Waving flags of...
I've gotten a lot of emails regarding my article on the West Chester Flag Day demonstrations. No one was happy with it.
This is not to malign the demonstrations or the people who participated. It's extremely important that everyone gets their say. I hope both sides agree, at least, on that.
Peace Movement demonstrators complained that I miscounted the number of people on their side of the street. It's possible I did. But crowd counts are notoriously unreliable, and the fact I wanted to get across was that the Victory Movement had more people out than the Peace Movement did.
Victory Movement demonstrators complained of bias. Their problem: I included quotes from both the Peace Movement demonstrators and the Victory Movement demonstrators. (Read the Victory Movement's reaction to my article here.)
I still stand behind the article. It portrays the competing Flag Day demonstrations for what they really were: a battle between right wingers and left wingers. Maybe not all the demonstrators were aware of the images and political messages with which they were associating themselves?
A young Peace Movement demonstrator:
A group of Victory Movement demonstrators:
This is not to malign the demonstrations or the people who participated. It's extremely important that everyone gets their say. I hope both sides agree, at least, on that.
Labels: Chester County Peace Movement, Chester County Victory Movement