I burnt the US flag several times in 1990. Mostly during the
Gulf War.
But we (me and my friends in the
Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade) also held a flag burning on June 10th,
1990 (I think) on the steps of the
Art Institute of
Chicago.
We did this on the day after the
US Supreme Court decided flag burning was
free speech.
So there we were me,
Jethro (what a brother know),
Kevin,
Juliette,
Anika,
Ed,
Karyn and , well I don't remember who else, but there couldn't have been more than a dozen of us.
We were in turn surrounded by a ring of Chicago
Cops who were in turn surrounded by a
ring of
photographers,
reporters and other assorted media types.
We got down to business burning two or three flags we had ripped off the night before (cloth ones burn better than nylon or plastic ones). The jounalist got down to business taking pictures and getting sound bites and the cops just stood around pissed off that they couldn't bust us for burning the flag.
After that we went out to
Java Jive for espresso. From there I called my
Mom, who said, "where are you?"
I responded, "At Java Jive" She said, "I saw you on TV burning the flag. Don't come home." I said, "ok," and returned to my java. This was
7 days after graduating
High School and I was pretty damn
psyched to get the hell out of the house.
The upshot of the story is that this act of flagrant flag burning got me one of my
15 minutes of fame. Yep,
Newsweek was at that flag burning and they put
Jethro (what a brother know),
Juliette and I into their swell magazine. We shared an article with some
rapper from
Florida who sang nasty songs about
nasty sex. I don't remember his name.
If you want to check it out (the photo) go to the local
library and find the issue of Newsweek with
Madonna and
Dick Tracy on the cover from June 1990. Then go to the flag burning article... I'm the kid holding the flaming flag wearing a
kafiya and a
Bob Marley t-shirt.