Kat Rodriguez, a coordinator for the Tucson Latino-rights organization Coalicion de Derechos Humanos (or "Human Rights Coalition"), still blames the cops for letting Lawless and other anti-immigrant activists into the park. Rodriguez believes that Lawless' goal is similar to Warden's. They want to incite violence by burning the Mexican flag.
"Burning the flag is a First Amendment right," concedes Rodriguez. "There's nothing illegal about it. But what's her intention in doing that? When you burn any flag — when you burn the American flag, for instance — you're going to stir up strong, strong feelings. And they're not going to be friendly feelings. It's going to create animosity and division, and that's what they counted on April 10. They were laughing when the mayhem broke out."
![From the 1997 Northern California Hercules & Xena Fest: "Ms. Lawless [third from right, in hat] cannot make up her mind whether she wants to be Xena or marry her."](http://media.phoenixnewtimes.com/burn-baby-burn.550212.40.jpg)
From the 1997 Northern California Hercules & Xena Fest: "Ms. Lawless [third from right, in hat] cannot make up her mind whether she wants to be Xena or marry her."
"Burn a Mexican flag for America," spat talk jock Michael Savage on his March 27, 2006, show. "Burn 10 Mexican flags if I could recommend it."
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Indeed, Lawless and her cohorts assert that what happened on April 10 proves that they're not the violent ones. But burning flags, like burning crosses, is one of those things guaranteed to garner a response and attention from ally and foe alike. For Lawless, burning flags has meant a path to infamy, the sort of recognition she's unlikely to have drawn otherwise.
Lawless would be the first to admit that burning the Mexican flag wasn't her idea. Rather, the concept came to her via that mustachioed, blackhearted talk-radio personality Michael Savage. Seems the nationally syndicated, San Francisco-based jock — known for such New York Timesbest sellers as Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder and The Savage Nation, as well as for his puerile on-air rants — let loose on his March 27, 2006, show. He showered invective on Mexican immigrants and exhorted listeners to ignite the Mexican national banner.
"That's right, burn the Mexican flag on your street corner," urged Savage in his hyperagitated style. "Show what you care about, show that you won't take it anymore, show that you're sick of everybody pushing us around like a pitiful, helpless giant of a nation that is out of control because we have nothing but corruption and rot at the highest level.
"Do that," Savage raged. "Burn a Mexican flag for America. Burn a Mexican flag for those who died that you should have a nationality and a sovereignty. Go out into the street and show you're a man. Burn 10 Mexican flags if I could recommend it. Put one in the window upside down and tell them to go back where they came from."
Savage referred to the immigration problem as "an invasion by any other name," and remarked that, "We, the people, are being displaced by the people of Mexico." He lamented that he was only a radio host, but if he were "more than one man," he would organize a massive Mexican-flag burning. "Then I would like to see how our hardworking brethren would react, our friends from the south," he carped, contemptuously. "Let us see how they would react."
This foam-mouthed philippic was brought on by massive pro-immigrant marches in California in which the Mexican flag was unabashedly waved. In response to such cavils, subsequent demonstrations featured Old Glory rather than the colors of the homeland. But Laine Lawless, a longstanding Savage fan, heard the howl of her icon and obeyed.
"I was listening to Michael Savage one day," she tells viewers in How to Burn a Mexican Flag. "And I heard him rant and rave in his inimitable style, 'There should be Mexican flags burning from every street corner in America.' And I thought, 'Yeah, he's right, why don't we do it here in Tucson?'"
Lawless had been in the movement for a few years already, having done a brief stint with Chris Simcox and the Minuteman Project before falling out with Simcox and eventually registering her own Border Guardians Web site in 2005, after working on the concept during much of '04. After living on a ranch in Cochise County, a hotbed of anti-immigrant fervor, she had ended up parking her Chevy SUV and her RV trailer in Tucson, hooking up with the likes of Dove and Warden.
She's always been a talk-radio enthusiast, and can discuss the nuances and niches of personalities as diverse as Tom Leykis, Howard Stern, and Dr. Laura, but Savage held, and holds, a special fascination.
"I like his passion," Lawless says of Savage in one of several interviews with New Times. "When he does a radio show, it's exciting. It gets you stirred up inside."
As odd as it may sound, Savage and Lawless share a few significant characteristics. Each has left his or her heart in the Bay Area — in Lawless' case, Daly City, just to the south of San Francisco, where she spent 20-plus years of her life. Both have changed their last names to labels of what they long to embody. Lawless refuses to own up to her pre-'90s last name, though a routine background check suggests her birth name may be Roberta Dill, a more prosaic moniker than her current handle. Similarly, it's widely known that before Savage was Savage, he bore the less-intimidating name Michael Weiner, under which he earned his doctorate in epidemiology and nutrition science from the University of California at Berkeley, going on to become a famed herbalist and author of many books on the subject. And both Savage and Lawless passed through periods of lefty-ism before their sharp turns to the right. Savage once swam naked with Allen Ginsberg and counted Lawrence Ferlinghetti as a friend. Lawless admits that she was an ardent member of the gay-liberation movement of the '70s. She remains a pagan, consulting tarot cards and crystals for purposes of divination — not practices typical conservatives cotton to. And, of course, there's that bit about laying a curse on anti-gay '70s orange-juice queen Anita Bryant.
