Mexican Flag on City Property Infuriates Protesters

The flap started last weekend. The city held a “family day” to celebrate and promote its immigrant-friendly municipal ID card. A dozen out-of-town opponents of the card, organized by a group called the Community Watchdog Project (CWP), rallied outside. (Click here to read about that event.)

The protesters discovered that the city was flying the Mexican flag below the American flag on the pole on the Green. That outraged them. CWP founder Dustin Gold subsequently sent an email to supporters decrying the sight of the Mexican flag.

The city raised the flag to commemorate Mexican Independent Day. It has for decades regularly flown the flags of Italy, Ireland, and other nations on the Green to mark dates important to local ethnic communities.

“On Saturday, CWP members arrived at City Hall around 8:45 am. To their surprise the POW flag, that usually flies below the American flag on the New Haven Green flagpole, was replaced with a Mexican flag,” Gold wrote to his list of supporters.

“We are calling on all Veterans, soldiers, and patriotic Americans to call our Governor, Mayor, Attorney General, and Congressman to share your disgust with this treasonous act.”

Following that email, hostile emails and phone calls from around the country came in to City Hall.

Mayor John DeStefano read aloud some of those messages to the ethnic group leaders and to reporters assembled on the Green Thursday afternoon. (Click on the play arrow to the video to watch highlights.)

A sample email:

“Subject: Burn the Mexican flag, don’t fly it

“Mayor,

“You need to get your head out of your proverbial rectal area and become an American and represent Americans.

“Get rid of any flag, the Mexican flag and fly it in mexico if you like so much. It’s not our flag and we’re sick of paying for illegal aliens and all their babies and having their kids overrun our schools and downgrade our country.

“Kick them out and you go with them.”

Among the people joining DeStefano to decry the campaign and to support flying the Mexican flag were representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, the Knights of St. Patrick, the new Ecuadorian consulate in town (pictured above: Troya Patricio and Raul Erazo), and Lithuanian, Puerto Rican, Italian, Polish, and Peruvian organizations.

DeStefano said that for decades, at least, the city has flown the flags of nations whose descendants in town wanted to mark important holidays — the flags of Ireland, Italy, Poland, etc. This is the first time he knows of that people have raised a fuss.

“This Mexican flag is doing nothing different than other flags representing people who live in this community have done,” DeStefano said.

Go to NewHavenIndependent.org to see a video of Mayor DeStefano reading some of the hate mail.

source:  NewHavenIndependent.org

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