{"id":178573,"date":"2018-10-23T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T02:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/23\/i-approve-of-this-flag-burning\/"},"modified":"2018-10-23T21:19:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T02:19:00","slug":"i-approve-of-this-flag-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/10\/23\/i-approve-of-this-flag-burning\/","title":{"rendered":"I Approve of this Flag Burning"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 280px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/ywbpehV.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" bordercolor=\"white\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/ywbpehV.png\" width=\"270\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>Burning this flag is a good thing<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacy Abrams, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2018\/10\/23\/democratic-candidate-isnt-sorry-she-once-burned-georgia-flag\/\">participated in a burning of the Georgia flag in 1992<\/a> because of its extremely prominent placement of the racist confederate flag:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Just 30 or so people attended the 1992 protest on the steps of Georgia\u2019s State Capitol \u2014 a smattering of student activists but mostly reporters and a few Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, snapping photos of demonstrators lighting a state flag on fire. <\/p>\n<p>In the center of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution photo chronicling the event was a Spelman College freshman named Stacey Abrams, who, 26 years later, finds herself locked in a race that could make her the nation\u2019s first black female governor \u2014 and who is unapologetic about her role in the demonstration. <\/p>\n<p>In a statement Tuesday, Abrams\u2019s campaign said she was part of a movement to remove the Confederate emblem from the Georgia flag. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring Stacey Abrams\u2019 college years, Georgia was at a crossroads, struggling with how to overcome racially divisive issues, including symbols of the confederacy, the sharpest of which was the inclusion of the confederate emblem in the Georgia state flag,\u201d her campaign said in a statement about the photo, which resurfaced Monday. \u201cStacey was involved with a permitted, peaceful protest against the confederate emblem in the flag. This conversation was sweeping across Georgia as numerous organizations, prominent leaders, and students engaged in the ultimately successful effort to change the flag.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good.&nbsp; Embrace this.&nbsp; You were right then, and you are right now.<\/p>\n<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 250px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"180\" scrolling=\"auto\" src=\"\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/2gYwCS6n-zFOPDjEV.html\" width=\"240\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>It got caught on tape<\/i><\/div>\n<p>She still has a tough row to hoe to win, she&#8217;s black, she&#8217;s a woman, she&#8217;s unabashedly progressive, it&#8217;s Georgia, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/politics-news\/brian-kemp-leaked-audio-georgia-voting-745711\/\">her opponent is the Georgia Secretary of State and has been recorded saying that he wants to suppress the vote<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams\u2019 voter turnout operation \u201ccontinues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,\u201d according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">An attendee of the \u201cGeorgia Professionals for Kemp\u201d event says they recorded 21 minutes and 12 seconds of the evening, held last Friday at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar near Atlanta\u2019s Buckhead neighborhood. As proof of their attendance, the source shared with Rolling Stone a receipt of their donation, which granted access to the gathering.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Not long after Kemp began his remarks, the candidate expressed worry about early voting and \u201cthe literally tens of millions of dollars that they [the Abrams camp] are putting behind the get-out-the-vote effort to their base.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Kemp then asserted that much of that Abrams effort is focused on absentee ballot requests. \u201cThey have just an unprecedented number of that,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote \u2014 which they absolutely can \u2014 and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">It is fairly typical for a political candidate expressing confidence in his campaign to lament his opponent\u2019s efforts to increase turnout. But Kemp\u2019s position as Georgia\u2019s Secretary of State clouds his statements. While it is not uncommon for someone in such a position to be on a ballot during an election that he or she oversees \u2014 they do have to run for re-election, after all \u2014 the state\u2019s top elections official speaking of \u201cconcern\u201d about increased early and absentee voting raises further questions about a conflict of interest. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Kemp\u2019s recent decision to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/politics-news\/georgia-voter-suppression-736362\/\">suspend more than 53,000 voter applications<\/a>, 70 percent of which were filed by black residents, for violating the state\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/georgias-voter-suppression-problem-goes-much-deeper-than-brian-kemp\/2018\/10\/20\/67dab6c2-cd9b-11e8-a3e6-44daa3d35ede_story.html?utm_term=.1e0aaaa4b2fa\">\u201cexact match\u201d<\/a> verification standard has drawn attention to his penchant for restrictive voter laws and purging of voter rolls. American Public Media reported last week that Kemp <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apmreports.org\/story\/2018\/10\/19\/georgia-voter-purge\">purged an estimated 107,000 voters last year <\/a>simply because they didn\u2019t vote in the prior election. He is also being sued for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/08\/14\/politics\/georgia-brian-kemp-voter-data\/index.html\">leaving more than 6 million Georgia voting records open to hacking<\/a>. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Reached for comment, Abigail Collazo, Director of Strategic Communications for the Abrams campaign, said, \u201cBrian Kemp is barely trying to hide the shameful fact that his strategy is to win through voter suppression. The idea that he, as Secretary of State, would be \u2018concerned\u2019 that hardworking Georgians are exercising their right to vote is disgraceful and outrageous.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If there is any justice in the world, Brian Kemp will spend the rest of his life in prison for this, but Republicans approve of him, and Democrats lack the guts to go after rat f%$#s like him, so he&#8217;ll die surrounded by his loved one, as opposed to being shanked in a prison laundry, which is what he deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burning this flag is a good thing Democratic candidate for Georgia governor Stacy Abrams, participated in a burning of the Georgia flag in 1992 because of its extremely prominent placement of the racist confederate flag: Just 30 or so people attended the 1992 protest on the steps of Georgia\u2019s State Capitol \u2014 a smattering of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,413,368,375,364,389,374,590,639],"class_list":["post-178573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-civil-rights","tag-corruption","tag-elections","tag-evil","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-protests","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}