According to New York’s NBC 4, activists are planning to burn the American flag at a park in Brooklyn Wednesday to protest what they call “systematic racism.”
“A group called Disarm NYPD will lead the protest at Fort Greene Park at 7:30 p.m. The group says it will also burn the Confederate flag in a rally against the country’s long history of systemic racism after nine people were killed in a historic South Carolina church earlier this month,” NBC 4 reports.
The park memorializes “more than 11,500 American prisoners of war who died in captivity aboard British prison ships during the Revolutionary War,” NBC reports.
Some of the remains of those that died are still there.
“It’s wrong,” Republican state senator Marty Golden, from Brooklyn, said. “It’s a wrong message to send to our children, wrong message to send to our communities. Just plain wrong.”
NBC 4 reports the Mayors office is encouraging organizers to cancel the event and find another way to demonstrate their views.