I spent my fall semester in New York City working as a Red Cross volunteer at the World Trade Center. I worked 12 hour shifts in a respite center with approximately 50 other volunteers from New York, the rest of the United States and Canada in a building one block from the devastation.
At the center, emergency and construction workers could come in for a rest. The purpose of Red Cross volunteers was to take care of the workers at the site, providing food, new clothes, and a friendly face. Part of that responsibility was to make sure that our Red Cross co-workers took a break when it was too much to handle. As part of Red Cross policy we were never allowed to state our opinion on a political issue.
The last time I was in lower Manhattan, near ground zero, I was protesting the acquittal of the white police officers who shot (41 times) and killed an innocent black man, Amadou Diallo. At the site I was taking care of police officers, letting them hit on me like a World War II USO girl. I was even asking for their brass pins to wear, as was the custom for the Red Cross workers.

The conflict of interests hit home when someone gave me an American flag to decorate my hard hat. Gifts became an important and regular way for people down at the site to show that we cared about each other. Like many citizens of the city, I couldn’t wear our national symbol easily. Even at ground zero, the flag brought to mind a sense of mistrust, a wariness. For many of us jingoism remained a fear. Looking at the tired face of my friend who offered me a flag sticker, I thanked him, waited, and put the flag on the underside of my hard hat’s brim when he walked away.

In the first few weeks after the attacks I went to peace rallies at Union Square, events that left me cold after experiencing the site. Groups of people gathered to say prayers for the dead and then discussed the events spinning out around us. They soon fell apart into shouting matches; people expressing their grief through their politics. I had trouble with the cries for pacifism.
I once thought that I would never again live in New York. After joining the Red Cross at ground zero, however, I found that building out of destruction can build a sense of community. The site was the most supportive and caring environment I had ever found in the company of strangers and it renewed my love for my city. l would leave the site saying goodnight to everyone on the street in a city where no one says hello. So if I could love the city again why couldn’t I redefine my patriotism? Or reclaim it? At the site I found myself inspired by the hope of bettering my city after this atrocity. Committing myself to a city and country with which I still had issues, I found that my criticism bolstered my patriotism. Obligated to keep my opinions to myself for two months allowed me to form a bond with a group of people I had never really listened to before. My politics didn’t change, my perspective did.

So what did I do with the flag? I knew that to some the flag stood for the right wing, the right to life, the KKK, the NRA, racism, homophobia, anti-enviromentalism, and an assortment of other groups whose values I cannot understand and with whom I do not want to be associated. I was not going to become a “patriot” but I would not let these groups co-opt my symbol for the America I was working to build and rebuild down at the site. And the next flag sticker was visible on the front of my Ground Zero access badge.