My American Flag

I snuck away for a soak this week. On Thursday morning, after a couple hours of work, I picked up a dear friend and we hightailed it to the hot pools in Lava Hot Springs.  As we drove by Century High School on the interstate, I recalled being there a couple weeks ago at the Pocatello Chubbuck School District 25 (PCSD25) special meeting on September 28 .  This weekday getaway was, in part, spurred by my attendance at that meeting almost three weeks ago, and how I’m still processing it all.

Prior to that September 28 special meeting a sizable number of locals organized and strategized. In light of social media rumblings and recent media coverage of all of this, I knew protesters would be on hand at this school district board meeting. I decided I wanted my family to attend, not just to show our support for educators and decision-makers, but also to put myself in the company of people who are thinking so differently from me. I needed to see their anger, fears and frustration for myself rather than just read about it online.

Dozens of people flanked the entrance to the school chanting and holding signs. Members of the public heckled the people serving on the school board at various times after the meeting was called to order. People cheered, whooped and hollered after public testimony they agreed with, continuing the practice even after the chair of the board asked the attendees to refrain from doing so. While a Pocatello High School student was at the microphone offering his considerate and personal public testimony, people heckled and jeered him. Two men in the back of the high school auditorium held an American flag between them – shaking and waving it when they liked tidbits of public testimony, ensuring that all of the School District 25 trustees could see their display throughout the entirety of the meeting.

This is not my kind of protest. I can appreciate people exercising their freedoms. In fact, I will defend the people’s freedom of speech here while exercising my own. The guys holding the flag, however,  reminded me of gay rights activists over the years who made out in cheek-less leather chaps on many a capitol’s steps. Just men, full of passion and energy. Exercising their rights in over-the-top displays of freedom.

In the immediate days following that school board meeting, it was the heckling of the Poky High student that bothered me the most. He is a classmate of our middle son and they are on the debate team together. Now that weeks have passed, however, I’ve found that I am just as bothered by how the American flag was used that night.

There’s an American flag in front of Century High School, and there was one present on the stage during the board meeting. What was the purpose of someone bringing another one? Since the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol where a rioter beat a US Capitol officer with pole flying an American flag, I’m noticing the use of the American flag, our American flag, more and more.

I have an American flag at home. It was presented to me when I was 13 years old at my dad’s funeral in Lava Hot Springs. He had been in the US Army just long enough to earn veteran’s benefits before injuries in a car wreck got him discharged. I don’t think Dad ever wanted a funeral, but a local Veteran’s group insisted on providing military rights, so we held a funeral. In Lava in 1986, this consisted of a rifle fired three times, bugle taps played on a battery-operated tape recorder situated on a metal folding chair and a presentation of the American flag to me with a dozen folks in attendance.

My American flag will not be used to intimidate, shame, or threaten another American.  It will continue to stay folded in its triangle in the cardboard box I brought home 35 years ago. I find it every six months when I reorganize the garage. I pause, feel it, and put it back.  I have often thought I should do something more with my American flag, but in those private moments when I rediscover it at home, it spawns profound reflections in me that I probably wouldn’t have if I saw that particular flag every day.

Do you have an American flag? What do you use it for?

I was participating in the Zonta Region 8 District conference online this week and this was my screen during the opening ceremony.