They aren’t terrorists in far-off lands, plotting day and night to undermine America. They are unenlightened Americans. That fact only heightens the depravity of what has been done. Burning our nation’s flag has never been an appropriate way to express a grievance about any political ill even when it regards racial injustice.

For those Americans who treated our Star Spangled Banner as “just a piece of cloth,” what they forget, or worse, do not know  is our flag represents what we stand for as a nation and everyone we’ve lost in pursuit of that. Such groups of ill-informed “activists” prove only how “non-peaceful” acts become meaningless and damaging.

Any degree of progress that comes as a result of Ferguson will still have been one step forward and two steps back, given these seditious acts  in the past weeks. Such misplaced anger was a grave mistake.  Peaceful protest are and always have been a “freedom” and a judicious means to express disapproval and enact change, but what has been done is nearly the complete opposite. Their anger was misplaced, and a grave mistake was made.

Written by Chiru Gunawardena’17