Fly flags for all or don’t fly them at all
I see the flag fight in Harford County has turned into a food fight. This is so idiotic, it makes me both laugh and cry.
The Harford County school system wants to restrict the flags that can fly at respective schools in the county, thereby effectively excluding Pride flags from the array of flags that can be flown outside schools. The school authorities claim that policy will promote unity, but from the cries for equity at the meeting where school authorities proposed their restrictions, it is clear there was nothing but disunity at that flag-focused county school board meeting.
Flags are merely symbols. Though there is a lot of emotion vested in those symbols by various concerned parties with varying beliefs and agendas, when they become cause for flag fights I say it is time to bring down all the flags, or time to allow all the flags except the Confederate Flag, because the Confederate Flag is a symbol of hate for many in this country and it should not be flown with impunity anywhere.
Avoid a civil war about flags. Hoist them all or don’t hoist any and, remember, unity cannot be forced on people by flags flown on poles. Unity in diversity cannot be extracted from people who must feel this unity inside themselves, who must submit to it in actions of tolerance, acceptance and civility for and toward people who are not like themselves in color, race, languages spoken, abilities, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Usha Nellore, Bel Air
Our country has abandoned its neediest people
Knock, Knock.
That was the sound, back in the 1940s when traveling “tramps” (read “homeless” today), would ask to perform a chore – chop wood, weed the garden, pluck a chicken – in exchange for a meal, a glass of sweet tea, and a 15-minute “sit” in a rocking chair on our porches before heading out to roam the roads, looking for nightly shelter, the next town or the next railroad where they could hitch a ride to the next town while looking for work.
I was only 4, as I remember, asking my mother why these polite men had no homes, jobs, and walked the roads across the country. She replied, “Ever since the Depression in 1929 our country hasn’t recovered and there is no work for them. So, they leave their families to try to find work.”
Is it any different today? Homeless everywhere, with drug and alcohol addictions, except – everyone is afraid to open their doors and demand solutions.
Kudos to Gov. Wes Moore and political analyst Armstrong Williams for the article by Williams “Moore, Bates, Braveboy call for accountability, reform” (The Aegis, Feb. 28). They get it. We have a demolished infrastructure that doesn’t provide for its populations; until American citizens wake up our nation will continue its downward slide and may lose its democracy.
It is not sustainable to have a few wealthy at the top, a middle class that is now lower class, and a Congress that cannot do its job and is accountable to no one and is not required to live up to any standards of care toward its country.
Celie Hanauer, Darlington
