I’ve been thinking about my relationship to the American flag.
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I’ve been thinking about about my relationship to the American flag.
When the anthem plays, or when I’m invited to join in the pledge of allegiance, the patriot in me stands at attention while the liberal social activist resists saluting what has been such a conflicted symbol throughout my adult life. But recently I had a moment when I was filled with patriotic joy, honored the flag without hesitation, and cried through my experience of uncluttered patriotism.
For this, I want to thank Patty, who cleans our house every week.
My mother was an immigrant, my father a first-generation Irish American. They relied on the support of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and were life-long grateful Democrats. I was a War Baby, born in June, 1941, six months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. My first political memory is of Joseph McCarthy’s 1954 televised hearings investigating the role of Communists in our government, and of Chief Counsel Joseph Welch’s response to McCarthy’s relentless drilling of a young lawyer:
McCarthy hearings (1954). History Collection.
"Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
As a college and graduate student in the 1960s, I was part of the liberal activist community that marched for Civil Rights and Voting Right and opposed the war in Vietnam. Dr. King was murdered in April of 1968, and weeks later I joined thousands of mostly Black citizens of Trenton, NJ, in the first Poor People’s March behind the mule-drawn wagon that had carried Dr. King from the church to his burial site. As a seminary student, I was exempt from the draft, but many of my peers burned draft cards and set fire to the flag. We chanted taunts at our president: “Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today.” I wince at the cruel memory, though not at our opposition to the war.
Trenton, NJ protests. (1968). Times of Trenton file photo.
I was among those who felt President Reagan weaponized our flag in his fight against the Soviet Union, implying that if we didn’t agree with his brand of patriotism we were disloyal Americans. In 1981, I was part of a coalition of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who organized a conference aimed at reversing the arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. We could not get a single member of Congress to endorse or participate in that weekend. In 1984, the Reverse the Arms Race movement was on the cover of Time magazine, celebrating its impact on US-Soviet collaborations to de-escalate. I marched against George W's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I was crazed by President Trump’s defense of the Confederate flag and statues of southern traitors who went to war against their government – our government – to defend their right to own Black people.
Jonathan Bachman/Twitter (2016). Globalnews.ca.
This is the heritage that rode with me as I raced down the 110 Freeway, found one of the last places in the vast parking garage, and trotted a quarter of a mile to an enormous auditorium in the Los Angeles Convention Center.
And there it was: an American flag so large it spanned the width of the dais and towered over the lectern from which a variety of notables would speak. Perhaps twelve thousands of us were seated behind the 3,542 men and women who were about to be sworn in as new citizens of the United States.
Patty was among them.
I’d rushed in too late to see her before she was seated, but I knew she was down front, nervous, but equally thrilled, and that her husband Ricardo and their children, already citizens, were somewhere in the throng. Now, in this vast space in front of this vast flag, she would become a citizen.
Thousands sworn in as US citizens at LA naturalization ceremony (2018). KABC.
There were one hundred and twenty nations represented that day by these new citizens, nearly two-thirds of the nations in the world. I was in a crowd as diverse as America: a man near me with his head wrapped in the respectful turban of a Sikh; Mexican, Filipino and Chinese families and friends. Directly in front of me was a man in his thirties with a red and indigo Hindu tattoo rising above his tee-shirt collar to a point in the middle of the back of his shaved head.
America the beautiful.
I cried when I placed my hand over my heart and recited with the crowd, and with the new citizens, the Pledge of Allegiance. I cried when 3,542 voices recited together, like a joyous, grateful chorus, their oath of citizenship, after which the presiding judge said to them, and to Patty, “Congratulations, you are now citizens of the United States.” I cried when a video showed scenes of our country while a singer gave depth and soul to America the Beautiful. I cried when a Latina stepped to the microphone as all of us stood at attention, and sang The Star Spangled Banner.
Thank you, Patty, for the reminder of where I and my parents come from, and of my gratitude for this diverse, complex but undeniably wonderful country of which both you and I are now citizens.
For decades, I’ve had an ambivalent relationship to our flag. But for one hour on a Tuesday afternoon in a crowd as diverse as America, with our dear one up front becoming a citizen, I was reminded of what it means to me to be a patriot: to applaud the ambition of our uniquely American ideals, to deplore our constant failures to live up to them, and to pledge myself to every ongoing effort to realize our better vision of who we can be.