For much of my childhood in Tennessee, I believed that the American flag was a symbol of the far-right and extremism. It’s been broadly co-opted by those groups in recent years, after all: It’s splashed across muscle tanks and car bumpers. It has been waved by the self-described “western chauvinist” Proud Boys at rallies in Nashville and was hoisted on Jan. 6, when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. It’s also appeared prominently at Make America Great Again rallies, such as the 2024 presidential rally at Madison Square Garden, where a comedian’s description of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” was just one of many xenophobic comments made by speakers towards people of color, religious minorities, and immigrants.
But again and again, despite all its flaws, I have found a reason to claim our flag and the country it represents: it protects our right to protest.
I’ve spent much of my high school career advocating for issues that could make our country kinder, safer, and more inclusive, from immigrant students’ rights to gun reform. The flag has waved above me and my peers as we’ve advocated for gun reform and immigrant student rights at the Tennessee Capitol.
Earlier this year, I watched my city and country take to the streets en masse, calling for a better United States: In the wake of the killings of the Minnesota protesters, The Guardian reported more than 300 anti-ICE protests planned for a single weekend, many with American flags waving proudly. I was reminded then that the stars and stripes don’t stand for the state-sponsored violence or anti-immigrant policies that were foisted upon the Twin Cities, but the freedom to speak out against those injustices — loudly, collectively, and unfailingly.
The freedoms of speech and assembly are our most essential rights, and it’s worth remembering that they don’t exist everywhere. Around the same time as I began organizing, I was in a World History class where we learned about the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. It was from this lesson that I came to realize that the freedom to organize may be a right, but not one that is granted worldwide. Countries across the world lack it, from North Korea to Iran to South Sudan.
The stars and stripes represent the right to local, grassroots organizing that makes change possible. Change comes after months, years, and decades of hard work toward progress. Experts on feminism agree that there have been four waves of the feminist movement, ranging from women’s suffrage to breaking free of the stereotypical “women’s role” in the home. It’s easy to see movements like #MeToo or the ratification of the 19th Amendment as sudden moments in feminist history. The reality of it, though, is that over a century of organizing has gotten the feminist movement to where it is today. The flag has been a resilient symbol at key moments in this progression, like suffragettes holding flags affixed to broom handles.
It disconcerts many Americans that the same freedoms that have made progress on issues like feminism possible also enable extremists to spout hatred and march in the streets. I felt this deeply in the summer of 2024, when a group of Neo-Nazis marched in downtown Nashville. How could the American flag support such clear, disturbing hatred?
The answer to that question lay in a reminder I got soon afterward: The freedom of speech that our flag symbolizes doesn’t just enable one-off expressions of any viewpoints, but ongoing conversations about those viewpoints in which just voices can chime in.
In the months after that neo-Nazi march, which included members of the Goyim Defense League (GDL), a Nashville-based Jewish activist I know, Melissa, convinced a California-based member of the GDL to leave the organization. She didn’t beg or plead with him — she simply started a conversation.
The same freedom of speech that had let Nazis march in my hometown helped Melissa rescue that former GDL member from this hate-filled rabbit hole he had fallen down. It’s the same freedom of speech that encouraged a group of Tennessee bipartisan legislators to speak out against a different instance of Nazi activity in Nashville in February 2024. The American flag may protect Nazis, but it’s the reason conversation, advocacy, and growth are all feasible, too.
When I was younger, I thought the American flag symbolized everything that I’ve fought against. It’s an easy mistake to make. We live in a country that has stumbled again and again in its young life — with overseas military imperialism, racist laws in the South, and cruel treatment of minority groups. The American flag flies hauntingly over those moments of our history.
But it has also been a constant symbol of protests through the generations. It flew over the 1960s lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, the teach-ins at the University of Michigan against the Vietnam War, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, and the No Kings protests. It is true that it has been painted with our catastrophic mistakes and our monumental strides forward alike. Still, it stands for our always stumbling, ever-persisting pursuit of liberty, freedom, and justice for all.
