|
David MCReynolds on the American Flag
(David
McReynolds is a leader in the Socialist Party, USA and the War Resister's
League)
Let me preface this by saying I have not saluted the flag or stood for
the Star Spangled Banner since I joined the "radical movement" at
UCLA, over a half century ago. (I have modified that in cases where I was
speaking to a community or conservative group and I knew that if I
"sat it out" I would lose the audience before I even began).
At this meeting there was an agreement to a suggestion I had made a week or
so ago - that rather than get into a hassle about having the American flag
in the demonstration (and right now Manhattan is awash in American flags),
we have as many national flags as possible, including the US flag, plus
banners and symbols of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, etc.
When the group got to this point tonight there were three young women,
intense, very serious, who explained that "we" (ie., everyone
else in the room) had to understand that just to "make everyone else
comfortable - mainly white people - we were letting in the flag without
understanding that for people of color it represented terrorism, that many
in the Arab community only put the flag up to protect themselves, and it
is hated by people of color".
I nearly exploded, saying that if people were trying to impose this radical
and sectarian view (however correct it might be!) on an effort to have a
broad outreach rally which would draw in as many people as possible they
had their heads up their ass and had no idea what had happened September
11.
Yes, the flag represents Bush, capitalism, war, terrorism from the skies,
segregation, racism, sexism, sanctions etc. But for the vast, overwhelming
majority of people living in this country - and I mean dirt poor working
folks, I mean black Americans, Japanese whose folks were in internment
camps, Puerto Ricans, etc., the flag is a symbol MOST of them look to as a
way of saying "I'm an American too". Most of the folks in Harlem
and Bed Stuy are flying flags - though I'm sure there are two or three
dozen, or even three hundred, radical blacks who aren't.
I worried because those three women, so serious, so young, are so desperately
out of touch with the black community they tried to speak for - and out of
touch with working class America. Yes, many Arabs are putting up flags to
protect their shops. But many blacks are leaping at the chance to be
patriotic - to say "count me in". We might wish they would say
"hey, America never did shit for me, I ain't flying that flag"
but that isn't what they are saying.
There is also, right now, in Manhattan something going on which these three
women were missing - people are raising the flag to comfort themselves, to
share in something. Because for the moment the flag is a symbol of the
community of New York. (And NO I am NOT wearing a flag button
myself).
During the Vietnam War the Vietnamese would ask Americans "Why do you
carry our flag in your demonstrations? Why don't you carry your own
flag?" When we organized to celebrate the "radical
alternatives" to the bi-centennial in 1976, the Puerto Rican
Socialist Party folks said to me "You mean you guys aren't going to
have an American flag on the platform? We have our flag there - why do you
'give' your flag to the ruling class?".
My reason for not saluting the flag is that I am not, as a pacifist, loyal to
any nation state. For me it is a pinch of incense before Ceasar. But I
don't expect most people to understand that, much less agree with it. My
position is a small minority within the Socialist Party and I do not push
it.
But for us to think we can build a movement in this country which spits on
the full and total history of the nation, good and bad, lynchings and the
underground railroad, the draft, and the draft resisters, strikes and
bosses and bloodshed - all that makes us, for better or worse, a community
of peoples that is American, and different from Canadians or Mexicans or
French or Japanese . . . if we think we can do this, we are really crazy.
I don't want the Socialist Party to start flying a thousand American flags
or bow down to the State, but if we are working in coalitions with other
people and groups, we better learn that for most working people, most
veterans, most blacks, America is not spelled with a K, and the flag is
not something for burning. It is, perhaps, in the words of Norman Thomas,
something that might need washing.
The point of this post, done late when I'm tired but before I forget tonights'
meeting, is that NOTHING IS EASIER than for good radicals, particulary
good young radicals, to think "our own internal culture" is
somehow something we share with poor whites, workers, etc. It isn't. They
don't say comrade. They don't know what the red flag means. Again and
again, if we would build a movement, a serious movement, one that can
shake the establishment, it must be built on the foundations of the best
in our own history. Not the best in Vietnamese or Cuban or African or
Chinese or Russian history - OUR OWN HISTORY.
If we are alienated from our history, it we don't even know how great much of
it is, we are lost. I still won't salute the flag, (though I look forward
to the day when, in good conscience I can) but I hope on October 7th that
my solution - of many people carrying the flags of many nations, including
American flags, will be something TV catches - a thousand flags, and many
of them flags of the nations that lost nationals in the WTC tragedy, and
many of them flags and banners of various religous faiths.
A P.S. (which I fear I've written before). When I was in Prague in 1968 and
Soviet troops rolled in, by the second day people were wearing a small
patch of cloth - red blue and white, the Czech national colors - to
indicate their support of the STATE which had just been overthrown.
Yesterday it had been a Communist State, and the flag a Communist flag,
the day after the troops came in, it was the flag of the people against
the invaders, and I asked for a piece of that flag to wear, which I wore
on the train which took us out of Czechoslovakia and still have somewhere
in my apt. And if the US was invaded I always said I'd then I'd wear it.
The destruction of the World Trade Center, the loss of nearly 6,000 lives,
at least two thousand of them working class and a great many of those
people of color, almost makes me, too, wear the flag. And I sure as hell
do understand why every car in this town is flying a flag, every store in
town has one in its window.
David McReynolds
|
