Now, one Quarter of Cities and Towns in Massachusetts Say: Change the Flag and Seal.
It was well past her two-year-old’s bedtime, as Hannah Lipper wrapped up her brief remarks at the annual town meeting in Holden, on Monday, June 8th. ”I have a toddler who will one day soon enter our public schools,” she said. “I’d like to imagine a future for her where she has an opportunity both to learn our state’s history but also ways in which we sought to make amends for past injustices.”
Complete silence fell over the crowd in the auditorium at Wachusett Regional High as vote counters chalked up their tallies. A last-ditch effort to indefinitely table the resolution to change the flag and seal of Massachusetts was failing beneath a bevy of indigo voter cards, held aloft in the hands of a vast majority of town meeting voters.
There was silence. There was a feeling of something tearing loose. A last verminous foundation collapsing beneath the tottering structure of white supremacy, embodied in the heinous symbol of a white hand brandishing the sword of violence over the head of an Indigenous man on a centuries-old symbol of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, dating from 1629. A fetid tide was turning, and eddying away. You could feel it in the room.
The motion to table the resolution failed on a standing count of 153-25. The moderator, Kenneth Mills, called the room to attention on the main motion. And with that, an overwhelming majority of the town meeting voters in this largely white, affluent suburban community, ten minutes northwest of Worcester, in the heart of Nipmuc homelands, affirmed the Town of Holden’s decision to call upon their Republican state legislators, retiring representative Kimberly Ferguson and retrograde senator Peter Durant, to change the flag and seal.
It was Durant who wrote, in August of last year: “The Massachusetts state flag is not up for debate — it is a proud symbol of our history, our values, and the foundation on which this state was built.”
Senator Durant, the Town of Holden has some news for you.
The Massachusetts state flag was very much up for debate last night in one of the bedrock communities of your district. The voters there are not proud of holding a sword of settler colonialism – Myles Standish’s own broadsword – over the heads of their Nipmuc neighbors. The history that particular sword represents is a history of genocide, land theft and enslavement. That is the foundation on which this state and this nation were built, and those values were rejected overwhelmingly by the town meeting voters of Holden on Monday night.
Today, everyone who feels the time has come to strike this shameful flag – the last state flag of overt white supremacy still flying in America – should take just a moment to call and leave a message with Governor Maura Healey (617-725-4005). Urge her to uphold her inaugural pledge: to remove barriers of structural racism wherever they exist within the Commonwealth. Urge her to immediately reactivate the advisory commission charged with choosing a new design for our state flag and seal. That advisory commission, chaired by her Education Secretary, Stephen Zrike, and her Director of Travel and Tourism, Kate Fox, has failed to hold a meeting since December of last year. Why, Governor Healey?
Can’t you hear the voice of more than a quarter of the cities and towns in the state you govern? These 88 towns and cities have all taken formal votes, like the vote in Holden on Monday, June 8, calling on the legislature – and you – to remove the most enduring symbol of racism and white supremacy in Massachusetts, indeed in America, today.
They are calling for a new, aspirational and inclusive flag and seal to represent the highest ideals of Massachusetts for peace, justice, and harmony between all people who now call the Commonwealth their home.
Governor Healey, Let’s Get this Done!