A few weeks ago, a Mexican American woman was harassed by a man who demanded she "go back to Mexico” as she was shopping with her young son. The man didn’t care about her or her child, nor did he care about her immigration status or ethnic background. To him, she was just another Mexican—an outsider he felt entitled to berate, demean, and accuse of being the "enemy within." On February 8th, a teenager was stabbed in front of City Hall, and news platforms reported “non-American flags” being present while the victim was on the ground. In Bakersfield, around the same time, a female activist was arrested for replacing a U.S. flag with a Mexican flag.
In a society where our very existence is often disparaged, we have few tools to unite and fight against the persistent racism and xenophobia that permeate our daily lives. Waving flags—yes, Mexican flags—at protests is one such way to be seen and heard in a country that so often wishes Mexicans/Chicanos and Latinos would disappear.
Ironically, it seems that even President Trump would agree with this act of protest. After all, he has repeatedly defended the waving of the Confederate flag as an expression of free speech.
In a recent interview with Politico, Trump claimed, "I know people that like the Confederate flag, and they're not thinking about slavery. I just think it's freedom of speech, whether it's Confederate flags or Black Lives Matter or anything else you want to talk about. It’s freedom of speech."