NC veteran speaks out after flag-burning arrest outside White House

Jay Carey, who served for 20 years and saw combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, told Cardinal & Pine that he was not disrespecting the flag but protesting the Trump administration’s perversion of the right to free speech.

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order seeking to criminalize the burning of the American flag, a right that US courts have long held is protected by the First Amendment.

The news broke around lunchtime. By dinner, Jay Carey, a North Carolina Army veteran, was in front of the White House with a flag and a bottle of accelerant.

“I fought for every single one of [you]  to express yourself … however you feel,” Carey told passersby and the gathering crowd in Lafayette Park.

Then he laid the flag on the ground, doused it with rubbing alcohol and set it on fire.

“I’m doing this for every single … American citizen,” he said.

Carey was arrested soon after by the US Secret Service, who put out the fire and handed him over to Park Police. He was not charged with burning the flag but lighting a fire in a national park and damaging public property. 

In an interview on Tuesday, Carey, who issued stark warnings about Trump’s rising authoritarianism during Cardinal & Pine’s “Voices for Veterans” event in May, said Trump’s order was illegal. 

“Last time I checked, presidents cannot make law through executive order or otherwise,” Carey said. “It’s a very important executive order, infringing on our first Amendment rights.”

As soon as he heard the news, he knew what he wanted to do.

“My first reaction was, ‘Well, I need to go burn the flag in front of the White House. ”I never, never considered burning a US flag before. I’ve never had to,” he said. “Until yesterday.”

Trump’s executive order

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that burning an American flag as a form of protest was protected speech under the First Amendment. It limited prosecutions to cases of inciting a riot or public endangerment. 

In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump told reporters that the executive order would result in jail time for anyone who sets fire to the flag for any reason.

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing,” Trump told reporters. (The order itself however does not mention jail time and acknowledges the Supreme Court’s previous protections.)

“Over nearly two-and-a-half centuries, many thousands of American patriots have fought, bled, and died to keep the Stars and Stripes waving proudly,” the order says.

On that, Carey agrees. He was one of those many thousands, seeing combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the executive order banning its desecration does not protect the flag, Carey said, it perverts its meaning.

“[Trump Republicans] are trying to convert the flag to represent their views, which are views of hate and divisiveness,” Carey said.

“I wasn’t disrespecting the flag. I was protesting what this president is doing to our country and to our rights.” 

Sometimes taking the flag back, he said, means burning it as an expression of the inalienable rights it represents.

“It is a symbol of our country. It’s a symbol of our freedom. It’s a symbol of who we are,” he said. “Who better to respect, honor and love their country and their flag, then a veteran who has fought for it, bled for it and watched their friends die for it.”

‘Whatever it takes’

Carey was taken to a detention facility and kept in a cell by himself for about 4 hours before being released around 11 p.m., he said.

“They were very respectful,” he said. “They treated me well.” 

Carey, who is married to a North Carolina Democratic official, has been an active participant in protests against the policies Trump has pursued in his second term. In March, Carey was forcibly removed from an Asheville town hall for US Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican who supported Trump’s cuts to the VA.

He is not done yet, he said. 

Carey was already in DC when the Trump announced the executive order in order to protest Trump’s deployment of the US National Guard to police American cities, he said. 

“I’m in Washington, DC as part of a veteran group that is occupying DC until the illegal occupation of the military on American soil ends. We are gonna be here one week, one month, one year, whatever it takes until we can end the occupation.”

Carey founded the veterans organization Resist and Persist and is one of the organizers of the group that plans to stay in DC. They will walk around the city, talking to people, including the National Guardsmen themselves, he said.

“They understand that we’re not countering the [National] Guard itself, but the actual orders and the people that have put the Guard in place.”

The reception in DC overall, he said, has been encouraging. 

“The reaction has been amazing,” he said, “even before the flag burning.”

Veterans are especially suited to protest, he said. And a first amendment violation involving the flag is an important cause for those who served.

“We wear it on our uniform. We display it proudly. We stand for it … and then to be told that you can’t exercise your First Amendment rights, which you faithfully risked your life to defend? It is ignorant at best.”