Posted on 11/17/2004 3:50:28 PM PST by gringo_in_Akita
http://www.dailyhampshiregazette.com/storytmp.cfm?id_no=110900952004
AMHERST - The Puerto Rican flag is flying in front of Town Hall again, two days after a woman mistook it for the flag of Texas and removed it from the flagpole.
Patricia Church, of South Prospect Street, was attending a peace vigil on the town common Sunday when she noticed a new flag flying under the usual United Nations flag. Someone at the vigil said it was the flag of Texas, she said.
Church, still upset over the re-election of President Bush last week, said she thought someone had raised the Texas flag as a prank to taunt supporters of Sen. John Kerry. She called the police. But before officers arrived on the scene, Church, a Town Meeting member who chairs Amherst's Solid Waste Committee, undid the ropes and took the flag down, and later brought it to her house.
She was unaware that the flag was raised there last week, before 100 people, as part of the Amherst Puerto Rican Association's eighth annual cultural celebration.
The flags of Texas and Puerto Rico are similar. Both have white five-pointed stars on blue backgrounds on the left, and white and red horizontal stripes on the right. But the blue part is a triangle on the Puerto Rican flag and a rectangle on the Texas flag, and while the Puerto Rican flag has five alternating red and white stripes, the Texas flag has only two.
''I'm mortified,'' said Church when she learned of her mistake Monday. ''This makes me really embarrassed.''
She immediately asked a friend to fetch the flag from her house and take it to the police station, she said. Town Manager Barry Del Castilho said it would be returned to the flagpole today, she said. Police said today they would not pursue charges.
But the matter didn't end there. Vladimir Morales, the School Committee member who is president of the Puerto Rican Association, says he has demanded a formal apology from Church. The two were active in the campaigns of rival candidates in the Democratic primary for governor's council, said Church, who had not yet responded to Morales' request Monday night.
Removing the flag would not have been justified even if it had been the Texas flag, Morales said. ''You have to respect any flag, no matter where it's from,'' he said. ''Flags are flags. They're symbols.''
And he expressed surprise that a participant in a peace vigil had taken matters into her own hands by removing the flag. ''They're there for peace, for heaven's sake,'' he said.
''The elections are over,'' Morales said. ''Bush won. They have to let it go and get on with their lives.''
Staff writers Tom Marshall and Scott Merzbach contributed to this report.
Memo to Patricia Church:
Someday you're going to google your name and find this thread.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Doh!
What a commie ditz. She's also a fascist. It's her view or no view and that's a big element in any dictionary definition of "facism".
You're right, their flag is much more similar to that of my home state than to Texas'.
LOL....I love it!
With her confession that she didn't know the difference, she confesed her blatent racist...
Will do next time Mod, sorry.
Yes, Patty, get a life.
Flannel sheds and they'd be all day picking lint from the uniforms.
Great story -- hilarious!
Ant one note that they fly the UN and not US flag?
How apropos.
At least she was only mortified to have removed the Puerto Rico flag. Had it been the Cuban flag, she most likely would have been suicidal.
Yea right!!!!! Liberal lie #7,849,333,295,779,453,109, approximately.
You should be embarrassed... but not for the reasons YOU'RE embarrassed.
I worked in Amherst in the late '80s. Northampton is lesbo heaven. You have my sympathies.
Appreciated. That's one reason why I now live 8,000 miles away from Northampton.
That's OK, lots of people hate Puerto Ricans and dis them every chance they have. This woman was shrewd enough to wipe her butt on the PR flag and, when caught, claim she thought it was the Texas flag. Very clever and fast recovery to avoid having the PRs after her!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.