The activist, whistle-blower and former U.S. Army soldier now known as Chelsea Manning burned a Thin Blue Line flag, took a picture as it flamed away, then tweeted “fuck the police” along with the hashtag #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay on January 9.
“Yearly reminder we live in a domestic military occupation in every major city,” Manning wrote.
“‘Thin Blue Flags’ are a variation of an American flag that features a thin blue line to represent law enforcement. It’s also occasionally seen painted on roads between solid yellow painted lines.”
Manning then tweeted an article from July 5, 2018 which was published in the Intercept that covered a police raid on her home in June after she posted a series of tweet police said they thought sounded “suicidal.”
“My warrantless ‘welfare check’ with guns drawn,” she wrote.
Police claimed to have not been searching her home, but rather conducting a welfare check.
In October, Manning called the U.S. a “large, big prison” while speaking at the Royal Institution in London.
“You think about the surveillance systems, the cameras, or the police presence, and you think about the fact that we have walls around our country, and that is very much the same thing that is inside a prison,” Manning said, according to The Guardian.
“I see a lot of similarities between the world out here and the world that was in there.”
Manning previously faced 35 years in prison after being found guilty of leaking military and diplomatic documents, but had her sentence commuted in 2017 by former President Barack Obama.