The Star Spangled Banner

I have an explanation for why I don't stand for the National Anthem. My grandfather was born in Belgium. When the Nazis invaded, he refused to surrender so they put him in prison. On his way to execution, he escaped along with some other men but so far as he knew, the rottweilers got to the rest of them. He proceeded to become a liaison between the French Underground and the Allies until the U.S. invaded and freed them from German occupation.

Today we're taught the French owe us a favor but our soldiers knew then that we were just getting even. Upon their arrival on Normandy's beaches, they declared, “Lafayette, we are here!” giving admiration to the French Admiral who fought for us in the Revolution.

You may think you know our founders' intentions but honestly, this country was founded from compromise between two ideologies that could barely stop screaming at each other long enough to defend themselves from their former masters. And when Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem about how no bombs dropped by the British could burn our star-spangled banner, the third verse of his song emphasized the triumph of the white man over escaped slaves that joined the British ranks for a chance to slay their former masters.

The flag is a symbol and it represents what was given to us to by the blood of our ancestors but for Native Americans it may as well be a swastika. Ideas may be bullet proof but they aren’t real. Human beings are real. The people perceived as our enemies wouldn't be so upset, but fear has them looped in a cycle, trapped in a defensive posture so nothing gets in unless it fits their preconceived bias. And if you presume this type of denial will exclude you because you’ve been victimized, too, welcome to the spiral because evil perpetuates in our blind-spots. It remains hidden in our generalizations until we can no longer see the distinction between a war criminal and their citizens, or a terrorist and all Muslims, or a bigot and the privileged.

Pain cannot be mutually experienced and suffering is like a gas in that any amount is enough to fill the room. That's why the size of your fart doesn't matter, I still smell it from here. That doesn't make our problems equivalent, but it does mean your enemies are hurting, too, and no one has any excuse to give into fear. You can be hate's captive or love's instrument so choose.

I don't care if some indentured servants were white and some slave owners were black. Do you identify with the hand that holds the whip or the back it breaks against? You're not a victim of the people who have less power than you. The White Supremacists are the ones killing the white race by revising our history so we can't learn from our own mistakes. The knife pulled to the white throat is the lie told to the white folk there's nothing to fight for because our founding fathers said "All Lives Matter" and the bombs bursting in air proved it, when that flag was still there. My flag is the star-spangled banner because I'm part of a Union that says we're all in this together but I won't stand for your fucking anthem anymore because our fight isn't over.

My father was drafted into Vietnam. For this country he sacrificed half his intestines to a bullet wound and lost more than half his platoon, including his best friend, but if you claim he protected your freedom you might find him in disagreement. He'll tell you that freedom was no where to be found in Vietnam, it wouldn't be until later that he would come to his country's defense when a cop smashed his camera with a billy club while he was working for a newspaper photographing the civil rights movement.

I choose the star-spangled banner despite the bloodstains accrued because I am part of a dream, and you tried it to take it away but our dream is still here so you can shove that ugly blue X up your inferiority complex. Through each generation we've been beaten and battered and told to let go of that lantern but our dream is still here. And if you want to control the narrative of what it means to be an American then I have a different story to share. And if you say I ain't a patriot I say you've mistaken your country for a myth made of borders, colors and creeds. I say you aren't fighting for this country if you aren't fighting for its rivers and its trees, its mountains and valleys and its motherfucking bees.

And if you say I hate capitalism, I say you don't even practice it. The philosophy is based off market velocity not just extracting wealth. You live in a colonial system that ran out of space and started eating itself. And if you say I hate the constitution, I say you should read it because it was written that this nation would be one people with divided power not divided people under one debt machine. I say when the wealth disparity between executive and employee is the same as a slave and the owner of a plantation then it's time once again for us to declare our emancipation.

And if you say I hate freedom, I say this isn't the first time greed and division seized our vision and squeezed it as if the dream would retreat through intimidation and our ancestors never let the fire deplete and right now they're all watching. And they say listen, for we are the people who built this country and the people whose graves it was built upon. We are the captives who came here stripped of freedom and the refugees who sought it through Ellis Island and the Rio Grande. We are the soldiers that fought against Fascist Persecution and we survived the camp on Angel Island.

We are both sides of history and we beg you not to repeat it. Our silence regarding the military industrial complex has thrust Europe into a refugee crisis and as terrorist acts threaten the liberty of countries like Belgium and France, they call out once again for that nation that fought for their freedom the last time. I am my Grand Papa's grandson and to the children of Lafayette, I declare: We Are Still Here.