hears them and stands with them. Ours is the only anti-genocide, pro-peace, pro-planet, pro-worker campaign slated to be on the ballot across the country this November. We need your help today to ensure that we ARE on that ballot in every state.

54 years later, we are days if not hours away from a completely predictable, completely avoidable repeat of the Kent State Massacre.

While I pray it never happens, I know that we won’t have peace or justice until we wrestle power from the parties that brought us back to this brink.

In solidarity and gratitude,

Jill