Dear Editor
I am responding to an article you posted this week about a group of veterans who have been protesting at the WLA-VA for some time now who have come to a point in their protests that they have decided to sue the VA with the help of the ACLU because these veterans decided to hand the US flag upside down on the fence at the facility and the lag was taken down by the VA Police.
This is not the first time that this group have attracted the attention of the VA Police, some months ago during the height of the Iranian protests at the federal building when these veterans went on to VA land and confronted VA officers over the Police keeping watch over the VA grounds and these protesters as well, on the far side of the facility from the Iranian protesters.
In this latest incident these veterans decided in order to make their political statement more boldly and to attract more attention to their grievances over the disposition of the VA land, they would dare the VA Police to enforce the law against hanging articles upon the fence line, and the VA Police did their duty such as they perceived it to be by removing the flag.
I don’t know how this will all turn out in the courts, mu gut shot feeling is that equal protection under the law says, if I am not to hang my laundry on the fence then these folks ought not hang thir rgas on the fence either, because that’s what they do when they display the US flag upside down in my opinion, they trun the flag in to a rag to make some cheap political statement to further their political agenda like the demagogues they are.
I remember some years ago when some one, some where, burned the American flag in public. And when that person did, yet another person stepped out of the crowd there that day and punched the flag burner in the nose, and the puncher was arrested.
When there came the day the matter went to trial, the judge heard the facts of the incident, and ruled that burning of the flag was protected free speech, and that a punch in the face like wise was equal and opposite freedom of expression under the law saying if one chooses to make a provocative statement such as using the flag in such a manner then that individual should expect that any other reasonable person would react and that the flag burner should have anticipated a response that he generated by making such a statement to begin with.
Here we have in this example, that by hanging the flag upside down using a VA fence where the law says no one shall hang articles upon that fence, these individuals exempted them selves instead and bring suit, and no matter how much I for one may feel about their issue over the disposition of the VA land, I simply do not agree with the prostitution of the flag in order for demagogues to make their political statements and then have them think that no one has any right to disagree with what they did or have an emotional reaction, because some of us take it as an insult to do this to the flag we fought under as well and there are those of us who take a very dim view of this matter and are very capable of fighting back when we do.
Stewart Resmer
