Kids Stand Up for Their Peer Kicked Out of Class for His Gadsden Patch
Jaiden Rodriguez, the 12-year-old who was kicked out of his seventh-grade class in Colorado Springs by a school administration made up of people who clearly need to go back to school themselves, is back with his fellow students after a quick win against ignorance.
Rodriguez had been told he could not come back to The Vanguard School, a charter school, until he removed a Gadsden flag patch from his backpack — because of the administration’s erroneous belief that the flag was somehow connected to American slavery.
Now he’s back, after messages of support from conservatives around the country — and even from Colorado’s Democratic governor, who at least recognized the patch for what it was: an important symbol of the American colonists’ fight against British tyranny in the Revolutionary War.
“Hey, guys,” the young man said in a video posted to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Today was a good day — kind of.
“When I got to school, all the kids were really hyped up,” he explained, “because they saw me on Twitter. And kids are putting ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ on their lockers.
“Well, at least, my new-made friends, ’cause I’m big on Twitter and now they like me all of a sudden. But the teachers, on the other hand — I got some dirty looks, that’s for sure. They’re definitely not happy with me.”
Jaiden speaks! He’s so grateful for all the support you’ve all shown. 🇺🇸💪🏼🎉 pic.twitter.com/pyW9pzsic2
— Connor Boyack 📚 (@cboyack) August 30, 2023
If I were a professional educator (and I used to be) and a 12-year-old made me look like a fool in interviews published nationwide by household names like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro, I might be tempted to glace askance at him too. (Luckily, though I did more than my share of dumb stuff as a teacher and administrator, I got out of education before I could do anything quite this dumb.)
The school saw the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” image, suspected it was in some way racist — because what isn’t racist in the eyes of the left, honestly? — and did a bare minimum of research to try to support their presupposition.
Despite the historical facts, in an email to the student’s mother, school administrator Jeff Yocum cited a 2014 decision by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to a follow-up post by Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute, a libertarian think tank.
The EEOC ruled that the flag could be viewed as racist if someone feels it is racist whether it is or not.
The agency found the Gadsden flag had no connection to racism or slavery, saying, “After a thorough review of the record, it is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context.” It said the flag is also often used “to express various non-racial sentiments” in political contexts.
Still, the EEOC said the Gadsden flag is “sometimes” used by bad actors to convey a racist message.
“However, whatever the historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages in some contexts,” the agency said.
It concluded that the flag “must be investigated” as an example of racism because of the “ambiguity in the current meaning of this symbol.”
Based on this, Yokum argued that the flag is racist because some people feel it is because some “hate groups” have also used the flag, according to a screen shot of an email shared by Boyack.
Of course, no reasonable individual disputes the shame on the history of the United States that is race slavery and the salve trade, but the Gadsden flag has exactly zero to do with either of those.
In fact, with its proudly, dangerously coiled rattlesnake and the motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” it’s a symbol of one of the proudest moments in the country’s history — when the North American colonies of Great Britain were fighting for their independence from the British empire.
It has also become a symbol of constitutional conservatives in the contemporary United States, opposing the ever-expanding reach of government into their private lives.
You know — like ignorant school officials trying to force their revisionist history on their students. That kind of thing.
Conservatives around the country spoke up to defend Rodriguez, to attack Yokum and The Vanguard School, or both. But so did Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and California Rep. Ted Lieu — and if the latter isn’t a perfect example of a broken clock being right twice a day, I don’t know what would be.
The responses to Rodriguez’s X post were almost uniformly supportive, but probably no one put it better or more succinctly than Bill Clinton accuser Juanita Broaddrick.
Cute kid. Great mom. Justice won.
— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) August 31, 2023
“Cute kid. Great mom. Justice won,” she wrote in a reply to the X post.
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