Protest: Burning Issue

In the wake of the antiwar demonstrations that brought out some 200,000 protesters in San Francisco and New York (TIME, April 21), patriots of every stripe last week demanded legislation to penalize desecrators of the American flag. In New York, where at least one flag was burned in the Central Park Sheep Meadow by overardent symbolists, city police scrutinized thousands of photographs in search of identifiable flag razers, each of whom, if convicted, would have to pay a $50 state fine for touching off Old Glory. In Washington, South Carolina’s Democratic Representative L. Mendel Rivers introduced a bill that would make desecration of the American flag a federal offense punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.

Draft cards were equally fiery objects of concern. Federal law demands that every American male born after Aug. 20, 1922, must carry his Selective Service notification “at all times.” Since some 75 young Americans burned their draft cards in Central Park during the antiwar weekend, the FBI set about tracking down the culprits. Many of them, it turned out, still had their cards; they had been burning licit scraps of notepaper. One readily identifiable card burner was Northwestern University Political Science Researcher Gary Rader, 23, a reservist in an Illinois Special Forces unit, who wore his green beret and Class A uniform while he burned his draft card in Central Park before newspaper cameras. FBI agents arrested Rader last week at his Evanston, Ill., apartment, handcuffed him before they stuck him in a Chicago jail cell overnight. Though Rader was released the next day on $1,000 bond, raised by friends at Northwestern, he faced a possible five-year prison sentence and $10,000 fine for burning his draft card, and a possible six-month sentence for wearing his uniform without official approval.