GoFundMe raises $300,000+ for UNC students who protected American flag during protests

[ripcord]

https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/orange-county-news/gofundme-raises-300000-for-unc-students-who-protected-american-flag-during-protests/

This party might go down in history.

[jimfields33]

1. This great. What a wonderful student body.

And those who supported this important cause. Thank you!

[Think. Again.]

2. Good...

...less money going to trump's eventual gofundme.

[yardwork]

8. If you're interested, I can share quite a bit of knowledge about UNC.

Tearing down the American flag, throwing it on the ground, and raising another flag in its place was a supremely stupid thing to do.

UNC and its surrounding towns are deep blue. The student body and faculty are mostly progressive. That's why these protests are happening here, rather than on the more-conservative nearby campuses of Duke and NC State.

However, this is the south. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of flags in general, but living here I'm just grateful to see the American flag flying, rather than much-worse things like the Confederate flag and others. Many people here have a visceral reaction to seeing the flag desecrated. It's a very complicated symbol for many southerners, and progressive southerners have had to go against their own culture in some ways to embrace the American vs. Confederate flag. Complicated symbols create strong emotional bonds.

This stupid move on the part of the protesters will not motivate one single person over to their side. Instead, they've turned thousands upon thousands of people against them, people who might otherwise have been sympathetic or neutral.

They've handed the extreme right-wing state legislature more ammunition in their ongoing war against the state's flagship state university. They've hardened the UNC administration into not negotiating or talking.

It's such an incredibly stupid and non-strategic move I'd believe it if an outsider encouraged it, but it's more likely that a bunch of egomaniacs simply indulged their childish destructive fantasies.

[Think. Again.]

11. It was probably just instigators that took down the flag...

...in any case, it IS a stupid thing to do, or to get all bent out if shape over.

[yardwork]

14. You can consider it stupid to get bent out of shape over.

I assure you that many North Carolina Democrats disagree.

I'm sure that some "outside instigators" read DU. This is a public service heads up that ya'll are doing it wrong. Get smarter. I've lived through campus shootings in my life. I don't want it to happen again. I'm not interested i hearing how it will usher in some Glorious Revolution. It never has.

[Think. Again.]

16. I suspect the instigators...

...would like something like that to happen, we probably shouldn't give them any ideas.

Let them just keep yelling at people and riling up the masses, it's safer that way.

[Jedi Guy]

25. Indeed, yes.

Because every idiotic or counterproductive thing done during the protests is the fault of "instigators".

That excuse is wearing more than a little thin. In fact, one can see right through it at this point.

[Think. Again.]

29. You might want to read up a little..

...on how protests and their initial causes have been discredited and disrupted for centuries.

Or just look at the recent BLM events.

[Jedi Guy]

30. You might want to consider that sometimes, just sometimes...

People championing a cause you support behave badly. Supporting or protesting a cause neither confers automatic virtue nor removes the human frailties of stupidity or bad judgment.

Hand waving everything away as the work of dastardly "outside agitators" ignores and minimizes very real behavior that is problematic. In this case, that behavior is anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students by some of these protesters.

What you're doing here is giving them a pass simply because they're your "team". I don't play that game. If you choose to do so, go for it. There's a word for that.

[Think. Again.]

31. There have already been police reports ...

...on protest outsiders stirring up trouble in these protests.

I'm not just guessing at anything or throwing out unbased accusatiins as some peoole ARE doing, I'm responding realistically to what is happening in reality.

[Jedi Guy]

33. If you were wondering about that whooshing sound you just heard...

It was my point sailing right over your head.

Yes, some of the bad behavior was "outside agitators", which presumably means people unaffiliated with the universities where the protests were taking place. That could be literally anything from students' friends who don't attend the school to Blac Bloc anarchists to right-wing provocateurs. So there's that.

Even if we grant that these "outside agitators" were nefarious right-wing operatives, they were by no means responsible for all of the bad behavior and you can't say with certainty exactly what percentage they were responsible for. So when you hand-wave it away with the "outside agitators" canard, you're refusing to acknowledge, let alone deal with, the very real problem of anti-Semitism on the left.

[AnrothElf]

37. I wish I had your patience and clarity.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. lol Jesus

[obamanut2012]

5. Can you believe this, man?!

[Cuthbert Allgood]

18. I hate this timeline I was put on.

What the actual fuck is happening?

[Glorfindel]

26. Can't tell you, Bert. I'm just passing through myself.

"Dazed and confused" seems to be the order of the day.

[obamanut2012]

4. Why do you think this is a good thing?

[Jedi Guy]

7. Do you think it's a bad thing? N/T

[obamanut2012]

20. Yes, I do

[Jedi Guy]

22. Okay. Why?

Edit to add: Putting up the Palestinian flag is, I assume, an act of respect by the protesters, and I further assume you're okay with that.

Why, then, is it not okay for someone else to show respect to the American flag in response to that? Why is the one okay but the other isn't?

To be clear, I think the amount of money lavished on them by the GoFundMe is a bit silly and over the top, but people spend their money where they want to, not where I think they should.

[Ping Tung]

6. "Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds

“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”
Arundhati Roy

[ripcord]

9. So that is why the protesters wanted to switch the flags so badly

[Ping Tung]

12. Maybe. What do you think?

Switch what pieces of colored cloth?

[Demsrule86]

10. I come from a miltary family. My Mom and Dad were Navy...

My bother and sister were Marines. The Flag is an important symbol of our country which many of my ancestors starting with the revolution have defended against all enemies. I completely disagree with you.

[Ping Tung]

13. It's an important symbol to those who believe in advrtising.

I suppose one could say that I come from a military family. 2 uncles landed at Normandy under the Canadian flag. My brother was in the Air Force, one of my brothers-in-law was in the army in WWII the BIL was in navy at the same time. I was in the marines '61 - '65. While I was in I was going to do my damndest to avoid dying or killing for bit of colored cloth.

I fully agree with Arundhati Roy's description.

[Demsrule86]

32. We can agree to disagree I guess...my uncle was in DDay and when they liberated

Buchenwald. Many young soldiers gave their lives during our entire history. This country isn't perfect. We have big issues. But it is my country and my flag.

[Ping Tung]

34. Two of my uncles were at Normandy. They were Canadians.

My grandfather was a Brit soldier who fought in the Boer war and in India.
My brother was in the air force and was a participate in the Korean war. I was in the marines when the US became involved in SE Asia (aka the Vietnam war).
They asked me to reenlist or extend my enlistment. I refused to do so because I considered it to be an act of aggression made to burnish LBJ's anti-communist creds and I had no desire to kill people I didn't know and had nothing against for the sake of LBJ or a flag.

But, yes, we can agree to disagree.

[Demsrule86]

36. My husband's is named for his uncle who was an RAF pilot who died defending the UK.

He was Irish and in his early 20's when he died. Luckily, you had a choice. Many didn't you know.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

17. My dad was in the army in WWII

and my brother was in the Navy in Viet Nam.

The flag is more often than not used as a propaganda tool to whip people up into a frenzy. As evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars raised for these nimwits.

[obamanut2012]

21. It is a piece of nationalistic cloth, as your post proves

And as those Tarheels in the OP prove.

I also come from a military family, and it is a piece of cloth, one used as a cudgel against marginalized people in the past and present.

[Sky Jewels]

40. Flag worship is so fucking depressing.

People knock themselves out over a piece of fabric, not what the material is supposed to represent -- freedom, justice, and all those other values that are being stomped by jingoistic Maga idiots and others.

[catsudon]

19. i guess the chinese government have no reason

to get made at a teen pop star waving a Republic of China flag?

hopefully Taiwan will get a new national flag soon.

[AkFemDem]

23. Tell that to the dumbasses who raised the Palestinian flag.

[Ping Tung]

24. How about Israeli flags? Irish flags? Italian? Bhutanese?

They're all bits of colored cloth.

[JustAnotherGen]

27. The Confederate Flag?

Just a piece of colored cloth with no meaning? I'm assuming based on your family's service record they were not a part of a segregated military that was relegated to being cooks.

So my question is - should I - the daughter of one of the first green Berets - who happened to be a black man from Alabama should just accept that piece of colored cloth?

Cool - I was born at Rammstein AFB Hospital (The Russkie Lovers had blown up the maternity ward of the Army hospital two weeks before I was born) . . . in honor of my country of birth - should I just go ahead and fly a German and a Nazi flag because - Hey! Just pieces of colored cloth.

Miss me with this - okay?

I need you to be consistent. Can you say clearly and honestly your belief that the Confederate States of America flag should be flown freely at say - the United States of America Capitol? I mean - its just little pieces of cloth with no history AT ALL of intimidation, hate, or disregard for America.

Careful - my Uncle Doug was at SC Orangeburg when AFTER the lynchings happened - some asshole raised a Johnny Reb Flag as a big fuck you to a HBCU student body.

[JustAnotherGen]

28. I think it is cool!

Calderon and several of his fellow students worked to prevent the flag from touching the ground, all the while he says he and others were pelted with objects by protesters.

“So many Americans in history have fought for the ideals of justice and freedom that that flag represents, and who are we if we don’t take some water balloons and take some yelling and chaos to reap the benefits of what they’ve sown for American society,” he said

Good on him!

There is only ONE American flag.

I'm old enough to remember Bree Newsome. I see no difference between these men that kept the American flag from touching the ground and her heroic act of taking down a Foreign Enemy's flag.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/6/27/15880052/bree-newsome-south-carolinas-confederate-flag


I also still love my Governor Murphy for taking down the Mississippi state flag from the Liberty Island State Park that New Jersey tax payers pay for.

The jerks knew what they were doing when they took down the American flag. It was deliberate and malicious.

I applaud the young men who raised an American flag in Offense.

[Think. Again.]

35. "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951),

[AnrothElf]

38. Who knew it would be a Russian or Palestinian flag, amirite?!

I always thought he meant an American flag.

[Sky Jewels]

39. Americans care more about a piece of fabric than about

people being slaughtered. It figures.

This is moronic. What a waste of money and what a stupid hill to die on.