Burning the flag ... Whose flag is it?

In Oakland, California this Saturday there was what is known as an "action" conducted by Occupy Oakland.  This action began as an effort to claim and inhabit an abandoned convention center in Oakland for gathering and for continuing the services that were terminated when Occupy Oakland's common space at Oscar Grant Plaza was lost.  Last year Oscar Grant Square, the site of the Occupy Oakland commune was evicted by police.  The functioning commune was a center for developing consciousness, for feeding homeless citizens, providing medical care and education.  These are services that the established community in Oakland is unable or unwilling to provide.  More to the point, however, the Occupy Oakland commune, in solidarity with occupies world wide, serves as an example of a demonetized alternative to capitalism.  Thus it is seen as a mortal threat by the ruling elites, the capitalist class.

The effort to occupy the abandoned convention center was repulsed with repressive force by the Oakland Police who employed tear gas and other forms of "crowd control devices."  Thus, Occupy Oakland was, in essence, told to just disappear.  The irony of the moment could not have escaped the marchers that evening.  Here were police protecting abandoned buildings while homeless citizens were being abandoned around the nation: Property trumps social justice.  The marchers, many of whom were kettled by police and then told to disperse, were not able to leave.  More than 400 marchers were arrested.  Meanwhile, a branch of the march managed to escape the police kettling and moved toward Oakland City Hall.  They reported that the door was open.  Some marchers entered City Hall and left graphite as well as performing minor vandalism.  The part of all this that the mainstream media focused upon was the attempted burning of a US flag.  Why was the US flag the target of burning rage?  And, more importantly, why has the corporate media ignored the primary goal of the march: the attempt to occupy an unoccupied building in order to restore to the Oakland Occupy commune a common space.

I think it depends upon what the American Flag means to you personally as mediated by your experience as a citizen of the US.  When I was a young boy, I remember getting goose bumps when I recited with the entire student body of my grammar school the Pledge of Allegiance.  The Pledge itself was written in 1892 by Edward Bellamy, a socialist.  That is why "justice for all" appears in the recitation.  Now I have come to understand that the flag that represents my government, my democracy has been captured by the ruling elites.  Money is power in our nation.  The wealthiest portion of our  citizens, the 1%, the capitalist class  owns our economic and political system.   They have fashioned a one-party system to serve their interests first.  It is the capitalist party.  It has two right wings.  So when I look at the American Flag I have to ask myself, "Is it my flag or has it been hijacked?"   Is it now being used only as a symbol to rally Americans into wars that they do not want, or to vote against their own self-interests?  I think you need to ask yourself the same burning question.