I’ve Got My Plans for July 4th Next Year Already
I’ve Got My Plans for July 4th Next Year Already
What with the kids in cages, gerrymandering given a pass by the Supreme Court and civil liberties under constant attack, I found it a little difficult to work up any enthusiasm for the Fourth of July. I would have been fine to grab a pizza and watch TV, maybe try and squeeze in a little activism — but, sort of by chance, we ended up at Gantry Park in Long Island City, Queens, which is not far from where I live. It’s a waterfront park developed in the last few years and so a lot of people had gathered there to see the fireworks. We walked past people from all over the world. We saw families of a multitude of religions and races. People streamed into the park and while I don’t love crowds, I was actually grateful to be among so many people of so many varieties on a day like the Fourth.
I’ve never been a big fan of the Fourth of July. It’s loud and crowded and tends to feature a lot more naked nationalism than I tend to have the stomach for. The preponderance of American flags makes me nervous. I often think of a story a Muslim friend told about her father going right out to put up American flags in front of their house after 9–11. He knew their family would be a target and hoped that expressing a kind of symbolic patriotism might protect them from hate crimes. I have often thought of American flags and red, white and blue décor as either an expression of nationalism or a defense against nationalism.
But in walking through the park, I saw people from everywhere dressed in flag fashion. A boy with an American flag t-shirt was shepherded by his mother in a hijab. A little girl in a red, white and blue dress chanted her readiness for the fireworks to begin — while many children who look like her are locked up at the border. Six women in black summer burkas stood on the sidewalk with a baby in the stroller. The baby’s stroller was decorated with red, white and blue. (I was so delighted to see them that I did not even mind that they were taking up the whole sidewalk — which for us New Yorkers is a rare feeling.) There were surely many recent immigrants in the crowd, perhaps celebrating their first American Independence Day. The patriotism in the air was palpable and in a completely different way than I normally think of patriotism. I suddenly felt I could learn to be a patriot from the newest arrivals to our shores — our borders.
At one of the fancy restaurants near the water, a group of white men were singing, loudly and in the courtyard. They sang “God Bless the USA” in a way that did not make me feel as though they were expressing pride so much as they were projecting aggression. There was something about these men in their privileged private restaurant fenced off from the rest of the humanity in the park that expressed exactly the kind of patriotism that has historically put me off patriotism.
But outnumbering them by the thousands were families who hopefully dressed their children in red, white and blue. They gathered by the water in a mélange of music and languages to see some fireworks on America’s birthday.
In the end, the fireworks were only in Brooklyn this year, much to everyone’s surprise, so we sort of saw them off in the distance behind the power plant. But even without the fireworks, it was kind of the best Fourth of July ever and I might just have to make it a tradition.
I want you to know that on Pixabay, where i get my images, all the pictures of people with American flags were either little blonde children or blonde young women. There was one old white man in an American flag hat. There were no people of color with the flag. I think this is a problem. Anyway, the photographer of this photo sounds like they might not be a white guy, so I’m trying to boost them instead.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on July 12, 2019.
