When confronted with large public demonstrations of flag-waving I have snarled when I though it save to do so. When I didn't feel safe I simply shut down in defense of my essential self. That behavior changed early this week. Over the weekend folks in Seattle created a floral memorial to the victims of the September 11th tragedy. Official estimates reported that 75,000 people left a million flowers in and around the large central fountain at the Seattle Center. For those of you who are not familiar with the fountain, the water sprouting apparatus sits at the bottom of a large bowl that is several hundred feet across. Spiraling ramps lead from the level of the surrounding ground down into the bowl.

I visited the memorial on Monday evening because my heart ached, and I desperately need solace and hope. In the memorial I saw flowers of all kinds laid out everywhere. I also saw written messages that spoke of sorrow and loss and a longing for a time and place when all would be right with the world. I also saw many American flags and flag variants. I never thought of speaking harshly, but upon seeing the flags, I began to shut my heart down. I did not fear for my safety if I spoke out against the patriotic display; I kept silent out of respect for the other, much more wholesome sentiments present and the people who made them. I began to shut my heart, but I stopped because the other expressions touched me deeply. It made little sense for me to willingly cut myself off from them. Besides, I came to the memorial in order to open my heart and weep. So at first I tolerated the flags in order to fulfill my emotional needs, and toleration led to new understanding.

I came to the Seattle Center believing that the vast majority of the American people want peace and need to express many feeling like sorrow, loss and many beliefs like faith in the future rather than anger turning to revenge. Consequently, I looked for evidence to support that belief as I immersed myself in the memorial. I found lots of that real evidence. I also found that the combination of the many expressions of love and my willingness to perceive the world outside of my own box allowed me to see the flags in a different light.

The flags came to represent love of country in a new/old way. For me that love reminds me of the innocent love I once felt as a child only now I make a necessary distinction between the current government, whose actions I do not love and decency of the people, which I do. I want to love my country rather than feel ashamed of it because of how its government acts. In order to do so I need to redefine and reappropriate the country, capture it back from those who have stolen it from me and from the rest of us. Today I can employ a linguistic trick that allows me to say and mean that the Bush Administration is not the nations. Doing so makes more possible that tomorrow or the next day or some day we can bring about the change in the material world.

I should have know to make this distinction already because I already had all the facts I needed. I have often told friends who inquire about our family trips to foreign countries that Cubans or Vietnamese or Nicaraguans do not hate American people despite the destruction American foreign policy has visited upon them. I've often reported that most people overseas make a clear distinction between the American people and the US government. Yet until Monday I hadn't been able to truly make that separation myself.

I have a copy of a recording Paul Robeson, the great Black Activist and Internationalist made in 1953. That's the heyday of Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. That's the first year the Republicans in the form of Dwight Eisenhower held the White House in nearly a generation. That's six years after the American Legion rioted in Peekskill, New York to block Robeson's recital in that small city. The song he recorded was "The House I Live In", a patriotic song expressing a love of country. The apparent contradiction used to confuse me. Now I realize that the country he loved was the one he perceived below the ugliness.

As I write the elected thieves and their minions try to stoke up the ugliness machine. In so doing they try to maintain their grip on my country. They try to make me believe that only they have the power and the right to define what my country is and does. But I have seen the flowers, and I know better.

Yen Chin does educational work in Seattle.

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