Has ICE’s Brutality Finally Gone Too Far?
Will ICE’s grotesque killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, coming less than a month after Rene Good’s equally horrific death at the hands of ICE, stop Trump’s lawless reign of terror?
Unlike after Good’s death, bipartisan outrage exploded after Pretti was killed, fueled by multiple videos that definitively showed agents shoot Pretti multiple times after he was restrained on the ground. But will it finally be enough?
In 1970, I was a 22-year-old senior at the University of Washington. I had seen a lot over the previous seven years. The assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luthur King, and Robert Kennedy. Protesters savagely beaten by Mayor Richard Daley’s police force at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Black Panthers targeted and murdered by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. And of course, the Vietnam war, which by 1968 was killing over 500 American soldiers every week.
Then came Kent State.
On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire without warning on Vietnam war protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. Student photographer John Filo captured what has been called one of the most important photographs of the 20th century. Now known as the Kent State Pieta, the image shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body student Jeffrey Miller, her arms outstretched, screaming for help.
Surely this will be enough to move us to stop the war that was tearing our country apart, we thought. But it wasn’t. The war ground on for five more years, as brutal as ever.
Back then, war protesters were despised by “the establishment.” The Greatest Generation had returned from World War II and built the American middle class during a golden time of shared prosperity and a feeling of common purpose. The Vietnam War shattered this moment in history. War protests increased in lock step with the escalations in Vietnam. And the Greatest Generation turned on its children.
Polling after the Kent State massacre found that 58 percent of Americans blamed the students for their own deaths. President Nixon privately called them “bums” and publicly said they had invited the tragedy. No national guard personnel were held accountable. Federal charges were dismissed, and the state of Ohio refused to prosecute.
I’m cautiously hopeful that this time might be different. But I’ve seen enough in my long life to understand it may not.
PERS Board Stares Into the Abyss
The PERS Board received some very bad news in January. Investment returns on the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF) for 2018 were barely above zero.
Actuaries estimate that if such returns hold through 2019, an […]
PERS Solutions for Public Services: Blue Ribbon Group Proposes 7 Sensible Solutions to Address PERS Crisis
If you have not yet heard of the group PERS Solutions for Public Services, take a look at their website at perssolutions.org.
This diverse group of prominent individuals, including former governor Ted Kulongoski, has done the […]
PERS Investment Returns Headed for Big Decline, Unfunded Liability Headed Way Up
The Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF) has been cruising along for more than 12 years without a major decline. That’s good news, right? Well, not really.
Let us recall what happened the last time OPERF […]
Investment Council Removes OPERF Investment History from Website. Let the Self-Serving Reports Begin.
The body was scarcely cold, but it got a quick burial. I am referring to the 10-year investment returns of the Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund for the period 2008-2017. This report and many other […]
Why the PERS Unfunded Liability Doesn’t Matter
If you are like most people in Oregon, including state leaders and the policy-setting PERS Board, you find PERS’s multi-billion-dollar unfunded liability horrifying. And you may be tempted to come up with all kinds of […]
Board Policies, Complacent Investment Council Fuel PERS Cost Increases
It was very disappointing to see no mention in Kate Brown’s budget proposal about PERS, the 800-pound gorilla that continues to chew up a massive and ever-increasing chunk of state revenues.
While the State Supreme Court […]

