17 hours ago
Stop tone policing protesters
Which brings me to all the protester policing happening in America these days.
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I'm not talking about the literal policing — including thousands of National Guard members and hundreds of Marines deployed to American streets by President Trump — of protesters. I'm referring to this weird tone policing of people for what they're wearing or carrying at protests against Trump's unconstitutional mass deportations and his other odious policies.
Not long after people took to the streets earlier this month in opposition to workplace raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in and around Los Angeles, there were complaints about some protesters carrying Mexican flags.
'I think the visuals of carrying [Mexican flags] are terrible, honestly,'
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Kinzinger, who was one of only two Republicans on the Democratic House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, is certainly no Trump fanboy. But he, and others with similar beliefs, are the ones playing into Trump's narrative that there's only one way to be an American. They seem to believe that the optics of another nation's flag at a protest against the Trump administration is as harmful as families and communities upended by swarms of people with covered faces who look and act more like kidnappers than government agents.
It's a handy distraction that Republicans are only too happy to amplify as a means to shift focus away from the monstrous anti-immigration policies crafted by
When Republicans call protesters 'insurrectionists,' as
'I hold the Mexican flag with pride because I'm Mexican American and I'm proud of my culture and my people,' protester
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Trump is recklessly trying to detain and deport as many immigrants as he can as fast as he can. He's threatening to expand a travel ban to an
But there's also this — people fighting for their rights and challenging a fascistic government do not have time for someone else's idea of respectability. As Kepner said in 'Before Stonewall,' asserting one's whole self is the only path forward. If someone holding the flag of another nation at an anti-ICE protest is all it takes to convince someone that that person or those they represent are less deserving of fair treatment, then those offended never cared about the rights of others in the first place.
Equality isn't won by conformity or putting someone else's fragility and comfort ahead of your own rights. Freedom isn't pretending to be someone other than who you are to gain acceptance. Regardless of what flag they wave, protesters are only demanding that this nation live up to the red, white, and blue values of its own.
This is an excerpt from
, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Renée Graham.
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Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at
