The City of North Charleston, SC is flying the tea party flag in front of City Hall, the location of it’s Police Department, Municipal Court and City Council Meetings.
Protests to the Mayor’s office get the response that they’re flying a historic flag to protest the state’s plans to force a railway plan through a part of town under redevelopment. Some staff claim to be unaware that the Gadsden Flag (which was used during the revolution in South Carolina) has become the banner of the tea party.
The city probably has a legitimate gripe with State Government over the proposed location of the railroad line. The port needs a railroad link. One of the railroads refuses to cooperate reasonably with the other. The Tea Party Republican Governor gives the entire issue doubletalk. At the root of this is a trucking company influenced state port authority which doesn’t want trains at all, even though rail access to the port is essential to being competitive. Since this is SC, the simply solution is to just run the trains through a low income neighborhood where they can block the only available streets to and from the area for long periods of time. There has been a noisy backlash and a commendable amount of hell raised by a racially and culturally diverse Park Circle Community.
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The City of North Charleston isn’t ruled by rednecks. It’s the home to the regions annual gay pride festival. The Democratic and Republican party executive committees both meet in this building. However someone North Charleston City government into thinking the Gadsden, Tea Party Flag was the appropriate symbol for their struggle against an insensitive state government and the tea party endorsed Governor who is frustrating them. Now of course, if they pull it down, they get a tea party backlash. If progressives ignore it, the tea party gains. It’s a distraction which does damage.
Of course most people walking into the building have no idea that is why the flag is there. Their only knowledge of the Gadsden Flag is from the tea party. It’s flown all over the Lowcountry and it only began appearing most places with the rise of the tea party. The message here is that the City of North Charleston is under tea party control, weather they believe it or mean it or not.
The Gadsden Flag has a legitimate revolutionary war history. My own ancestors probably fought under a similar flag at the battle of Eutaw Springs (though it’s possible they didn’t have a flag at all that day) however in symbolic communication it is perception that counts.
I could bring the Confederate Flag to a Democratic party meeting and explain that the right wing takeover of national and state politics funded by the Koch brothers is destroying the culture, prosperity and independence of my state, which is arguably the cause for which my Confederate ancestors fought. We could burn up a lot of time arguing the historic issues, but nobody thinks waving the Confederate Flag would help me get my African American Democratic friends to come to my phone banking event.
My Hindu friends could bring a Swastika to a community meeting and suggest that we adopt that ancient Hindu symbol of power and life as the emblem of some worthy cause. You can find it inscribed on temples across the subcontinent in perfect innocence. However no one who is aware of what the allies found after they pushed open the gates of the concentration camps would suggest we run off a batch of T-shirts inscribed with it for a picnic.
This once honorable American symbol has become the banner of a hate based movement committed to opposition to a black president, the persecution of minorities, the oppression of the poor and a twisted take on the Christian religion that Jesus couldn’t recognize. I’ve been surrounded by mobs waving that flag who felt perfectly justified in shooting down our puny healthcare reform rallies here.
Yesterday the mistaken ideas behind that flag cost me a huge amount of money on my investments. If I were a conservative Republican, what happened to my stocks on Monday would be more than enough to make be detest the tea party. I’ve seen the ignorance and rage of the tea party in person. Ignorance with power is the most dangerous thing in the world.
The tea party has a grip on most of my state so dysfunctional, conservative establishment Republicans are now frightened. These people were useful to conservatives when they could be managed by the established right, but they’re dangerous now. It was the corporations who put the Nazis in power. Acid in a squirt gun can be a weapon, but you eventually get your hands burned down to the bone when the plastic dissolves. The motives of money and race and class hatred are imperfectly aligned. The flow of money is easily controlled. Class and race hatred grows itself once it has become established and the cultural forces containing it fail as they are here in South Carolina.
I had regarded N. Charleston as a reasonable city with a decent agenda to increase the quality of life of its people. In the heat of a contest as bitter as the one over the railroad, mistakes get made. If you want to stop a train, consider the plain red flag railroads used to use as a signal to stop a train. If plain red flags bother you, plant some appropriate symbol on it to make your meaning clear. Repeat it on T-shirts and bumper stickers and raise all the hell you’re entitled to. Put the railroad line in the proper place to serve both the port and community.
Just don’t allow you city to be co-opted by the tea party. North Charleston is better community than that. Don’t unwittingly lend your support to a movement which is destroying our state and inviting the monsters of racism and hatred of the struggling poor to return from the places we’ve attempted to cage them while we tried to build a better state.
After we have some comments, we'll direct the Mayor's attention to this posting. However if you want to let the city know what you think, contact the contact the Mayor's Office at (843) 740-2504 or via email at mayor@northcharleston.org.