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Protesters Try to Remove Maine Peace Flags
Protesters Try to Remove Maine Peace Flags Fri Nov 11,10:24 AM ET
Yahoo News
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WATERVILLE, Maine - Protesters led by a veterans post tried to remove a flag display placed by peace activists at a veterans cemetery, and five were charged with criminal trespass.
The display remained intact Friday, Veterans Day, despite a threat by at least one of the protesters to return later to finish yanking up the flags.
The display of 2,000 white flags, meant to remember U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, was set up at Veterans Memorial Park cemetery Oct. 30 under a permit issued to Waterville Area Bridges for Peace and Justice.
Members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post complained, saying they wanted the flags removed before Veterans Day. The permit allows the flags to remain in place until the first snowfall.
On Thursday, about 10 people went to the cemetery and, under the glare of television camera lights, some began removing the flags as eight peace group members and sympathizers gathered nearby. Police moved in quickly to make the arrests.
Wayne Elkins, the VFW commander who led the protesters and was among those detained, said he had no problem with the peace group, as long as it stays out of the cemetery.
"They desecrated our veterans' grounds. If they want to protest, let them protest. We don't mind. But to desecrate hallowed ground is wrong," he said.
He and the four others were released on the condition that they stay away from the park until Sunday, police said.
The peace activists stayed out of the fracas.
"Obviously, I don't want to fight them for the flags," said Bill Lord, a Vietnam veteran. "Really, I think that the VFW and Bridges for Peace and Justice have a lot in common. I believe in peacefully working things out."
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... should consider an alliance with their neighbors in Vermont concerning whom one Jason Miller has recently written:
In support of the brave and intelligent citizens of Vermont who recently passed a resolution to secede from the union, I decided to update and modify our Declaration of Independence to fit the circumstances we are facing in 2005. Despite the numerous distinctions between then and now, in some significant ways, little has changed. Like our Founding Fathers, I enumerated grievances of the Oppressed in my version of the Declaration, and many are similar to those spelled out in the original version drafted in 1776. Even the name of the lead Oppressor remains the same.
... I believe it is crucial to fan the dying embers of the American spirit of independence in a time of unprecedented apathy, conformity, and complicity in the crimes of our abomination of a federal government. George Bush is not fit to lick the boots of a man like Thomas Paine, yet he is one of the most powerful men on the planet. With the might of the US government at their disposal, he and his loyal minions have committed duplicitous, larcenous, and homicidal acts virtually on a continual basis throughout their reign. In a symbolic act of defiance against King George, and an act of support for social justice and human rights, I have signed my revision of the Declaration.
Thomas Paine was one of the few Founding Fathers who championed the rights of the "common people". Paine recognized the universality of human rights, which is why he has not been enshrined in the "American pantheon" with the likes of Washington and Hamilton. Were he alive today, he would once again be vehemently agitating for change as he caught scent of the overwhelming stench emanating from the seemingly grand epicenter of inhumanity rising from the banks of the Potomac River.
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"Find out just what people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." -- Frederick Douglass