To the editor:

I am troubled by the calls to “keep politics off the pole.” (“Veterans call for ‘Respect’ flag to be flown” - Dec. 2, and “The Barrington Republicans support a flag policy” - letter Dec. 23).

The American flag that waves atop the pole outside our town hall and throughout the United States represents a political system. When we salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we are making a political statement; we are proclaiming allegiance to a democratic republic; we are not aligning ourselves with a monarchy, a communist or fascist state, or a dictatorship. Our pledge describes our political system and distinguishes it from other types of governance in a series of phrases that build in a crescendo to the finale. We are: one nation, under God, and indivisible. And finally, and most important, we are a nation with liberty and justice for all. Or at least we aspire to be.

Unfortunately, our history teaches us that we have failed to live up to this last ideal, and we have yet to repair the legacy of centuries of harm we have inflicted upon people of color. We subjugated indigenous peoples. We kidnapped and enslaved Africans and then fought a civil war to preserve chattel slavery. After that war came convict leasing and Jim Crow and lynchings. Today we have mass incarceration, including in private, for-profit prisons, and there is an epidemic of police killings of unarmed Black people. There is inequity in education, housing, healthcare, and wealth accumulation. We have denied, and continue to deny, liberty and equal justice to people of color who are our fellow human beings and citizens.

The Black Lives Matter flag hanging below the American flag is an addendum to our Pledge of Allegiance; it clarifies and strengthens it. Together, these two banners make an important, unifying, and inspiring political statement: that when we proclaim liberty and justice for all, we truly mean it. The Black Lives Matter flag challenges us to confront racism, to work for reconciliation, and to finally and fully ensure liberty and justice for all. Keep these political statements on the pole.

Trinki Brueckner

Barrington