Man Burned a Cross to Protest Trump. It Did Not Go Well.

What Actually Happened in Grant Park

According to the Guardian, Lu carried wooden slats from his apartment to Chicago's Grant Park on June 9, assembled a cross, doused it in toilet paper and lighter fluid, lit it on fire, and then placed a red hat on top of it. He chose Grant Park specifically, he says, because it was visible. He was not wrong about that part.

Chicago police released photos of a person of interest fleeing the scene shortly after. The images showed a young man in his 20s with dark hair, black backpack, dark trousers, and white sneakers. Lu then went on NBC Chicago before his arrest and said, essentially, yes that was me, but let me explain.

The Explanation Was Not Great

Lu told NBC Chicago that "my protest has nothing to do with race, nothing to do with gender" and that he was targeting Donald Trump. He said he built the whole thing alone, with no organization behind him, because he wanted to do something by himself. He also sent the station a video claiming responsibility, denying KKK affiliation, apologizing for any offense caused, and criticizing the president.

Here is where it gets genuinely painful to read. Lu admitted to NBC Chicago that he knew about the historical significance of burning crosses before he did it. His exact words: "I did know about this historical relevance beforehand, but I didn't know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did." He knew. He just underestimated it. By roughly the entire history of American racial terror.

He also said, credit where it's due, that he should have protested a different way. A rare moment of clarity that arrived approximately one cross burning too late.

Eight Charges. Four of Them Felonies.

Lu was arrested and now faces four felony counts and four misdemeanor counts, per the Guardian. Two of the felonies are hate crime charges. The other two are arson and damaging city property. The misdemeanors cover breach of peace, reckless conduct, damage to property, and cross burning to intimidate.

He is scheduled for a detention hearing Thursday. The "cross burning to intimidate" misdemeanor charge is doing a lot of work in that list, considering he maintains he was not trying to intimidate anyone on the basis of race. The law, reasonably, does not grade on intent when the act itself has one of the most specific and brutal symbolic meanings in American history.

The Community Response

Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of Chicago's Faith Community of Saint Sabina, offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the perpetrator before Lu came forward. Pfleger was not interested in parsing the anti-Trump framing.

"This was so premeditated. You made this cross somewhere. You carried it, you got it downtown. You put it in one of the most visible spots in Chicago and then you set it afire," Pfleger told ABC7. "This is a decades-old symbol of hate and supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan. This is their symbol." Pfleger's point is not complicated. The symbol does not care what was in your heart when you lit it.

The Context Nobody Should Need But Here We Are

Cross burning is not an ambiguous symbol. It was the signature act of intimidation used by the Ku Klux Klan for more than a century, deployed specifically to terrorize Black Americans, Jewish Americans, and anyone else the Klan wanted to threaten. When you burn a cross in a major American city, in a park where tens of thousands of people will see it, the message it sends has nothing to do with whatever was going through your head when you struck the match.

This is not an obscure piece of historical trivia. It is covered in middle school. The fact that a senior at a major urban university decided to deploy this particular image as political theater against Trump, in a city with one of the largest Black populations in the country, is the kind of thing that makes you stare at a wall for a while.