Revolution Club Dives In...
CHEERS to a Defiant Statement Dis‑Respecting the American Flag by Students at Occidental College
September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On September 10, reactionaries at Occidental College near Los Angeles planted 2,996 American flags on campus. When the sun came up on September 11, those flags were all in the trash. Posters appeared on campus based on a graphic Facebook posting circulated by actor Adrian Grenier that said: "R.I.P. The 2,996 Americans who died in 9/11. R.I.P. the 1,455,590 innocent Iraqis who died during the U.S. invasion for something they didn't do."
Speaking to the controversy, a statement posted on the Facebook page of Oxy United for Black Liberation said in part:
"As students of color, this symbol of the American flag is particularly triggering for many different reasons. For us, this flag is a symbol of institutionalized violence (genocide, rape, slavery, colonialism, etc.) against people of color, domestically as well as globally. Additionally, if the goal of the memorial is to commemorate the lives lost during 9/11, the singular nature of the American flag fails to account for the diversity of lives lost on that day."
The incident made national news. And the Revolution Club, Los Angeles, dived into the mix. They went out to the campus and called on students to gather and sit on and step on the U.S. rag in response to its atrocities while getting out the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP, Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution.
Many students joined the Revolution Club by sitting on the imperialist rag and wrote messages about why, including:
"Because my life doesn't matter to America."
"We shouldn't have to 'just accept' the way things are today like we are told by the generation before us."
"All people of the world should be equal and the American flag doesn't represent that."
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