There’s Growing Anger Over Mexican Flags Flown At LA Protests. Here’s What Everyone Is Getting Wrong.
HuffPost
Who gets to tell oppressed people how to resist their oppression?
As protests broke out in downtown Los Angeles in response to ICE raids and the Trump administration’s immigration policies, a number of protesters held up Mexican flags. Some brandished them with U.S. flags. Others waved only Mexican flags.
In a city as diverse and Latino as LA ― approximately 48.6% of the city is Hispanic or Latino ― Mexican flags have long been a fixture at protests and celebrations: May Day marches, previous protests of ICE policies, Dodgers World Series championships parades.
But for national audiences watching the protests, the sheer number of Mexican flags on display proved divisive: For every headline that read “Mexican flag symbolizes pride in Los Angeles protests” there were at least double that criticized the flag’s presence over the weekend.
“How Mexican Flag Photos Are a Gift to Donald Trump,” politics reporter Dan Gooding wrote in Newsweek, while right-leaning tabloid the New York Post deemed the footage and photos as “the perfect propaganda footage for Trump.”
By Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was alluding to the flags in his testimony to a House panel. Though he couldn’t identify what legal authority President Donald Trump had to deploy the National Guard and Marines to LA, he said troops need to be called in “if you’ve got millions of illegals and you don’t know where they’re coming from, they’re waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers and laws.”
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“It’s become quite a messy and toxic situation,” a Eurovision expert said.
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