Sunday, June 29, 2014

What Our Flag Represents

9/11/2012 New York City financial district

My only concern with painting a crosswalk to resemble an American flag is that flag protocol forbids letting the flag touch the ground, and especially frowns on  treading all over it .   

But obviously those are (unenforced) rules and regulations for an actual American flag, the kind made of cloth or polyester and designed to be flown.

Besides, if it's good enough for New York City on the most sacred of anniversaries than it's good enough for me.  

Apparently not, however, for our sister city to the west, that other bastion of enlightened liberalism, Northampton.  "NoHo" to hipsters, or just plain "Hamp" to longtime residents.  


I would expect flag phobic Amherst to summarily dodge the idea of a patriotic crosswalk in the downtown, but I'm a little surprised by the Northampton Board of Public Works suddenly saying it's not in their jurisdiction to allow a patriotic crosswalk when they already allowed the rainbow one.

In my ill fated speech to Amherst Town Meeting seven years ago I invoked that same comparison, to no avail.



Let's hope Northampton comes to their senses before they start being compared to Amherst.  On a national stage. 



5 comments:

Dr. Ed said...

If Bill Newman does not raise the issue of "content neutral use of a public forum", he will loose the absolute last scintilla of respect I have for him.

If they make crosswalks public forums to express flag-values (i.e. rainbow) then they gotta allow ALL flags including the Nazi one. The US Supreme Court has been quite clear on that -- repeatedly.

Anonymous said...

That town used to be cool. It has gone way downhill in the last 20 years.

Anonymous said...

Forget the rainbow colors/ forget the flag colors- just mark/ repaint all the crosswalks to keep pedestrians safe

A crosswalk located feet away from the rainbow (in front of city hall) desperately needed repainting- It could've easily been done. The crew and tools were there- and the white paint container was open!

Dr. Ed said...

A crosswalk located feet away from the rainbow (in front of city hall) desperately needed repainting- It could've easily been done. The crew and tools were there- and the white paint container was open!

Except that pedestrian safety is no longer the primary concern.

Anonymous said...

It is a flag code and it is not required to be followed by law. It is suggestive.

If a group is so weak and unrecognized as to need to paint a crosswalk for their cause, perhaps they should re-evaluate their techniques. Such a group would be better coming in at 2 am and and painting their own crosswalk without permission...in Northampton, did gay folks wait for permission to be gay...no...why did they need permission to paint a gay pride flag on the street?

Again, the need or desire for a representative crosswalk just shows how weak a group really is...needing govt help to push their cause forward. Seems appropriate given that and our recent history to put an Red White and Blue crosswalk. Those colors are getting weak like the rainbow.