White woman steals flag from black protesters then fights police

Last week Valdosta State University police detained but did not charge a white military vet who stole a flag from protesters after she heard that the protesters were walking on it.

Michelle Manhart, the Air Force vet who once posed nude with the flag for Playboy, said she had not planned on interfering with the protest but felt she had to take action when she heard the protesters were walking over an American flag.

“I did not want anything like this, but I got a call from a student who told me that the flag was on the ground, and they were walking on it,” said Manhart. “I was just going over there to pick up the flag off the ground. I don’t know what their cause is, but I went to pick it up because it doesn’t deserve to be on the ground.”

Watch raw video of the incident here:

Campus police detained her, but Manhart resisted them when she saw that they were giving the flag back to protesters. However, neither the police nor the protesters pressed charges against her, though she was given a criminal trespass warning that barred her from returning to the campus to participate in any campus events.

One protester explained that walking on the flag was meant to be “a symbol of our protest” and went on to say, “When a slave understands his situation and understands he doesn’t want to be in slavery, he does not respect or revere anything his slavemaster has put in front of him.”

Manhart later said that she agreed with the message, if the cause was anti-racism, but disagreed with the methods. “If your cause is racism then find some white people and walk on them,” said Manhart. “But to walk on the flag is walking on our symbol of freedom. You have the freedom to do what you are doing because of it. I’m not fighting against them. I’m fighting against the way they are going about it.”

The Board of Regents has since released this statement on the protests: “We respect the rights of people to peacefully assemble and voice their opinions. Our primary concern is the safety of our students, faculty and staff and our ability to carry out our responsibilities to all our students on campus. We are monitoring the situation.”

Meanwhile, Manhart is being heralded by some conservatives as a hero for her actions.

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