When Erik Bottcher first learned that a rainbow flag had been taken down from the Stonewall National Monument in New York, he wondered if it was vandalism.
The newly elected state senator only knew what a constituent told him in a disquieting call on Monday: “The flag is gone.”
“We didn’t know at first if it was taken down,” Bottcher told me Thursday. “Who took it down? If it was stolen by a person on the street or what?”
Stonewall has again become the location of another fight for LGBTQ+ Americans.
Within a few hours, Bottcher had learned an even more upsetting piece of news: The flag was taken down by the Trump administration.
It came down as a result of an Interior Department memo restricting the types of flags that can be flown within the national park system. In theory, the “one flag policy” isn’t discriminatory. But the memo provides a slew of exceptions that make clear its targets are rainbow and Black Lives Matter flags.
There’s an irony to taking down a Pride flag outside the Stonewall Inn, where LGBTQ+ patrons fought back against police harassment in 1969, igniting the modern gay rights movement.
Now, Stonewall has again become the location of another fight for LGBTQ+ Americans who just want their own place in this country. Bottcher and other elected officials have promised to reinstall the flag on the flagpole every time the government takes it down. They raised it again on Thursday.
“This administration envisions a country that’s straight, white and Christian. And if you don’t fit into that box, you’re not part of their narrative. That’s not what this country is about,” Bottcher said. “This country was founded out of rebellion against injustice and persecution, and we’ve been on a march towards a more perfect union. This is just another battle on the way.”
It’s a battle that isn’t happening in a vacuum.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has garnered attention for attempting to erase Black history, most recently by removing interpretive panels in Philadelphia that documented the lives of nine people enslaved by George and Martha Washington.
In that case, federal officials dismantled them under a different directive from the Interior Department, citing an executive order’s mandate to eliminate content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.”
These displays, whether they’re a flag or a historical exhibit, aren’t minor details. To members of marginalized communities, they are a reminder of their historical struggles. The administration knows this, too, or it wouldn’t be working so hard to remove them. Imara Jones, creator of TransLash Media, told me that the erasure of these markers isn’t just a symbolic fight but something more sinister. “This is an administration that is very aware of the potent power of symbols and the way that symbols can communicate what and who is tolerated in society and what and who in society are not tolerated,” Jones said. “There are no accidents.” President Donald Trump has long tried to rewrite history. President Donald Trump has long tried to rewrite history, whether that’s his own record in office, his past positions or the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In his second term, he’s embarked on an even more ambitious project to rewrite American history, seeking to sweep it clean of any mention of conflict and airbrush out the contributions of the country’s many minorities. But history can’t be erased by executive order, as long as there are people who remember it and fight to keep it alive. Don’t forget to subscribe to “MS NOW Presents: Clock It,” Eugene Daniels’ new podcast series with Symone Sanders-Townsend on the latest political news, the catchiest cultural moments and how they converge. Listen to the first episode here.
Eugene Daniels is an MS NOW senior Washington correspondent and co-host of "The Weekend." Recommended
