Hanover
The standard-bearers, members of several motorcycle clubs for military veterans, were waiting for Tim Messen, a Dartmouth junior who had announced plans to burn the Stars and Stripes in protest of Trump’s inauguration.
“Don’t worry, there’s not going to be any fires,” one of them told a Hanover firefighter who went around the circle shaking hands.
The hours that would follow saw a tense confrontation that mirrored the divisions of November’s election.
No flags were burned, ultimately, and no one was hurt, according to police. But for a moment, the hopes, fears and resentments that defined the 2016 campaign flared into the open.
Messen declared his intentions in an op-ed in the student newspaper The Dartmouth on Thursday.
In his piece, he cited a Nov. 29 tweet in which the now 45th president opined that people who burn the American flag should lose their citizenship or face a year in prison. To Messen, Trump’s attack on flag burning — a practice that the Supreme Court deems constitutionally protected free speech — smacked of authoritarianism.
“To burn the U.S. flag is fully within our rights,” Messen wrote. “Ceding ground on this right for fear of disturbing some unity, which has never really existed — much like the ‘Great America’ Trump tells us is past — capitulates to the anti-civil libertarian views already clearly voiced by the incoming administration.
“In this moment, we need neither unity nor healing but an active and engaged citizenry unafraid to exercise its rights. I invite Dartmouth’s community to join me on the Green this Friday for a discussion on what rights are threatened by the incoming administration, what steps we can take to ensure that they are not simply taken away and what burning an American flag might achieve. And then, if we so wish, we will burn the flag, for we are free to do so.”
Messen’s invitation to protest had been so impromptu, he said later, that he at first didn’t see a need to register the event with local police.
In a document he filed later with the Hanover Police Department, on the advice of a Dartmouth administrator, Messen said he doubted that more than 50 people would show up. There probably would be no counter-protesters, he said.
“I expect more than anything apathy from students and community members,” he said in an email attached to a request for a protest permit.
He got anything but that.
After Messen’s op-ed went online, Dartmouth students sent a link to a talk radio host at WNTK-FM, a station licensed out of New London.
The host, Keith Hanson of “Live and Local in the Morning,” mentioned on air Friday morning the possibility of a flag burning, and encouraged listeners to stage a counter-demonstration.
Hanson, who was among the crowd that grew around the flagbearers on Friday afternoon, said that after the show he had contacted area motorcycle groups, including the local chapter of Rolling Thunder, an organization that supports veterans. News also spread through social media, and soon scores of people were planning to attend.
Hanson acknowledged that burning the flag is a right afforded by the First Amendment’s protections of free speech.
“Do I support freedom of expression?” he said. “Yes, you have a right to freedom of expression, but with that right comes responsibility. You have a responsibility to consider what that means to people who have pledged all to defend those rights.”
John Hendrick, of Plainfield, was one of the bikers carrying a flag.
“It’s their right,” he allowed, but added, “The guy hasn’t even been president a day and they’re protesting him. They ought to put on their big boy pants.”
Hendrick wouldn’t say who he had voted for in November, but said he “in a way” supported Trump.
“I support some of the things he said,” Hendrick said. “He might be the best president we ever had. We don’t know yet.”
Meanwhile, more and more people appeared on the green. By 4:30 p.m., more than a hundred were milling around the flagbearers, speculating aloud about what would happen.
“I don’t think he’ll dare show up,” one student said.
Suddenly, the crowd rushed in one direction. Messen had arrived.
First, he told everyone, his voice faint despite the use of a bullhorn, “We won’t be burning the American flag today.”
Messen said he had a prepared statement to read, after which he hoped to have a conversation about free speech and the flag.
He looked down at a piece of paper and began to speak, and almost immediately was drowned out by people reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. His words came through in snippets, interspersed with the lines of the oath.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag—”
“Burning the flag is an act of respect, rather than sacrilege—”
“And to the Republic for which it stands—”
“To place the value of the American republic on a piece of striped cloth—”
”One Nation under God, indivisible—”
“—is to misplace and misvalue what is wonderful about living here.”
In many other countries, Messen went on to say, flag burning is illegal. The United States is special for the very reason that its citizens are allowed to destroy the national symbol that draws them together, he said.
“It’s illegal anywhere!” a man screamed, taking several steps toward Messen.
“Let him speak!” others shouted.
Hanson attempted to interrupt as well, but Messen kept going, enumerating Trump’s cabinet picks and the reasons why he thought them unfit.
The heckling continued until Messen finished his statement. As he exhorted the crowd to “remain unafraid and educated,” a woman shouted, “What about the blue-collar workers?”
As he asserted that Trump threatened to “bring America back into the early 1800s,” the flag-bearers moved to his side, closing a tight circle around him.
“I thank all of you for provoking me” to have a candid public dialogue, he said in closing. “I thus pledge allegiance to the flag and a better United States of America with liberty and justice for all.”
Hanson stepped in to reiterate his point about responsible use of freedoms.
“The reason you can stand here on this green and not get shot in the head is because of Americans who have fought and shed their blood so that you can be here,” he said.
After that, Messen thanked the crowd, invited them to email him and left.
This was not Messen’s first act of protest on campus. In 2014, he and other students disrupted a public forum with former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, posing the then-presidential candidate lewd questions designed to mock his stances on LGBT issues.
The incident made national headlines thanks to a question from another student about whether Perry would be willing to have sex with a man in exchange for campaign contributions.
Messen, for his part, criticized Perry’s past likenings of homosexuality to alcoholism, asking him what it had been like to work with Annise Parker, the mayor of Houston, who is openly gay.
Although the possibility of a flag burning had ended with Messen’s speech and his departure, many of the protesters, the counter-demonstrators and the merely curious stayed afterward to talk.
Messen, meanwhile, moved to the nearby Collis Center for a talk with one of the leaders of the counter-protest, Skip Rollins, a state representative for Newport and Unity who is also a member of the Rolling Thunder group.
They sat down across from each other at a conference room table — Rollins, his leather biker’s vest festooned with pins; Messen, wearing a striped scarf over a hoodie — and tried to find common ground.
The two men agreed that Messen had the right to burn the flag. Where they diverged was on the question of whether he should.
Messen said that his family had immigrated to the United States, in 1992, from Moscow, at a time when strongman rulers in Eastern Europe suppressed free speech and dissent in a way that to Messen resembled Donald Trump.
Exercising a right, Messen argued, is a way to protest an incoming leader who does not appear to respect it. In that sense, flag burning is a way of affirming democracy and freedom, he said.
“It’s a paradox, right?” Messen said.
Rollins asked Messen and a few other students in the room whether they knew what a “gold-star” parent is. A gold-star parent has lost a son or daughter in combat, he explained.
Justin A. Rollins, a U.S. Army specialist who grew up in Newport, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on March 5, 2007.
Rollins on Friday said that his son had cherished the flag while he lived. After he died, the Patriot Guard Riders, a motorcycle group devoted to the military dead, attended the funeral.
To pay them back, Rollins said, he joined Rolling Thunder, a group that helps bring back troops missing or killed in action and raises money to aid struggling veterans at home.
“They’ve sacrificed and they’ve seen their sons die for this country,” Rollins said, “Just like I saw my son die, although I didn’t see him die. That flag to them symbolizes our freedom, and it’s their sacrifice that they made that has given you the freedom to burn that flag.”
It may be Messen’s right to burn the flag, Rollins said, “but it is very painful to the veterans to see that happen, to see that someone doesn’t respect … the sacrifices they make to give you the freedom to still do that.”
The two sides found little common ground on other topics, including what may happen during Trump’s presidency. What they did agree on, however, was that the protest had sparked a conversation they otherwise wouldn’t have had, and that they should talk some more.
“If there’s any unity or cooperation or healing it has to come from below,” Messen said. “It can’t be forced on us.”
That Rollins could agree with.
The two exchanged email addresses, and spoke of organizing some kind of discussion in the future. They parted ways with “biker hugs”: clasping hands, then slapping each other on the back.
Afterward, Messen said his feelings about the event were still “swirling,” but mentioned that he felt some regret about his decision not to burn a flag.
Part of his decision to back down, he said, came from warnings from police that people online had made threats against him and his family.
Later on Friday, Hanover Police Chief Charlie Dennis said that his department had not received any outright threats.
“We were contacted by people from another state who wanted to get a group to come here,” he said, “who wanted to know what their rights were in terms of pulling a flag from his hands so that it wouldn’t be burned.”
Dennis said he had told them that that would be illegal.
“Is it a threat?” he said. “No. Does it mean something may happen? It could.”
Later, in an email, Messen said he felt the protest had accomplished two things: mobilizing those with concerns about Trump, while also connecting groups who usually do not engage with one another.
“I am told that many students hung around and spoke with veterans/locals and that although they found many points of disagreement, they were also able to make meaningful connections that are lost in the Trump/Hillary dichotomy,” he said. “I don’t think the goal should be to have everyone agree on everything, but it should be for everyone to feel welcome to voice their thoughts freely and engage civilly, non-violently with other citizens.”
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.