A Response to a Dickhead Pierogi Truck Owner who believes that talking about the Constitution in public isn't 'Family Friendly'

 

Your flag is red, your flag is blue

Your flag is white and so are you

Placed atop your concessions truck

You have just made a political statement at this so-called “family event”

So when you shout at me as a coward in the distance that my politics have no place here

May I remind you, that flag on your truck is a political statement

The American Flag is not a benign symbol

It is the authoritarian reinforcement of a jingoistic value system

That demonizes the “other” and uplifts the privilege of the white male

Whom you just happen to be, sitting in your truck,

Shouting at me as a coward in the distance

Trying to silence a dissenting voice

Because your flag is your politics

And you support the system that I speak out against

If gun control and civil rights are words that children's ears should never hear

Then gun violence, slavery, discrimination and segregation are even greater crimes against out children

Silence will not end the injustice

And waiting for an allegedly appropriate hour to speak

Only results in delays and deference

Tools the white man uses to hold everyone else down

Tone policing our anger

Calling our demonstrations at public events inappropriate

If now is not the time to discuss my civil rights, white man, when is?

When does this marginalized citizen's mere existence STOP being political

Long enough to have a proper conversation about my rights?

It doesn't.

So I will stand here and speak my peace for children's ears to hear

Because it's only then will my voice carry weight

For when your children learn of the injustices you've allowed in the name of preserving White America

They will learn what we have always known -

That your flag is a tool of the oppression we face every single day living under it

And the promises this Nation makes to your children -

That “We hold these truths to be self-evident,

That all men are created equal,

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,

That among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

Every last word of that is a lie, and the flag that sits upon your truck is a reinforcement of that lie

I will not protect your lies for the sake of your children

I will speak the truth to power for every child in this nation to hear

Because they deserve to be told the truth

About you, About the flag that sits upon your truck

The political statement that you wave in MY face to oppress and silence ME

When I take this mic, this is no longer a family event

It is an educational seminar about the real America

The America that is Red, and Yellow, and Brown, and Black, and covered in Rainbows

The America that your flag doesn't represent

Your flag drips with red blood on the hands of white skin,

Burying the shameful blue underneath its white stars

And I will not stand silent in the face of your political statement any longer