“Whenever you’re involved in an organization, you want to be an asset,” he said. “At the moment I’ve become a distraction, and that’s not helping anybody. I stepped aside so hopefully the people that are so angry will feel that they’ve accomplished what they set out to do, and maybe we can all get on with our lives.”
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(Original story 2/4/17): In the wake of protests at the University of California, Berkeley, over a planned speech from alt-right white nationalist Milo Yiannopoulos, Michigan GOP official Dan Adamini invoked one of the darkest moments in American history, calling for "another Kent State."
Twenty-eight members of the Ohio National Guard fired shots that Monday in 1970 as unarmed Kent State students protested American involvement in Cambodia. Thirteen students, some of whom hadn't been protesting at all, were shot, leaving four dead and nine wounded.
Adamini, secretary of the Marquette County Republican Party, made the abhorrent, dangerous and offensive statements calling for the death of student(s) on both Facebook and Twitter.
“What I was trying to get across, apparently very poorly, is that the violence at the college campus in Berkeley was reminiscent of the violence on college campuses in the ’60s,” Adamini said. “I fear that if we cannot get a handle on the violence, we might see the same type of tragic end.”
Kent State itself released a statement decyring the "abhorrent" posts.
May 4, 1970, was a watershed moment for the country and especially the Kent State University family. We lost four students that day while nine others were wounded and countless others were changed forever.
This abhorrent post is in poor taste and trivializes a loss of life that still pains the Kent State community today.
We invite the person who wrote this statement to tour our campus and our May 4 Visitors Center, which opened four years ago, to gain perspective on what happened 47 years ago and apply its meaning to the future.
