Anti-Trump protesters set US flags on fire in New York City
A group of protesters have set fire to the American flag outside Donald Trump’s hotel in New York City, shortly after the US president-elect said flag burners should be jailed or have their citizenship revoked.
Gathering outside Trump International Hotel on Tuesday, activists from the Revolutionary Communist Party and other political movements burned at least two flags while chanting slogans against the New York businessman.
Earlier in the day, had said in a tweet that “there must be consequences” for burning the flag.
“Donald Trump is a fascist,” the group chanted. “You know who else outlawed desecrating national symbols? It was Hitler and Nazi Germany.”
Following Trump’s election victory against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on November 8, thousands of protesters took to the streets across the US and demonstrated against him over his racist campaign rhetoric.
Initially, Trump tried to calm the situation by commending the protesters’ sense of nationality, but he lost his cool when the flag burning began.
“The US/American flag deserves to be burned,” the protesters said Tuesday. “It is a symbol of genocide, of oppression, of death squads and Honduras and Guatemala.”
“We refuse to accept a fascist America,” the group’s speaker shouted when the flags went up in flames.
In an apparent jab to Trump’s campaign slogan of “making America Great Again,” the group shouted that the country “was never great.”
Despite Trump’s suggested punishments, the US Supreme Court has twice affirmed the practice as a way of exercising free speech. The cases were brought to the high court in 1989 and 1990.
Despite it being a right protected by the Constitution, American lawmakers have tried at least two times to ban flag desecration.
In 1989, former President George H.W. Bush introduced the Flag Protection Act which was blocked on the ground that it was unconstitutional.
The Flag Protection Act of 2005 was another failed attempt to criminalize the practice, despite being co-sponsored by then-Senator Hillary Clinton.
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