Somali Flag Raised Over Vermont School District

A school district in Vermont faces backlash after raising a Somali flag on its property on December 5.

“We are raising the Somali flag this week in honor of our Somali youth and families in Winooski and Vermont,” the Winooski School District posted on Facebook. “On Monday, we will be gathering to celebrate together and to learn more about our civil rights.”

Backlash

Apparently, some Winooski residents weren’t thrilled at a foreign nation’s flag flying over their taxpayer-funded school district, where some nine percent of students are Somalis.

“Vermont Schools Sent Violent Messages After Raising Somali Flag,” was Newsweek’s spin on the story. It claimed the district had to take down its website and disconnect office phones due to the “racist and violent messages” it received.

In answer to protests, the district posted a follow-up on social media: “First, we want to assure our community that the United States flag remains in its proper place at the highest point, in full accordance with the U.S. flag code.” Three flag poles stand outside its headquarters. The tallest flies the U.S. flag, and the Vermont flag is unfurled on one of the other two. The Somali flag takes third billing for a week.

Vermont State Police spokesman Adam Silverman told the outlet that there appeared to be a “coordinated national campaign” against the district, but after reviewing more than 200 messages, investigators “had not identified any credible threats of violence.”

According to reports, the flag-raising was the district’s answer to comments President Donald Trump recently made about illegal Somali immigrants in Democratic U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar’s district in Minnesota. “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you,” he said in a Cabinet meeting. “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

Clutching his pearls, district Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria called the president’s comments “almost marching orders for a large part of the U.S. population to go and harass our community.”

Biased Reporting

Of so-called negative messages, Newsweek offered only one. Benny Johnson posted on X: “I’ve got a suggestion for ICE’s next stop.” Not quite violently bloodthirsty, was he?

The report failed to include rational sentiments such as this one from X: “I am not paying property taxes to honor a nation that gets the mainstay of its funding from piracy on the high seas.”

Others suggested revoking federal funding, firing school officials, and giving illegals a “one-way ticket back to Somalia.” One pointed out the hypocrisy of fleeing from the despotic regime of another country, only to play the victim of the country providing asylum.

The school district’s decision is oddly timed considering the ongoing U.S. House investigation and Treasury Department review of $1 billion in public-benefits fraud schemes involving Somalis in Minnesota. They involve the “alleged theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in COVID relief funds and fraud related to public housing programs and autism relief services,” according to Fox News. “Claims that at least some of the money was funneled to the African Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab are also being probed.”

Staff in the Minnesota Department of Human Services claim that Democratic Governor Tim Walz turned a blind eye to the situation, thereby perpetuating it. In November, Trump ended the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program for Somalis in Minnesota, calling the state “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”