One Flag, One Night, and a Whole Lot of Strangers
Saturday night I did something you don't really see in New York City anymore. I grabbed my American flag, and I walked.
No parade. No holiday. No excuse needed. Just me, the flag, and walk on Fith Avenue.
I started at that corner everybody photographs in front of the Louis Vuitton store, made my way to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, over to St. Patrick's, through Rock Center, and into Times Square. A pretty standard New York night, except for the flag over my shoulder the whole time.
People noticed. They always do.
A couple from Romania stopped me to ask to take a photo with the flag in Trump Tower A family from Brazil wanted a picture. I met people from Argentina, from Canada, from Holland, and from states all over this country who were in town for the weekend. Every single one of them was kind. Every single one of them smiled at the flag and shouted USA!
More than one person asked me the same question that night: why are you doing this? What's the purpose?
My answer was simple. I wanted a feel good moment, and I wanted to show that we're proud to be Americans. That's it. No speech attached. Just pride, out in the open, on a Saturday night.
But not everyone asked it that gently. One person looked at the flag, looked at me, and asked, are you MAGA? My answer..yes. However, I share this because the question has a deeper meaning.
Somebody looked at an American flag, being carried by an American, on an American sidewalk, and their first thought wasn't country. It was party.
That's the moment that actually stopped me that night. Not the sightseeing, not the photos, that question. Because it means we've reached a place where holding this flag isn't read as love of country anymore, it's read as a team jersey. One side or the other. And when a flag stops being all of ours and starts being some of ours, I think we have to ask ourselves something a lot bigger than who's MAGA and who isn't. Are we headed for another kind of divide in this country? Brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor, over a symbol of American pride that used to belong to everybody?
Being patriotic shouldn't be a party. It shouldn't be red or blue. It should just be pride, plain and simple, in the country that let a woman from Argentina stand in the middle of Times Square and fly its flag with a stranger's blessing.
Here's the thing though. It shouldn't feel unusual to walk down Fifth Avenue with an American flag. In a city, and a country, where so many voices are working overtime to make people forget what we stand for, it felt like exactly the right thing to do.
By the time I got to Times Square, the crowd was thick and the lights were doing what they do, and that's where it happened. A woman from Argentina stopped, looked at the flag, and asked if she could hold it. Not just hold it, she wanted to fly it, right there in the middle of Times Square, and take pictures with it. I handed it right over. Watching her stand in the center of all that noise and light, flying an American flag with a smile on her face, is a moment I won't forget. It mattered that it happened there, in the one spot on earth that's basically shorthand for America itself.
I don't know if I'm the person who starts a movement. But I believe one person can. I believe a single flag, a single walk, a single conversation with a stranger from Romania or Argentina or two towns over, can remind people what we're supposed to be putting first. Our allegiance to this country and to the Constitution isn't supposed to be complicated. Somewhere along the way, we let it become optional, and for some people, apparently, partisan.
So here's what I'm asking.
You don't need Times Square. You don't need Fifth Avenue. Every town has a spot, the corner everybody knows, the diner, the courthouse steps, the water tower, the high school field. Grab a flag, walk your spot, and take a picture. Tag it, send it to me, whatever you've got. Let's see how many towns and how many states we can get people proud enough to show up in.
One flag. One walk. One night. That's all it takes to start.
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God Bless America and our Troops!
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Together we can make a difference, it always starts with one!
With hope and gratitude,
Christine Randall