… it’s good to have neighbors willing to intercede, explain Mark and Deborah Kuhn of Asheville, North Carolina in a video interview with the Motorhome Diaries crew.
The Kuhns, an engaging couple with very detailed knowledge of the plague of authoritarian militarism afflicting our country, were assaulted by police two years ago for the non-crime of displaying a U.S. flag upside down as a form of protest.
On July 25, 2007, a local Sheriff’s deputy named Brian Scarborough — a National Guard soldier who had recently returned from combat duty in occupied Iraq — attempted to arrest Mark under an ancient, and long-since overturned, state statute against “flag desecration.”
As can be expected, Scarborough treated these Americans as if they were Iraqi “hajis,” vandalizing their home, threatening them with various kinds of violence, and then summoning ten other officers to provide lethal “backup” in order to subdue two peaceful, unarmed citizens who had done nothing wrong.
Thanks to the intervention of teenage neighbors — who quite commendably defied police orders to ignore what was going on — this atrocity received nation-wide publicity. Eventually the charges were dropped and “expunged.”
Deputy Scarborough remains on the force, naturally.
11:36 am on June 24, 2009
