Village President John Deschane, 60, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said many people in town believe it’s disrespectful to fly the flag upside down.
“If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it,” Deschane said
Translation from Right Wing Bullshit to Real English:
“You have the right to free speech unless we dislike what you say or how you say it”
“We’re Fighting For Your Freedom, How DARE you go ahead and actually use that Freedom?”
Dispute over flag protest erupts in Wisc. village
APBy ROBERT IMRIE, Associated Press Writer Robert Imrie, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 10, 2:44 pm ET
WAUSAU, Wis. – An American flag flown upside down as a protest in a northern Wisconsin village was seized by police before a Fourth of July parade and the businessman who flew it — an Iraq war veteran — claims the officers trespassed and stole his property.
A day after the parade, police returned the flag and the man’s protest — over a liquor license — continued.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin is considering legal action against the village of Crivitz for violating Vito Congine Jr.’s’ First Amendment rights, Executive Director Chris Ahmuty said.
“It is not often that you see something this blatant,” Ahmuty said.
In mid-June, Congine, 46, began flying the flag upside down — an accepted way to signal distress — outside the restaurant he wants to open in Crivitz, a village of about 1,000 people some 65 miles north of Green Bay.
He said his distress is likely bankruptcy because the village board refused to grant him a liquor license after he spent nearly $200,000 to buy and remodel a downtown building for an Italian supper club.
Congine’s upside-down-flag represents distress to him; to others in town, it represents disrespect of the flag.
Hours before a Fourth of July parade, four police officers went to Congine’s property and removed the flag under the advice of Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey.
Neighbor Steven Klein watched in disbelief.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ Klein said. “They said, ‘It is none of your business.'”
The next day, police returned the flag.
Brey declined comment Friday.
Marinette County Sheriff Jim Kanikula said it was not illegal to fly the flag upside down but people were upset and it was the Fourth of July.
“It is illegal to cause a disruption,” he said.
The parade went on without any problems, Kanikula said.
Village President John Deschane, 60, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam, said many people in town believe it’s disrespectful to fly the flag upside down.
“If he wants to protest, let him protest but find a different way to do it,” Deschane said.
Congine, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq in 2004, said he intends to keep flying the flag upside down.
“It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else,” Congine said, “and then I come home to find it right here at my front door.”
At least they didn’t beat up any elderly and disabled people…
This time…
It is ,technically, illegal to fly the flag upside down, or to do many things with the likeness of the flag that are done every day by so-called patriotic people.
That being said, it is much more patriotic to exercise one’s right to protest in any peaceful way one chooses, than to engage in “plastic patriotism” and fly the flag while trampling the freedoms that the flag is supposed to represent, even if that peaceful protest is to fly the flag upside down, or burn it, or whatever.
copycat
Actually flying the flag upside down is permitted in the Flag code.
Using it for advertising, putting it on disposable (meant to be discarded or soiled) products like matchbooks, paper plates or napkins, flying two U.S. flags, flying a flag in a manner that the flag is not rated to bear… not making an effort to retrieve a flag once it’s lost from your vehicle…
For instance those flag-on-a-stick devices you buy at wally-world for 93 cents aren’t rated to be flown from a moving vehicle and when they are, they quickly become soiled, tattered and eventually break off or tear off in the 40-60 mph wind stresses that a vehicle typically inflicts.
If they want to display a flag from a moving vehicle technically it’s impossible to do it, other than very slow moving vehicles like in a parade,
OR
If it’s painted on the right-hand side of the vehicle.
Since they use the bought for under a dollar “patriotism” as an excuse to condemn peace activists or people who don’t lock-step obey the President…
and I used to be a flag-waver. Until I became either disillusioned or enlightened, whichever for the moment best describes the feelings.
But I walk or ride a bicycle everywhere. So I move slowly and I find quite a few of their flags ripped from their vehicles by the force of their own slipstream winds.
Two that particularly upset me were one I found right at the pedestrian exit from the parking lot of Bell-Textron Ft Worth. Right where all these “super patriots” who worked for a GodDamn “defense” War Industry plant had to deliberately ignore it as they walked from their parked Selfish User Vehicles to their babykilling Workplace. From the accumulation of mud on it I could tell it had been there a week.
Another I found on the side of Highway 24 right before getting into Woodland Park, I had to take a 10-100 (“better than a ten-two hundred” like the joke from a movie) and there was the flag, tattered, dragged partially into a Rat Nest and the rat was shredding it to line his/her hole.
I replaced it with a bandanna and took it as a condemnation of the Pseudo-Patriots.