By now, word has gotten out about a 12-year-old boy in a Colorado school getting in trouble, temporarily, because of a small patch seen on his backpack. That boy is Jaiden Rodriguez, and he attends a charter school in Colorado Springs, Vanguard Secondary School.
The patch is a small reproduction of the Gadsden flag. This flag shows a field of yellow with a coiled rattlesnake and the bold words, declaring, “Don’t Tread on Me.”
Who knew that a tiny patch on his backpack could cause so much of a stir — because of historical illiteracy?
There is video of a school official sitting down at a conference table with Jaiden and his mother (who is off camera). The administrator intones: “The reason that [the school officials] do not want the flag…is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade.”
The Daily Signal of the Heritage Foundation reports: “In an email exchange Monday between Jaiden’s parents and Jeff Yocum, executive director of The Vanguard Secondary School, Yocum says that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had determined that the Gadsden flag is an ‘unacceptable symbol.’”
And they add, “The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, however, later admitted that the Gadsden flag &lsq ...
