Zuzeca Sape

The Keystone XL Pipeline

This pipeline is especially dangerous as its trail cuts through 1,200 miles of the country, from southern Canada to Steel City in New Mexico. but, it also goes under the Ogallala aquifer which is an underground reservoir of clean water; it will be no surprise to learn most of the North Central and Midwest areas of the United States of America get their clean drinking water from there such as; Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. 

THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE LAKOTA WAY OF LIFE AND WESTERN SOCIETY

The Lakota way of life is a wise one, in which its religion can be experienced in a way that it only serves as a way of life, without the need to worship and/or obey an omnipotent father-like figure in the clouds. One may still very well be within the lines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam while adopting almost all of the Lakota spiritual lifestyles. The Lakota way is in and of itself very heavily based in nature.

By calling the planet Mother Earth, since birth, and living in a society that truly reflects these values ( I will expand on these values in a further paragraph) the word then becomes a delightful reminder of the innate unity of humanity and nature. The underlying realization is that one cannot exist without the other. If I may take another passage from Marshal’s beautifully written book:

"Given the concept of family, it isn't difficult to understand the idea of kinship with other forms of life-everything was of the earth. We all came from it one way or another and returned to it when life was over. These were unalterable realities that connected us to everything around us. Phrase essential to and used in all of our ceremonies is 'mitakuye oyasin', which means 'all my relatives'. Its definition reminds us of that connection. Many of our stories about animals refer to them as 'the elk people' or 'the bear people' or 'the bird people' not because we're anthropomorphizing them but because in our language the designation 'people' was not limited to humans. This kinship, this sense of connection, also served to remind us of our place in the great scheme of life."

It is important to emphasize the last part, in the Lakota language the idea of kinship between humans and nature is innately woven within the meaning and structure of the words. This does two things: first of all it reflects how clumsy the English language can be at times, and secondly, it also reflects that our language in the West is devoid of this style of syntax and symbolic representation. Jurgen Ruesch, an Italian-American Psychiatrist, can more aptly explain these phenomena as follows:

"The peculiarities of language introduce a number of distortions into psychiatric research. When words are employed to refer to behavior action and movement, which are continuous functions, are sliced into discrete elements, as if they were replaceable parts of a machine. The continuity of existence thus is split into arbitrary entities which are not so much a function of actual behavior as the result of language structure."

The key here is realizing, as Ruesch did, that existence is ultimately a continuity, or in the words of a biologist and ecologists, it is one constant process. To divide this fluid constant process into smaller parts, as cogs in a machine, serves the great function of being able to organize, divide, and asses how things work, though only if we remember that not only is everything in relation to each other; but that the words we use to label these smaller parts are nothing more than agreed upon convention and not the reality itself if one remembers not to mix up the map for the territory then they are in good standing and the map as a social convention can do its job and guide you and others to meet and understand the world we live in; but for the sorry individual who truly believes the map to be the territory will be forever resentful when they realize that those useful longitudinal and latitudinal lines on the map don't exist in the real world to help them along the journey, thus frustration and anxiety. One of the many failures in the development of consciousness in the West is a sidestep in which we forget to see that the fluidity of language is as fluid as existence itself, and therefore it does not do to dwell on words and how they make one feel themselves inside. While on this note of words and their fluidity, I feel it appropriate to quote Marshal again as he explains the meaning of the word 'Lakota':

"The three words-Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota-have the same meaning, 'an alliance of friends.' They represent geographic as well as linguistic distinctions. Numerous strong linguistic similarities between the two eastern groups suggest that they were one group several hundreds of years ago...."

The Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, and many other Native American tribes have a more unified and holistic attitude toward the universe. The idea is that organisms and the environment go together. Much like in Eastern ways of life such as Buddhism and Hinduism, the result of this understanding of these alternative ways of life is a less hostile attitude towards the environment, when you realize that you naturally came out of it, not forcefully put into it. 

The internal sense of division a human has between itself (the organism) and other (the environment) is a persistent illusion. It is a dangerous illusion because, if we believe it too strongly we then have some very hostile attitudes towards the environment and the universe as a whole, and therefore we end up in the situation we are in now, wherein we are calling destruction progress.

MY JOURNEY TO STANDING ROCK

In 2017 I would be lying if I had told you I knew anything about the situation at Standing Rock. If anything, it sounded like an incomplete sentence, not an extremely important issue that has ramifications beyond our conditioned comprehension. That's a different story now in 2018 as I put these thoughts to word.

It was November 23rd, 2016, at about 3:30 am. I was half asleep in an Uber clutching my blue gym bag filled with clothes and wires. As I arrived at Rebecca's (one of the producers) house I had a strange feeling of being close to O’hare airport. I tried to figure out where I was and in what direction we were going to end up driving for the trip, but I decided not to worry about it since at that very moment as we fully came to a halt, I didn't care. 

Unfortunately, cinematographer and camera operator Steven was not able to make it with us on the trip, but I do owe it to him for the experience. If it wasn't for him I would have never known about the whole ordeal until much later, and would never have met such awesome and talented friends like Robin and Rebekka!

‘MOE'S ALMOST WORLD FAMOUS DINER’

I was about to check something off of my bucket list: to eat one meal at a highway diner in America while on a road trip. There was a certain aesthetic I tried to capture in my photographs of this place, an aesthetic I grew up with when consuming Western media. It was something very basic to the American culture: the highway diner, the sharp saturated colors inside that were borderline carnival color scheme. Eric Frampton playing the fourteen-minute live version of Do You Feel Like I Do blasting quietly through the radio above. Not loud enough to disrupt conversations but enough to enforce a mood, and thankfully I was digging it. The smell of freshly brewed coffee is engaging enough as is, but the smell of eggs and bacon is enough to make the strongest of souls' gastrointestinal scream audible.

Every first-world country has highway diners in some way, but no one really does it like America. That’s just my personal opinion though.

I was glee ridden by the time I had walked through the doors and saw the small multi-colored, glistening, panels of the interior. It was living up to be everything I had wanted and more. The shiny counter-tops and the condiments on the table next to the napkins encased in a mutated cube, the faint sound of sizzling food in the background giving off an enormous aroma, all the way down to the little old lady who served us. 

We sat at the counter while we waited for a seat to clear. There was no one in the place but some local diner flies who seemed to need this break in their life. Who was I to judge, we looked like some hopeless lost white privileged teens going on some stupid superficial spiritual journey. Everyone had some kind of story I'm sure, but somewhere along each plot-line, there was a form of communion when one of us found ourselves at Moe’s Almost World Famous Diner as nothing more than just mere travelers on a journey.

This location looked like it came straight out of a 90’s road trip movie. I forgot what I ate but as we can see in the photograph I ate my food before my fellow dining mates could even reach half their meal. We were all a little excited to be experiencing a true piece of Americana. But, there were more important things to do, such as go over the strategic plan. We had none. I had no idea what I was doing really beside dedicating myself to documenting the journey, and the situation I was going to be faced with when I arrived at standing rock. I thought I needed to make this painfully clear to everyone around; I could not do what I set out to do if I was to be distracted doing busy work around the camp under a false guise of helping. In order for me to truly help I had to capture as much as I could of this experience in order to be able to represent it in the form of a documentary. 

RAMADA BY WYNDHAM, BISMARCK NORTH DAKOTA

The Ramada by Wyndham in Bismarck North Dakota was a sweet little thing. As soon as we walked in I was nodding in agreement with whatever it was I saw that had matched my less than sober expectations. Stark beige furniture. But then the smell of coffee, it was alluring and inspiring. We went up to the front desk in order to sort out our affairs. being the oldest and also the most immature i chose to stay back and let Rebeka and Robin handle this. They knew what we were doing and how we were going to pay for it, at that point I was nothing more than a rag doll who was still trying to find meaning after being deflated for 15+ hours in the back seat of a car.

The situation was broken down to me like this, the money raised from the Indiegogo campaign was to go for our housing in the motel, and also for resources that we were to go buy and then distribute throughout the Standing Rock Camp. seemed simple enough, their initial calculations only made accurate provisions for three people so when Steven couldn’t make it all I really was doing was filling in a gap. I think I paid 53$ for this entire trip.

We met a cute couple who had also just arrived, but from Japan! or was it Australia? I don't know, the point is they left their infant child with their parents somewhere far away and came here to fight the pipeline in order to ensure that the child grew up with at least a fresh cup of drinking water... if it ever found the misfortune of being stuck in a post-apocalyptic America or something. I'll be honest everyone's motives seemed a little bit murky, my own included. yes, the native Americans had called out to the world for help, but no one asked or all our self-righteous vibrations. The problem is it was subconscious.

I chose not to focus on these thoughts and get my gear to the room, shower, make a cup of coffee, and smoke a cigarette before heading down to the bar for some drinks and a game of pool!

Our new friends joined us in a healthy dialogue about whatever it was they spoke of. I chose to socially retreat to my camera. this was not only because I had a severely disappointing lack of social skills for an adult, but also because this camera of mine was relatively new... and for the next few days I had access to all the gear I needed in order to make a movie. I was in love and mesmerized by the technology of the Canon 5d Mark III.

The couple, though, was very progressive and truly believed that this was a cause worth sacrifice. This also wasn't their first time here, they had been here a few months before, and this time around they had intended to stay for a little longer than us; which meant they were to bear the full blunt force of the storm that was to come.

We laughed that night, and we ate, and we drank, and we lived in the moment for a moment. It was enough to live a full life, and whatever came after was extra. I remember hearing similar testaments somewhere unrelated to this context entirely, it was veteran with cancer who had this philosophy in response to being diagnosed with cancer, but it fit entirely into the grand scheme of life, I realized, if you could grant yourself permission to live one full true moment in life, and truly experienced it in the now, then whatever came after that was extra. Now whats left is what do we do with the pesky guilt of feeling good? It's less conflicting to appreciate life when we change our socially constructed view on the whole thing. In other words, we change our inculcated egotistic attitude towards it.

And yet, western civilization, and I included, find residual difficulty in constantly trying to live this way. This, in itself, is a testament to the myths and stories we repetitively tell ourselves. That horrid incomplete one sided story of who we are and our place in the universe… as if living were something we had to try to do, rather than it being something that happens in and of itself on its own, Like how your heart beats/you beat your heart, or grow your own hair\your hair grows out of you. It was slowly becoming clear to me.

This was something I had wanted to focus on! Yes! It was clear to me that coming at this from a point of view of a director ready to make a documentary was doing me no real favors not as an artist or a human being, so I had to come again, reborn, as a student willing and ready to learn, my mentor the experience and my past and ideals of the future, irrelevant.

Eventually, the girls had decided to go upstairs and get ready and relax before we all head out to go buy our materials and resources in order to distribute them at camp early the next morning. We were going to get things like blankets, sleeping bags, and water with some plates and such for people.

While the girls got ready I decided to go out for another cigarette and at the same time explore where I was. I had never done this sort of thing before, jump into a car with all my gear with two twenty-something-year-old women to drive to the middle of nowhere to fight something I didn't totally understand. Spontaneity was never my style. this thought process without the cigarette was sure to be anxious, but I hated how I had to slowly die, in order to feel a little bit better... Oh well, there was an overall moral to be learned there which was applicable to the documentary at hand, but too foolish to see it then.

I decided to create some long exposure photographs of Bismarck in order to artistically mark my journey in metaphorical geographical checkpoints. I am not entirely pleased with the photographs but they do add a sense of context to me as I go through the story, my story, via the digital Photography Contact sheets in Adobe Lightroom.

QUICK SUPPLY RUN

I went back to the motel and packed the tripod and just kept the camera and a lens with me as we embarked on our journey to some random American superstore which was open 24 hours nearby.

The superstore was just as you would it expect it to be, and foolish childish shenanigans took place as we sought to play, then finally gathered our resources and tools, paid for them, and then went back to the Motel.

AESTHETICS & INSPIRATION, GEAR & BAGGAGE

What drove me to intensely follow this project was that I wanted a drastic shaking change in my life. I needed to break out of the humdrum college life. I had felt I was going no where fast, and with 2 jobs and 8 classes, I was going to go insane.

By day I would go to college and be a full-time student, and by 4pm-9pm I would work at RoboAerial coloring editing or going over future or past projects, then I would go and work from 9pm - 9am at the Merchandise Mart for a wedding company called Fiona Images. There, I would process images and videos for clients who chose to use the service. Then after 9 am I had about an hour to go to class and start the vicious circle all over again.

I can remember once a poor girl was tasked with a scene where she had to mock kiss me for an acting class, I smelt so horrible she couldn't make it believable no matter how much we tried to suspend our disbelief. 

After I had agreed to be apart of the team to North Dakota I was blessed with the gorgeous trailer for the film LOGAN by James Mangold. The trailer resonated with my slowly breaking morale. I felt broken, used, and exhausted and the trailer spoke to me via the use of sound and images. The cinematographer and the director had decided to (appropriately) go for a western look, in direct homage to the Old Man Logan comic book series by writer Mark Millar and artist Steve McNiven, published by Marvel Comics in June 2008, which was set in the post-apocalyptic desert of a not too distant future Earth. 

The use of extreme wide lenses to capture the expansive existence of the landscape along with telephoto lenses used to get right into the action from afar compressing space and giving the viewer a more personal feel was inspiring. The desaturated gold and deep blues of the frustrated clouds holding back their tears were exactly the looks that made me want to design the entire shoot around those same aesthetics. I shot my film roughly around the same time the film LOGAN was still in production so I didn't know this yet but the film LOGAN was basically about a long road trip to North Dakota, so it made perfect sense that when I actually got there I was greeted by the same color palette that I so thoroughly enjoyed in the LOGAN teaser trailer.

At the time of my spontaneous decision to go to Standing Rock, I had only the Canon 5D Mark III body which I had bought directly with the money made off of the Green Solutions Time-lapse project. I had no lenses though. I decided to rent them from Magnanimous Media. I was terrified as I walked up the steps of the rental house, What was I to say? It didn't matter the process was painless, quick and smooth. I had reserved my two favorite lenses, both Canon, 16-35 f/2.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8, brilliant. I also got a small shotgun Rhode microphone to attach to the camera as I was not yet ready to handle single or double system sound on such a run and gun project. This would, later on, come back to haunt me in post-production. I had also reserved a very expensive Sachtler tripod which had some great special gizmos that made planning and tilting heavenly. The next day I was preparing my gear to head out of state. 

As we got out of the car I was struck with the cool fresh breeze of North Dakota. Instantly it made perfect sense why I was here, kind of like a spiritual trigger thanks to the uninterrupted breath of God that flowed through me, you, the universe. This flow of life that is called Tao in Chinese philosophy, Brahman in Hinduism, Allah in Islam, and the Lord God in Christianity. The spirit of playful existence has played a game with itself in forgetting it is the universe by virtue of being you. by being indulged in all these games we play as a civilization and the pain and joy we've all wrought ourselves. As the Hindus say, God created the whole of everything spontaneously by 'Leela', the Sanskrit word for play.

Despite the natural and sober existential trip caused by the drug of sensory cosmology which shattered my ego, the ego has a terribly cheeky way of rudely reemerging back into the pattern of thought. because that is what your ego is, just a believable and persistent pattern of thought; the constant image we build, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves which in turn constitutes the comforting illusory image of permanence in a transient world. Old habits die hard.

A young man with non-reflective ray ban sunglasses, a tall and thin build with stubble and long hair sporting a devil may care attitude, came up and out from under the tent.

"Hey! You better put that away bro, or we're going to have some problems!” he said as he casually pointed to the camera dangling off my strained neck. I looked at him up and then down again in a pitiful last attempt at trying to find some form of authoritative identification at this low key hippie invasion of the Native American land; as he took a long and cancerous drag from his shimmering white cigarette. He looked like he had issues beyond my control. At this point I had spent over 15 hours in a car and then unpacking myself in the middle of nowhere North Dakota was not a sincerely productive way for me to become a useful and polite negotiator. Especially since the very whole reason I was there, was precariously hung around my neck over three to five inches of snow and dog feces. I dragged the drone in its pelican case along the terrain.

as I walked passed him with a constipated look on my face he yelled out, "Hey!" and took a step further. The ground behind him was littered with cigarette butts. He had another one of his huskier, sickly pale and starkly ginger, friends sitting watch outside the tent. I was wondering when the entry fee to this afflicted sideshow would be demanded, but I honestly understood what he wanted. Yet, I demanded an explanation, we are civilized men after all.

"I'm Rashad Anabtawi, a photojournalist and filmmaker from the city of Chicago, we're here to document what's going on and share this story with the rest of the world,” I said with some new found confidence as I felt my blood pressure calm down and cool off. The young kid took a moment to himself then sprung into speech, "I don't like you already pal, did you hear what I just said?" he barked throwing his burnt out cigarette in front of me and now putting both his hands on his hips trying to block the vast expanses of Sacred Stone Camp with two scrawny and cold sticks that he called arms. I clearly was having terrible withdrawal symptoms from the warmth and cramped womb-like existence that was the backseat of the car.

“Look, man, what’s the problem here?” I finally said.

“The lady who lived here told her kids that when she passes no one is allowed to alter the land with any new kind of technology or photograph or film the Sacred Stone Camp.” He said looking at me as if he had just won an argument. Now, my look changed from constipation to that of sorrow. “That's all? Man, sorry to hear that…” Then my face changed to a friendlier version of its usual horror accompanied by an upward intonation in pitch, “Hey man, you should have said that from the beginning!” as I clamped my lens cap shut on the front of my lens put my hands up in surrender and continued going on through the path. As I turned my head away from him I could feel the gravity of my jowl change my face, turning my expression from one of happiness to that of disgust and contempt. After I walked past his line of sight I took the lens cap and threw it in my camera bag never to be used again. I could hear Robin, one of the producers yelling from the car, “We need walkies! Walkies Rashad, we can’t just wander off….”

THE BRIDGE & WEAPONIZED EXPERIENCE

The famed, yet dreadful, bridge was a dangerously simple-looking situation. There were two sides of the bridge, on one side there were the social justice warriors screaming and shouting, and within them, some native Americans just desperately trying to get their homes back. On the opposite side of the bridge, you had the very white, very happy American mercenaries and law enforcement ogling each other's tactical gear and equipment (notice if you zoom in on the photos of the armed men you will quickly see the pattern of gun-ho excitement written on their face).

The Roadblocks were made of giant grey cement blocks and I wondered how the Bridge could handle all that weight including the armored cars. The cars were a sight to see. Some had giant water cannons mounted atop the beige armor of the 4x4. Other vehicles had something a little bit more dangerous, something that would have been used if Bruce Banner were to rage out into the green monstrosity that is the Hulk. The LRAD, Long Range Audio Device.

TURTLE HILL at THANKSGIVING, a LOVE & HATE with TIGER SAWAN

TIGER SWAN, THE EXPENDABLE AND ILLEGAL HAND OF GOD

When researching this topic I found nothing outwardly dangerous or incriminating about Tiger Swan, some rumors here and there about them operating illegally in the state, until mid-2018 but before then, I only had one single question: Who was behind the mass influx of high artillery weapons? I know that the Sheriff's department does not have 3 LRAD systems mounted on a brown decked-out camoflaged tanks. We're talking about well over a million dollars a vehicle. Why were there so many men in military uniform?

Tiger Swan. Tiger Swan is a security company founded by a former Marine. According to their (as of 2018) newly re-branded website; "TigerSwan is VA-certified, service-disabled, Veteran Owned Small Business." The veteran in question is James Reese who once proudly served in the elite Delta Force unit.

While driving back from our motel to Standing Rock we witnessed a gaggle of wild horses running up onto the hill. It was a hopeful moment, one that felt like a fresh of breath air, but if the 2017 elections were to prove anything, it was not so much a breath of fresh air but maybe humanity's last breath.

There was to be an ‘Action Meeting’ where experienced protesters taught the less experienced ones how to deal with the violence of the police, mercenaries, and firemen. This, at first, may seem to be extremely silly and unnecessary, but one must learn the reasoning behind these extreme preventive measures which I will go into.

In mid-November a young 22-year-old girl was amid the chaos and riots, she met up with a young 22-year-old man with a beard and long hair, he was taller than her looking for a shield. The sound of seemingly live ammunition rang through the cold stale midnight sky. Flares, left, right, and center flew with sparks trailing nearby. Screams were audible for miles, pepper spray irritated the very veins of the eye, the water cannon would freeze the individual sending him or her into a terrible fit of frostbite.

As the two ran to take cover behind a flipped truck they ducked as a fiery ball flew above them; the smoke trailed behind it and made way for the light of the sky to light down, it was clear there were no stars tonight. As the young man was about to move from their cover, a ball bearing grenade landed right beside the young girl. The spark lit up as it burst through the hard plastic casing. The girl lifted her arm up to cover her face, body, and neck. The grenade blew up and hundreds of small rubber or metallic balls burst her arm apart. The young man heard screams as he turned around and ran back to help her.

The camp had accommodated for the new found police brutality. The system was one based off of an organic structure: the weak, young, and elderly would be in the middle, around them would walk stronger larger individuals and in front of them another group of smaller younger individuals holding arms making something like a chain link, and in front of them an asteroid belt of media flies helplessly rotating around the gravitational pull of the story. There was so much media coverage.

A DESPERATE KNIGHT & GRAVE INTENTIONS

At night, cold and quiet, I could hear the silent crackling of a nearby fire slowly dying out. People were whispering, not because they had to, but because they had wanted to. It was the come down from the adrenaline high of the previous night. The TigerSwan Mercenaries, the fire department and the sheriffs' office best patrolmen still looking un-phased. The crickets echoed through the night. As I looked up to take a breath of fresh air, I couldn't see the stars.

Now there was sharp barbed wire a the base of the numerous lamps atop the crippled and tumor-ridden Turtle Hill. As I walked to the right of the mount, now holding closer to the waterfront than before, I scouted a location to place my tripod and then use my telephoto lens, the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8, to try and get as much of an image in as little light as possible. The results were obviously stunning, Canon doesn't disappoint when you are in tough situations and intense terrain.

A girl walked up next to me and looked up towards the mountain and then at me,

"Are you making a film?" she looked up to see what I was framing.

"Yeah, a documentary about-" I was interrupted by her gasp for air and then suddenly blurt out, "Oh my god!" I asked, "what?" without losing focus from my camera and setting up my shot; but, as it turned out I wasn't the only one preparing for a shot.

"He's looking at me through his scope..." She said, in what now became a whisper. I stood up from my Camera and looked at her. "Well, Fu**ing get away from me then!" I picked up my tripod from the bottom grip, hoisted it up, and leaped away hurriedly.

Selfishly moving closer towards the group of people for safety I panicked wondering what would have happened if I had lost the footage because of a stray bullet. Even worse to think about was that this was rented gear! I had done a fantastic job up until that point keeping the gear safe, but what good was I opposed a stray bullet? It then dawned on me, the very fact that I had to ponder these thoughts at all was the very reason I and many else were there. I wanted to document this exact feeling of insecurity which leads to self-reflection; we're not armed.

This is where things become difficult. When anger rises within me it is usually because someone has used their illusory power of authority and began taking away rights and replacing them with terror, and I'll have none of that.

Thankfully I was not to do anything but record what was about to happen next, because apparently the rest of decent humanity felt the same rage, yet they had the tools to express it vividly and differently.

An elderly man pushed through the crowd and I could hear him muffle words likes, Please, watch out, and so on. eventual he walked in the frame and swung a pole with the American flag wrapped around it. It un-spun and revealed itself to be upside down! I could remember the goosebumps i felt.

He began screaming!

I let go of my Camera tripod in shock and it slid causing a very dramatic and exuberant dutch angle. a pleasant and welcome mistake.

" I did not fight for this country so we could end up doing this! This is not right, this is America!" he yelled. He was a veteran. There was talk and rumors throughout the camp at that time that the veterans would be coming to show their support, to stand united hand in hand with the native Americans and confused social justice warriors on a cause much larger than them and their self-imposed labels and divisions. this man was the first of the veterans, and certainly not the last.

He turned around and said, "if anybody wants to wave this flag, you're more than welcome to, but please don't let it touch the ground." and with that, the man passed the flag back to a waiting and willing participant. right hen something had started, what exactly it was I am not sure, but one thing is for certain, and that is his stand was not in vain. his words and actions were recorded on my camera and his passion for true patriotism is something that resonated with me. this was an issue in which for once and for all as it as just as simple as those poor misguided social justice warriors were screaming about.

the conversation began about how we were all unarmed and how they were. And then one man said, this is why I'm unarmed here, and the elderly veteran who brought the flash proclaimed, " I have no gun, I have no weapon, this flag is my shield if they want to shoot me, go ahead. you think they're going to shoot me with the flag in front of me?" and a lady from the back worriedly said, "Yep, they will!" to which many other people chimed in, agreeing with her. The veteran responded without thinking, "fine let them shoot it, let them shoot the symbol of this nation, go for it! If anybody wants to wave this flag you're more than welcome to, as long as you don't let it touch the ground.... it can touch the ground when they shoot me."