This Wednesday, just three days short of Fourth of July weekend, a political group is planning to burn a collection of American flags in Brooklyn, New York.
The official protest will take place at 7:30 pm in Brooklyn’s Fort Green park and has acquired roughly 300 RSVPs, according to the Disarm NYPD Facebook page.
According to Vice,
The event sprouted from a Confederate flag burning that was supposed to take place last weekend, but was delayed due to sh*tty weather. When they regrouped and announced a new date, Disarm NYPD had replaced the Confederate flag with the American.
In the wake of the Charleston tragedy, similar groups have staged Confederate flag burnings, like the one last weekend in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, but Disarm NYPD argues that the American flag should be treated no differently. According to their Facebook post, “However, the Confederacy lost the war the American flag has unceasingly, from the first day it was ever hung, represented the exact same thing.” [sic]
Putting an end to hate by haphazardly spreading more probably isn’t the way to go. Dylan Roof, the same man this political group seeks to dethrone, defaulted to the same tactic long before his deadly church shooting, while simultaneously being enamored by the confederate flag.
After receiving unwanted media attention, Disarm NYPD took to their Facebook page to clear a few things up:
Last week, we created an event called “Burn the American Flags”, which has invoked quite a reaction from people, both positive and negative. What we had intended to be a decidedly small, unspectacular gathering of burning symbols of oppression has been shared thousands of times and has been picked up by the press. We feel that we should take this opportunity to further clarify our position on the subject.
We maintain, unwaveringly, that both the Confederate flag, and the American flag are symbols of oppression. We must keep in mind that the Confederacy only lasted four years. Between the years of 1776 and 1861, slavery was upheld by the United States of America, not the Confederacy. In the years following the war, Jim Crow, segregation, and the extreme expansion of the prison industrial complex were all upheld by the United States of America, not the Confederacy. And now, in the 21st century, foreign wars are fought in our name for capitalist imperialist interests, while at home, systemic racism is alive and well.
Despite this, many people are rather offended by our decision to burn the American flag. We find it a sign of the times that people can care so much about a piece of cloth, while at the same time be so quiet about black churches being burned all over the country. Perhaps this is the great difference between us and the so-called “patriots”. While they express their loyalty to symbols, we express our loyalty to the lives of the oppressed.
We do not believe the ideals of America are anything to be revered. We are building something that will be much better than America. While the so-called patriots yell that we should just leave, we instead choose to dream. We dream of what real freedom looks like: freedom from paramilitaries occupying our communities, beating and killing our sons and daughters; freedom from our communities being destroyed by the speculative capital of gentrification; freedom from mass surveillance; and freedom from systemic racism.
So, we will burn the American flag, a symbol of oppression and genocide, and in the same action, dismantle our stunted, cynical expectations of what is possible in the world. The current trajectory of history is unsustainable. It is completely unrealistic to desire things stay as they are, and more unrealistic, even abominable, to desire to “go back to our roots”. We, the dreamers, are the true realists. We know things can’t continue this way, so we commit to building a better world. A world better than America.
Will this do anything substantial? No. Will it cause more problems? Absolutely. You know what won’t?
Putting an end to all of it and acting like a f*cking human being.
[H/T: Vice]
