‘Our flag wars’: Sonoma County residents weigh in on meaning of American flag as nation celebrates independence

The personal affiliations are out in the open on Wheeler Street, waving in the breeze for all the world to see.

Four consecutive houses on the north side of this tidy street of small lots, in the Luther Burbank Gardens neighborhood of Santa Rosa, tell the story. In order, the flags flying at those homes last week went like this: American flag and “Let’s Go Brandon” (the slyly profane dig at Democratic President Joe Biden); American flag and “Let’s Go Brandon” again; then a Pride rainbow flag; then another American flag, flying solo.

“You mean our flag wars?” asked Greg Fairbrother, who paused from retrieving his waste bins long enough to speak to The Press Democrat one afternoon.

Fairbrother, who lives across the street from that row of flags, had his own banners on display. He, too, was flying an American flag, along with a Pride flag.

The Stars and Stripes have always represented different things to different Americans — democracy or military might, liberty or oppression. But in the current moment, with this nation perpetually on the cusp of devouring itself in infighting, the flag has taken on a particularly complicated set of meanings.

Perhaps nothing symbolizes that confusion more than the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. Old Glory was in abundance among the crowd that surged into the U.S. Capitol that day to protest a vote that had been legally certified, by a government many of them sought to overthrow.

One Capitol Police officer was savagely beaten with a flagpole bearing the red, white and blue colors he had sworn to represent.

Against this backdrop, The Press Democrat spoke to a handful of Sonoma County residents to gauge what their nation’s flag means to them in 2023.

‘I can say whatever I want’

The power of the American flag struck Greg Fairbrother anew 3½ years ago, when he was living nine time zones away.

Fairbrother taught social studies for 30 years in Hong Kong, a colonized city that went from British to Chinese rule during his time there. That transfer of power, and the erosion of civil liberties that came with it, triggered massive, youth-led street protests in 2019 and 2020.

Many of the protesters, Fairbrother noted, waved American flags.

To them, the symbol meant more than one faraway nation’s sovereignty. It stood for the democratic ideals they aspired to. Fairbrother, 55, relates to that feeling.

Asked what the American flag means to him, he answered in one word: “Freedom.”

“Mainly, freedom of speech,” he elaborated. “I couldn’t say the things that I wanted to be able to say in Hong Kong, toward the end. I really had to self-censor things I wrote and said in the classroom. Now, coming back here, I say whatever I want to say. I’m not gonna get put in jail for saying something.”

Fairbrother and his husband, who is from Hong Kong, typically fly the colonial flag of that city-state at their house on Wheeler Street. During Pride Month in June, they switch out that blue-based banner for the Pride rainbow, another measure of the freedom to be and say whatever you want in the United States.

They always fly the American flag, too.

That doesn’t mean Fairbrother is blind to the fact that the national flag often appears at anti-LGBTQ+ gatherings, such as the recent Drag Story Hour protests in Sonoma County.

“I’m aware of the sort of hijacking of the American flag for right-wing stuff,” Fairbrother said. “And that’s part of the reason I emphatically put the American flag there.”

Why he served

Dave Phillips felt tremendous allegiance to the flag when he was in Junior ROTC, and when he joined the Air Force in 1971 at the age of 18. Twenty-two years in the U.S. military (18 of them in the Army) didn’t diminish that passion for the red, white and blue.

“I served under it in Vietnam for 13 months. I ran the color guard for Vietnam Veterans of America,” said Phillips, who is secretary/treasurer of Sonoma County Vet Connect, a nonprofit organization that assists veterans. “So the flag means a lot to me. We serve so that people who haven’t can live free. That’s my feeling. And I get very irritated when someone makes fun of the flag.”

Phillips doesn’t fly a flag outside his home. He rents within a homeowner's association.

“I don’t want to cause problems,” he said.

But in one room he has a display of three flags — the American flag in the middle, flanked by Army and Air Force colors.

Asked how he feels about the recent resurgence of the U.S. flag at protests, employed by Americans who might describe themselves as anti-government, he was less committal.

“I don’t pay attention to that stuff,” Phillips said. “I kind of keep that to myself.”

Pride, anger, guilt, shame

MaDonna Feather Cruz understands the conflicted emotions evoked by the American flag, because she experiences many of them internally. Often, all at the same time.

“My feelings are of pride, but also a little bit of anger. A little bit of guilt, a little bit of shame,” Feather Cruz said.

The pride, she explained, comes from her grandfather, Dennison Knight, who was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II. “The guilt and shame would come from what our government did to my people,” she said. “I’m a third-generation boarding school survivor. Things happened that were very bad for multiple generations.”

Feather Cruz, 45, is an enrolled member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, and a prominent local advocate for tribal causes, including Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

Her maternal grandfather served in the U.S. military, she said, to earn money for college and provide his family with the opportunity for a better life. He was proud of that service, and Feather Cruz is, too. She described with awe the sight of female veterans dancing at tribal powwows, all of them wearing matching Army or Marine colors beneath their traditional beaded regalia.

She certainly bears no ill will toward the people flying the American flag for the Fourth of July.

“Everybody has the right to be proud of whatever they want to be proud of,” Feather Cruz said.

She also wonders why, when she’s standing on government property, she sees the American flag, and perhaps a Pride or Black History Month flag alongside it, but never an eagle feather staff, or the flag of the American Indian Movement, or the banner of a local tribe like hers.

“I respect the American flag,” Feather Cruz said. “I don’t feel that it represents me personally.”

A child of immigrants

Like Feather Cruz, Andre Achacon has contradictory feelings toward the American flag. Unlike her, his ancestors don’t have deep roots in North America. His parents moved here from the Philippines before he was born.

“I think the flag means opportunity,” said Achacon, 17, a recent graduate of Santa Rosa High School. “It has given my parents the opportunity to find a happy, supportive, fortunate lifestyle for me. I have access to education, I have access to a lot of public services without a huge price tag. Those are the moments when I feel proud of the American flag.”

At the same time, Achacon believes many people in his age group have grown wary of what the flag represents.

He spoke to The Press Democrat shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down universities’ use of race-conscious admissions, upheld the ability of some business owners to discriminate against gay clients and struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student debt for tens of millions of Americans.

Achacon is proudly liberal, and he disagrees with all of those decisions — and, more generally, with the increasingly strident rhetoric of the right. He believes many people his age feel the same way.

“A lot of conservative people, I think they identify with the American flag way more,” Achacon said. “They’re more likely to fly the flag on their houses, on their porches. So it’s hard to share that identity. I think that’s where a lot of the disconnect is.”

Not that Achacon is ready to reject the flag. Far from it.

He has already embarked on a path of civic life, as a member of the Safety Roundtable Advisory Committee — formed to explore ways of making campuses safer in the wake of the fatal stabbing at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa on March 1.

Achacon will major in political science when he starts at Long Beach State University in August. He has aspirations of working in the legal profession, and in government.

“I do hope to be a part of that change-making in our nation,” Achacon said. “That’s part of why I feel so enthusiastic about our nation, and our flag.”

‘Instead of what divides us’

When Sonoma County moved its planning commission chambers during the pandemic, flags of the United States and the State of California suddenly were without a home. Tennis Wick, the director of Permit Sonoma, the county’s planning and building agency, didn’t want them to end up in a closet. He erected the flags in his small office at the county administrative complex.

“They hold importance to me,” Wick said. “We work within a subdivision of the state, in close cooperation with the federal government. It’s important for them to have a presence in our daily operation.”

The American flag has personal significance for Wick, too. His father was a Navy and Coast Guard veteran who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

The flag has flown triumphantly in battle. But Wick is quick to point out that it also flies over schools and libraries and local government offices, where Americans perform the everyday tasks that keep the republic running.

Anytime you sign a form allowing the county onto your property for an inspection, Wick noted, or speak at a public hearing, or apply for permits to renovate a house of worship, you are exercising rights enshrined under the flag.

“There is very little in this work that doesn’t spur some reference back to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” he said.

Wick flies the American flag at his house, partly because of the conversations it spurs. Some of them are uplifting. Some are uncomfortable.

“And that to me is the best use of the image, if it gets people talking,” Wick said. “And hopefully finding what they have in common as Americans, instead of what divides us. Because those are easy to find.”

World War II, 9/11 and beyond

America’s uncertain relationship with its flag is nothing new. At various times, it has been a symbol of unification or a source of division.

In an interview, Steve Estes, a history professor at Sonoma State University, traced that cultural path over the past century. The Stars and Stripes bound Americans amid the palpable fear of World War II, Estes said. During Civil Rights marches in the early 1960s, Black Americans pointedly carried the national flag — a declaration that they deserved equal protection under the law.

Then came the Vietnam era, when peace protesters and hippies used the flag in ways sincere and ironic, and sometimes derogatory. And eventually the post-9/11 world, when certain displays of patriotism and a vast expansion of the U.S. intelligence apparatus made some people uneasy.

“That’s what symbols do,” said Estes, whose academic interests include the American South, Civil Rights and gender issues. “They’re metaphorical. They can represent anything the wielder wants them to.”

Estes acknowledged that Old Glory has often been associated with conservatism in this country. That may be truer than ever in era dominated by the political messaging of former President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Estes would like to see that change.

“I wish more liberals would embrace symbols of American-ness,” he said. “Because liberals don’t do that, they open themselves up to being anti-American, where I think most liberals are very pro-America. They shouldn’t be afraid of embracing trappings like the eagle or the American flag.”

Estes has studied the flag more critically than most. But he’s an individual, too, and he has his own feelings about one of the world’s most recognizable and complex symbols.

“If it’s attached to a car driving down the street, yeah, it sometimes raises eyebrows,” Estes said. “Beyond that, look, I’m proud to be an American. When I go overseas, I don’t hide the fact I’m American. We have a lot of things still to be thankful for, and a lot we need to work on. And the flag represents that to me — the good, the bad and the indifferent.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.