DO Try This At Home...

Matter of Fact, We Will Tread on Your Nasty-Ass Imperialist Rag

June 30, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Chicago: Our Revolution Club decided to do an action giving commuters the opportunity to walk on the red, white and blue rag to build for the July 4th picnic. We got flags at Home Depot and ended up stapling 2 together in order to have a large enough swath to almost cover the entire ground where people exited from the turnstiles at a busy south side El train stop. We wrote some of the crimes carried out under the flag in black marker on the flags. We also made a 4x6 enlargement of the centerfold in the current paper “Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave”. This was almost too large to transport once we put it on foam core. 3x5 might have been better.

We knew what we were doing was legal (the exit from the trains is considered public property and it is legal to walk on the flag) but we expected to get flack from the police. So we printed out our legal rights and got a friend to dress up and be the person to interface with the authorities. This turned out to be a great idea. At times there were up to a dozen cops and various Chicago Transit Authority officials trying to figure out how to shut us down. Our friend was kept very busy the entire time we were there and the pigs never succeeded in shutting us down.

Two Revolution Club members in uniform stood on the ends of the flag to hold it in place and so the pigs couldn’t call it a safety hazard. Others held the huge “Land of the Thief and Home of the Slave” sign while one person loudly agitated.  Others passed out pluggers for the picnic and the “Time to Get Organized for an Actual Revolution” proclamation.

It was a wild scene. Some people really welcomed what we were doing, walked on the flag and gave us information about how to stay in touch. Some stayed and watched for a long time. Many took video and photos. Others hated it and told us so, although one woman after doing this returned some time later to apologize saying she hadn’t understood what we were all about. She asked for extra pluggers and proclamations to take to friends and family. The heavy police presence attracted people’s attention and more than a few seemed to enjoy taking the materials, or giving us their contact information right in the face of the pigs. There was also a significant number of people that tried to sort of ignore the whole thing as they pushed their way out of the turnstiles and headed home from work. At the end we marched out of the station doing our “we are the revcoms the mighty mighty revcoms” chant.

 

 

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.