I am not sure the Black Flag (teenage anarchists) knows that their standard “upside down flag” has real meaning:
* United States Code (The Collected Laws of the United States)
Title 4, Chapter 1 – The Flag
Sec. 8. Respect for flag
SubSec. (a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
I found this little tidbit at JPFO. Its Executive Director Aaron Zelman explains his reason for flying the stars and stripes upside down:
- One recent afternoon I was working outdoors when a stranger rode up on a motorcycle and started giving me a hard time. No, he wasn’t an outlaw biker; he was an ordinary patriotic American. But he didn’t like what he saw in my front yard.
It was a U.S. flag. But it was flying upside-down, as it always does at the Zelman household.
He growled that he was a Vietnam vet and that he’d fought for that flag, and he didn’t like me showing it disrespect. I answered that I was also a Vietnam vet. But I told him that he _hadn’t_ fought for the flag (which is only a symbol); he’d fought for the Bill of Rights — the document that sets America apart from lesser countries.
And I told him that flying the flag upside-down was as great a sign of respect for my country as I could think of. After all, America is in trouble, and flying its flag upside-down is a sign of distress. The inverted flag calls out to everybody who sees: “Please help the United States. Don’t let the most promising nation on earth fall into tyranny.”