Barrington (RI) Veterans Council Resigns In Protest Of Town Flying BLM Flag Over Veterans Memorial
“The Barrington United Veterans Council (BUVC) can no longer support or be affiliated with a local town government that openly disrespects and marginalizes its Veteran Community by failing to maintain the sanctity and decorum of the Town’s Veterans Memorials.”
Legal Insurrection Foundation is based in Barrington, Rhode Island. We are the “best kept secret” in this town that once was somewhat reddish, and now is decidedly blue. I’ve written before about how an influx of liberals from Providence and out of state attracted by the excellent school system and relatively (compared to the Boston area) low housing prices changed the character of Barrington.
The school system has gone woke, something we’ve documented many times here.
- Parents Defeat “Equity” School Agenda, Honors Courses To Be Reinstated In Barrington, Rhode Island
- “Just Devastating” – Three Teachers Who Sought Religious Exemption From Covid Vaccine Fired In Barrington (RI)
One symptom of the town’s loss of reason was the reaction to the death of George Floyd. The Town Council even co-sponsored an event featuring Ibrahm Kendi.
The town manager (at the time) followed by the Town Council went full BLM radical, to the point of flying the BLM flag above the town’s Veterans Memorial. This led to protests by the Barrington United Veterans Council (BUVC), an affiliate of the Town, which for almost 70 years was the voice of veterans in town. BUVC objected to ANY political flags being flown on the town flagpole over the Veterans Memorial.
The BUVC organized and ran the annual Memorial Day Parade, which is still a big deal in town, but their protests led to retaliation by the Town Council, which pulled the parade from BUVC. We covered the whole sordid saga in March 2022, Veterans Group Alleges Retaliation For Opposing Flying BLM Flag Over Barrington (RI) Veterans Memorial.
[Courtesy Greg Dulchinos]
- After Retaliation for Objecting To BLM Flag Flying Over War Memorial, Veterans Group Restored to Organizing Memorial Day Parade
- Barrington (RI) Memorial Day Parade Restored To Veterans Group Ousted After Objecting to BLM Flag Flying Over Veterans Memorial
So the story had a happy ending, right? Right? Buehler?
Sorry, BUVC is out again, not just of the parade, but of existence. It has decided to disband because of the continued refusal of the Town Council to get the BLM flag and other political flags, such as the ‘Pride’ flag, off the town flagpole over the Veterans Memorial. Attempts at compromise, such as erecting another flag pole to be placed nearby to fly political flags, were rejected.
The veterans wrotes an open letter in The Barrington Times (full embed at the bottom of the post) announcing disbanding of the Veterans group. It reads, in part:
The situation has become untenable. The Barrington United Veterans Council (BUVC) can no longer support or be affiliated with a local town government that openly disrespects and marginalizes its Veteran Community by failing to maintain the sanctity and decorum of the Town’s Veterans Memorials. For over 4 years, the Barrington Veterans have petitioned the Barrington Town Council to refrain from flying controversial and politically charged partisan banners under the US flag over our Veterans memorial at the Town Hall; however, the Town Council has refused to acknowledge our wishes and continues to desecrate our Memorial. They have repeatedly rejected all requests for compromise: such as erecting a separate flagpole away from our memorial from which to fly these unauthorized banners, to moving the American flagpole away from the memorial, to even relocating the Veterans Memorial itself.
The US Flag Code clearly states that the American Flagpole should never be used for advertising purposes, and this includes the unauthorized display of political banners from the same lanyard regardless of their merit. Nowhere in this country will you find Military or Veterans Memorials being defiled in this manner. The American Flag is the only flag that represents all Americans regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and it should be displayed unencumbered and free of partisan political rancor. It is the one flag that has been carried into battle by every service member since 1776 and it is the only flag that is respectfully laid across the caskets of our war dead.
Since 1954, the Barrington United Veterans Council has faithfully and honorably represented the combined veterans service organizations of the town in order to provide a single voice, sound counsel and guidance to the elected and appointed officials of Barrington concerning all matters related to the town’s Veteran Community. In addition, the BUVC has successfully executed all our Town’s Annual Veterans ceremonies and events to include the celebrated Memorial Day Parade. We have erected monuments to our war dead, maintained the Town’s Veterans Honor Roll, instituted a Lamp Post Memorial Banner Program, and have even helped to secure property tax exemptions for Veterans and their surviving spouses.
Unfortunately, the Barrington Town Council, which does not have a single Veteran among its members, has chosen to virtue signal to controversial national political entities outside of our community rather than respect the wishes of those that have served and sacrificed from within the community. Therefore, effective immediately, the Barrington United Veterans Council will cease to exist as an official Town of Barrington government entity, and all its current members hereby resign in protest from their volunteer duties and obligations. We can no longer serve in good faith a local government that harbors such hostility and animosity towards its Veterans and its families. In the future, Barrington American Legion Post #8 will continue those Veterans functions deemed necessary.
The Barrington Times reports on some of the controversy :
The decision to resign in protest left town officials scrambling to find someone to organize this year’s Memorial Day parade in Barrington. For decades, the BUVC and its members have “successfully executed all our Town’s annual veterans ceremonies and events to include the celebrated Memorial Day Parade.”
Without BUVC members available, the Town Council decided to approve a $5,000 expenditure to hire an event planner for this year’s parade.
Barrington Town Council President Carl Kustell has tried to remedy the issue. Last summer, Kustell suggested the town erect three new flagpoles at the top of the lawn in front of the Town Hall. Kustell said the flag pole in the middle would fly the US flag, while the poles on either side would fly the state flag and town flag. Kustell said officials could replace the town flag with other banners when they choose to do so. Currently, the town flies a number of different flags, including one for Black Lives Matter and the Pride flag — under the US flag above the veterans memorial.
Kustell said his plan would allow the town to continue to show solidarity for historically marginalized communities and also honor those who served and those who died while serving this country.
“We can do it without diluting either message,” Kustell said.
The Council President offered the Obama administration as an example — he said that when the marriage equality act was passed, the government lit up the White House in rainbow colors, but they refrained from doing that at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or at other veterans memorials.
Kustell’s plan failed to garner support among other Council members during the summer meeting.
Kustell said the town has placed local veterans in a difficult position.
“They’re in a tough spot, and I don’t blame them for finding the position untenable,” he said.
This is a completely shameful course of conduct by the Barrington Town Council. What has happened in Barrington is a familiar story – the prevailing political ideology is apathy, which allows activists who are obsessed with forcing their agenda on others to carry the day.
It’s worth quoting the ending of the BUVC open letter, quoting George Washington:
“The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any wars, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.” – George Washington
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Comments
Watching on Netflix, 3 Body Problem
It opens with the youth “red Army”
In front of the imperial palace, dragging out professors and scientists, putting dunce caps on them and bearing them till they acquiesce to the madness
I saw Antifa , and our future
Lock and load
No one is coming to save us
3 Body pretty much blames the cultural Revolution for the destruction of the human race. It’s complicated, but essentially a woman whose father was murdered by students invites aliens to come take over.
That gets the ball rolling.
It’s long been said that science fiction is less about the future as it is commentary about the present.
Well I guess we can wait for the Aliens then
Oh, their already here..
I don’t have Netflix. I watched the Chinese production. It’s pretty close to the books. It sanitizes the cultural Revolution, but doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t deny the horror, but the blood is offstage.
Good for the veterans. In this age of rage, good people need to have the courage to push back on evil. As Boris Pasternak observed in “Doctor Zhivago”, “The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of confidence in the value of one’s own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people’s notions, notions that were being crammed down everybody’s throat.”. As an outsider and veteran, it appears that Barrington RI considers corrupt, racist, Marxists (i.e. the BLM organization and movement – admitted Marxists and evident by actions to be racists and corrupt) to be one of “historically marginalized communities” and thus eligible to fly their flag. Perhaps they may want to reflect on exactly why BLM is an “historically marginalized community.” – And then again, perhaps Barrington RI might want to recognize the mainstream communities (e.g. American veterans) that got them where they are.
Increasingly, those who served are becoming a “historically marginalized community.”
I don’t like their resigning unless they have a plan B
If we don’t fight and give them everything, we aren’t going to win
They didn’t disband as a group of veterans, they stopped “working for” the town government as volunteers and organizers. They still meet and perform their patriotic functions at the American Legion hall.
Yep. Veterans owe zero duty to the wider community. They are under no obligation to continue to volunteer to support a Town whose leadership, in choosing to fly the banner of a activist political organization, dishonored the sanctity of the Veterans Memorial.
Choices have consequences. The leadership of this Town made a choice widely and very publicly opposed by the Veterans of the Town/community. This is one way how we begin to effectively push back. Withdraw support. Walk away. Go Gault and stop allowing ourselves to be used or manipulated with emotional appeals. IOW stop enabling the opposition to control us by refusing to participate when they capture a particular institution. This is no different than Parents pulling their children out of public schools.
Veterans owe zero duty to the wider community.
While your application of this is narrower, I will disagree wholeheartedly with this statement as it stands. All Americans owe a duty to their community. Without that duty, you’re just a libertarian screaming about your rights. Those rights accompany responsibility – including working to ensure that community has the right foundation, so it can continue to be free.
And, veterans are honored precisely because they have exercised that duty in one fashion. And living veterans have an ongoing duty to work to ensure those who gave their lives did not do so in vain. Of course, so do all of our citizens. Work to bring TWANLOC back to the fold. That’s the duty of every citizen. (Or send them out into the wilderness if they cannot be brought back.)
Work to bring TWANLOC back to the fold.
Note that I am not merely advocating talk. Yes, there needs to be talk. But a beating or two may be needed, as well – metaphorically or not.
Ok how about this restatement; Veterans, as group, owe zero duty to the community, beyond those of every other lawful resident.
Where I disagree significantly with your comment is, IMO, the community at large owes Veterans a duty to simply acknowledge their sacrifices on Veterans Day/Memorial Day, to maintain the graves and Memorials commemorating their service, especially for those who died in Combat and to refrain from politicizing either Veterans Day or Memorial Day by injection of outside, non germane political issues that in any way detract from the core purpose of those two holidays.
Who is Gault supposed to be? That’s Galt as in John Galt from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
I understand withdrawing support of crazy, but at some point, they will have effectively taken everything from us and I don’t know how that’s a win…
IMO folks like Professor Jacobson are like “the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike”. It is most welcome, but I fear hopeless. I wrote the following to friends earlier this evening about a NY Post article on the bad consequences of open borders in Sweden.
“Here we have [an article on] Sweden for the consequences of open borders. Five years ago I said that Merkel opening Europe’s borders to migrants would lead to Islamic control of Europe within 100 years, due just to differential birth rates. There is also Germany for the consequences of the Climate Change scam – poor economic growth, sky high utility costs. With the consequences of poor policies staring us in the face, with Europe’s experience, how do we allow that here? IMO it is the Democrat control and dumbing down of the education system – “equity” of result guarantees that – and control of the MSM, which shines a light on nothing relevant.”
5k for an event planner for the Memorial Day parade. Without veterans who will show up? The town will embarrass itself with a rainbow parade from hell. Good for the town leaders. Nothing becomes a change agent like a “Fantasy Fest” parade on Memorial Day. FJB
The Veterans of Barrington will no longer allow themselves to be a token unappreciated pawn in their Neo-marxist wet dream. We will now fight from outside the yoke of progressive wokism.
Now the woke progressive leftists are going to turn veterans day parade into gay pride parade with RuPaul in charge.
smh
Many normal people who live in such tony towns face the same dilemma- stay or go? The answer is go. Do your homework. You can sell your house for a pretty penny and move to an equally quaint, but sane location. I won’t name any for obvious reasons.
Yeah, it’s just that easy, genius.
It’s a question of priorities and will, not hard or easy. After you think about why, you decide whether. Only then should you determine how. If you don’t think it’s worth it after considering why you don’t do it. If on the other hand your religion, morals, patriotism and even politics say you should, you’re better off doing it come hell or high water.
“We can do it without diluting either message,” Kustell said.
No. Actually, you can’t. But your religious belief is so strong (and so involves using the power of gov’t to enforce its doctrine and beliefs) you’re blind to it. If you fly those religious flags it’s the same as flying the Christian “flag” over the monument. If you continue to do this you are in violation of the First Amendment, which denigrates the American flag you fly. It sullies it, and the deaths of all those veterans in the cemetery or honored by the monument.
But I don’t think they should simply resign. They need to fight back. Guerilla tactics if necessary. Adopt the lefty methods as necessary. And sue, sue, sue. And, also, preach and evangelize – Americanism – it’s the only way to return to an America that people loved.
Thank middle and upper class college educated perpetually aggrieved women (and the girly men who support them) who are driving this Marxist excrement.
I am a veteran. I believe I share a common experience with the Barrington veterans, an experience that instills certain characteristics. You have to do things you don’t want to do, endure heat and cold, be disciplined and think of yourself as part of a organization with a mission, not an individual. I believe the Barrington vets have not given up, they aren’t beat. They are just regrouping. As Captain James Lawerence said, ‘Dont Give Up The Ship’.
Well they’ve gotten better at their metaphorical stolen valor. From this:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
Now it’s:
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. Take over as spokesthing, push manifestos on their letterhead, raise someone else’s flag, plaster your symbols.
It’ll die eventually, but you don’t have to kill it first to hijack its platform and goodwill.
As a Veteran, I appreciate the support and respect of the society I helped protect, but that’s not why I did it. The principles of freedom are far more important to preserve regardless of the opinions of the clueless. They’ll come around when they get sufficiently scared again by some aggressor, and in the meantime if they are too apathetic to confront evil, then so be it. There will always be those around who will.
I think if I was a veteran in that town, and not knowing anything about it, I’d suggest the Veterans put on their own parade on Memorial Day, without the involvement of the Town Council. There may be permits from the state or counties required, IDK Involve other local community organizations, the schools, fire and police agencies, scouts, cemeteries, etc. and just do it. You may have to take a different route, but do it.
Mmmm. Counties in New England typically don’t mean or do squat. You’ll need a permit from the town itself, which limits this strategy. Best alternative would be to hold a joint parade with a redder abutting town like Warren or East Providence.
Again the left proves the hierarchy. We are in power and you will take a knee.
Ask the patriots. We don’t kneel to our leaders no matter what they’d like us to do. Never have, never will. Nowadays I trust experts even less than the government.