Burning the flag at a protest in Grand Rapids

As a photojournalist I try to let my photos do the talking.  On January 20th, 2018 I was covering a J20 protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The protest was referring to the one year of Donald Trump being in office.

Looking away from the event speaker at the time,  I thought I saw A Trump supporter counter protesting the event. I soon realized it was a group of protesters setting fire to both a Trump and and American flag.

Afterwards a person involved in the burning said this to me.

“We Burned two flags today. We burned the American flag and the Trump flag. Flag burning we find very symbolic because the American flag is suppose to supposedly stand for freedom and justice and all that. It clearly doesn’t so we burned the flag to indicate that is doesn’t stand for what it is suppose to. Therefore it is a useless symbol that people rally behind. Burning the Trump flag obviously to show we do not agree with the Trump administration and want that to go down in flames.”

 

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Author: johnrothwellblog

John Rothwell currently resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is a freelance photojournalist and reporter. In December of 2017, he finished his Communications Degree at Grand Valley State University and is currently working on adding a second degree in Multimedia Journalism. In addition to his academic work, he contributes photos, photo essays and local news coverage to The Rapidian, a hyperlocal citizen journalism platform, powered by the people of Grand Rapids. John believes that everyone has a story to tell and that story needs to be told in a medium that best suits the situation, either in photos, video, audio, word or a mixture of all. People must be informed on events happening in and around their lives and have their voices heard.

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