Mexican flag burned after being raised over US flag

[Sir EvilFreeSmeg]

Immigration tensions spark flag-burning in A.J.

By Blake Herzog, Tribune
March 31, 2006

This week’s tensions over immigration reform literally caught fire in the East Valley on Thursday when students raised a Mexican flag over Apache Junction High School — and then other students yanked it down and burned it.

“I know (they) shouldn’t have burned the Mexican flag,” said Jacob Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore. “I heard it was raised above the American flag and that just irked me.”

He said the turbulence was tied to the newsmaking debates in the state Legislature and in Congress, where ideas from offering illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship to making them felons are being considered.

Freshman Chelsea Garcia, 15, and junior Brittany Ramage, 16, said the unrest had more to do with longrunning racial tensions at the school.

“(This week’s events) might have sparked a little more anger,” Ramage said. “But kids are not very deep about that stuff.”

The Hispanic student who brought the Mexican flag said he was responding to a racist remark directed at him Wednesday. The flagraising, flag-burning and shoving match that followed happened before most students arrived at school.

Six students — three Hispanic and three white — will be disciplined, principal Chad Wilson said.

Officials with the Apache Junction Unified School District would not specify what kind of punishment the six students face.

Wilson said in a letter sent home to parents that there would be “increased supervision, including additional police officers, on the campus over the next couple of days.”

District spokeswoman Carol Shepherd said the additional security was being brought in as a precaution.

“It’s one of those situations where if you didn’t have additional security and something did happen, we’d be challenged by parents about why we didn’t do anything,” she said.

Wilson said the increased security would include four off-duty police officers the district hired as security guards, along with its regular school resource officer.

By early afternoon Thursday, district officials said the environment on campus had sufficiently calmed down to continue preparing students to take Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards test next week.

“It’s much more conducive to quality learning today than it could have been,” Superintendent Gregory Wyman said.

Shepherd said parents were calling the district office about false rumors their children had brought home: “That the American flag had been burned — not true. That this had happened four or five times before — not true.”

The confrontation happened at the flagpole in front of the school’s Navy ROTC building, but Maj. Bill Parker, one of the organization’s advisers, said he did not know whether any of his students were involved.

He said ROTC provides diversity training to all its students, and about 20 percent of his NJROTC students are Hispanic.

About 17 percent of the overall student body is Latino, according to the district.

Wilson said he e-mailed teachers separately Thursday about the incident, but left it up to them to decide if and how they should address the issue in their classrooms.

He emphasized that six out of the school’s 1,618 students were involved in the flag fight, and many students might not have the same problems dealing with the racially charged immigration debate.

School flagpoles have been lightning rods across the country this week, including an incident in which a Houston high school principal was disciplined after he flew a Mexican flag underneath his campus’ U.S. and state flags.

A new political awareness among high school students has also been grabbing attention, as thousands of teenagers have walked out ofclasses to join rallies nationwide.

More than 100 students from Mesa’s Carson Junior High and Westwood High schools marched in protest on Mesa streets Tuesday.

Organizers of last Friday’s protest that drew 20,000 people of all ages and shut down miles of 24th Street in Phoenix are gearing up for another one on April 10.

During a news conference Wednesday, they begged high school students not to join in until after school lets out.

Former Mesa resident Mercedes Mercado-Ochoa, who attended the conference as a member of Unidos in Arizona, said many of the students are part of struggling families and may be the American-born children of illegal immigrants.

She said the way to get kids to protest responsibly is to provide them with positive role models, rather than encourage bad choices such as those made on both sides of the Apache Junction dispute.

“We need to be educating them on what César Chávez was all about — he wasn’t a boxer,” she said.

“And about Martin Luther King — what he wanted for the people.”
Source

1. Burning of flags period isn't the right thing to do.
2. This is the US. Our flag goes on top. No if, ands or buts.
3. The election in Mexico is going to determine how hard the poo hits the fan over the issue.
4. It's a high school. What do you expect?

[innorton38]

I'd have to agree with you on points 1, 2 and 4 (I don't know enough about 3). Regardless of your stance on the immigration issue, I can't think of a way to justify putting anyone else's flag above the US flag...

[caddad]

1. Burning of flags period isn't the right thing to do.
2. This is the US. Our flag goes on top. No if, ands or buts.



~1. I am not the judge of what is right to do for anyone but myself and to another degree my kids. I will say I won't ever burn a flag of any origin. I think if the person that burned the flag was the owner of the flag, there is absolutely nothing wrong with demonstrating in this way, unless of course it was burned in a no burning time//area. If the flag belonged to someone else, then it's destruction of property. I would defend the right to burn a flag as long as they aren't infringing on another person's property//rights.

~2. Agreed.

-D2netDad

[alexzed]

It's just some ink on a piece of cloth...people need to mell-llow. There weren't riots when the US hung the Canadian flag upside down. Though there were rumours of another 1812...

But rather than rake mud - guess those kids will be kids. Mimicing what they see on tv...burn the flag! *sigh*

[Stoutwood]

I'm amazed that anyone noticed that the Mexican flag was on top. I sure wouldn't have when I was in high school.

[Cannon Fodder]

1. Burning of flags period isn't the right thing to do.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. All the same, I would never stop someone else from doing it.

[Ranger14]

Geez, I need to watch the local news tonight. I rarely do that. As I have mentioned prior and it was noted in the report, there was a protest last week that drew well over 20,000 people and there wasn't a single incident. This was an incident at a local high school that obviously goes beyond the immigration issue at hand. Another note from a local perspective...folks out in Apache Junction (about twenty miles east of Phoenix) are a little different kind of folk as it is. Lots of different motorcycle gangs and illegal activities going on in that area.

The article should have mentioned the 15 year hispanic girl who stood up with the American flag and said she was American and proud of it.

I had an interesting visit with a mexican American who lives in that area about a year ago, who said there is a high tension between mexican americans and mexicans who are illegal and not american mexicans. He said mexicans who from here don't care much for the mexicans coming over now as they are making it bad for the ones who are here being positive and contributing citizens.

[Dondrei]

1. It's just a sodding rag, if you own it you can do what you want with it. Especially if you're protesting - what's more important, the flag or the freedoms the flag supposedly stands for? But of course, the kids who burnt it didn't own it.
2. Raising the Mexican flag over the American in America isn't on - whoever's in charge of the school should have taken them down and given the kids a good scolding, and that should be that. I don't even see why the Mexican flag could be raised in an American school at all. Unless it's some sort of "cultural awareness day" or something and they're serving nachos and wearing those big-arse hats.
3. Those kids burning that flag was an overreaction, and it's a pretty sad state of affairs when there are racial tensions in a school.

[EliManning]

The idea that the Mexican flag was above the US flag is no more a known fact of the story than the racist remarks the Mexican kid was responding to. According to the article, both are something that some kid said he heard. Personally, I find even one incidence of racism to be infinitely more offensive than launching every flag on Earth into the sun could ever hope to be.

[alexzed]

1. It's just a sodding rag

Amen. I mean, right!

3. Those kids burning that flag was an overreaction, and it's a pretty sad state of affairs when there are racial tensions in a school.

Are you kidding me? I grew up in whitebread central - that's 1970's and 80's Oakville for you. Population 40,000 at the time. Our school had 2 black children, the rest white. That wasn't the racial issue. It was the only catholic high school in the city - and people were bussed in from all over. We had 1200 students - about half of whom were from italian or portuguese families. It was not uncommon to see 'Die munga cakes' or 'Kill all the cakes' on the lockers and walls. Nothing was done to deal with that. Now reverse the situation - the white folk are writing 'Die Wops' or something to that ilk...today that is a hate crime and would make national news...

So what I'm saying is that racism is everywhere...and sometimes the unlikely are the victims! ESPECIALLY in high school - thats usually where it begins!