nothin Flag Sparks Fire Department Complaint | New Haven Independent

Flag Sparks Fire Department Complaint

Contributed Photo

The flag before it came down.

David Vargas saw a symbol of the Marines and his son’s aspirations when he hung a Don’t Tread on Me” flag in his office at the fire training academy. Gary Tinney saw a symbol of the Tea Party and the Confederacy.

Tinney complained. The flag came down.

But the matter’s not settled, in the view of the New Haven Firebirds, the organization of African-American firefighters.

The incident is the latest instance of how the Tea Party’s movement’s appropriation of the traditional Marine Gadsden” flag has raised questions about its use by people in government. (Click here for a story about a similar debate sparked this month by the appearance of the flag symbol on a police cruiser in South Carolina; and here and here for reports on incidents in New York State. Nike came under criticism for using a version of the flag at the Olympics.)

The controversy boils down to how people in 2014 view the yellow flag showing a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike, below the motto Don’t Tread On Me.”

To Vargas, the fire department’s assistant drillmaster, the flag represents the U.S. military, as it has since Col. Christopher Gadsden first gave it to the U.S. Navy in 1775.

That was the flag Vargas hung in his office at the fire training academy on Ella Grasso Boulevard, he said.

My son is in the Marine cadets. His goal is to become a Marine,” Vargas said Tuesday. He said he hung the flag in support of his son’s aspirations.

Paul Bass Photo

To Tinney, the flag is the symbol a reasserted racist southern Confederacy movement in the form of the Tea Party, a substitute Confederate flag. To Tinney, it is the flag that Tea Party demonstrators wave at raucous, racially-tinged rallies while making crude remarks about and threatening violence against President Obama. (The flag was in display, above, at a 2010 Tea Party rally on Long Wharf; the ralliers took strong exception to the allegation that their movement is racist.) It is the flag they waved when they spat on a black Congressman at an anti-Obamacare rally. (Click on the video to watch.) The flag that members distribute in bulk to symbolize their movement.

That’s the flag Tinney saw in Vargas’s office several weeks ago.

Firefighter recruits were in the building at the time taking an agility test.

I was taken aback,” recalled Tinney (pictured), a New Haven firefighter who serves as vice-president of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters (IABPFF)‘s regional chapter, which represents some 1,500 members in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. In the last couple of years, I’ve really been paying attention to what’s going on, especially with the rallies. They’re bothersome. When I see the Tea Party flag, I look at the Confederate Flag also. People say it’s a military stance. It used to be military. Now they use it for a different meaning. It doesn’t represent what they thought it represented.”

Given the simmering racial divisions in the fire department, Tinney said, the last thing we need now is the flag.”

Tinney said Vargas wasn’t in his office at the time. Tinney brought the complaint to firefighter Michael Neal, president of the New Haven Firebirds.

Neal said he in turn brought the complaint to a supervisor, who promised to look into it. It could not be confirmed who the supervisor was.

The flag came down soon after. Capt. Matthew Marcarelli, the academy’s training director, told the Independent Monday that he asked Vargas to take it down. But not because of any objections to the flag itself.

It was blocking a bookcase,” Marcarelli said. He declined further comment. Assistant Chief Pat Egan said he had noticed the flag and asked Marcarelli to have it removed for the same reason; he said he was unaware of any complaints about the flag itself.

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Vargas (pictured) said he agreed to keep the flag down because I’m not trying to cause my director of training any problems or cause my department any problems.” But he’s not pleased.

I’m not a Tea Party guy. I’m not affiliated with the ten-minute Tea Party,’ as I refer to it,” said Vargas, who was born in Puerto Rico. I refuse to give the Tea Party this flag. That’s not what it was meant for. I think it’s a military flag. …

The U.S. Navy still flies the flag. Unless our entire U.S. Navy is racist, if that’s what they want to consider racist? A lot of Hispanics and African-Americans are in the U.S. Navy. It was a very ignorant way of looking at it, without even asking me. I found it very disturbing that they went in that direction with it. I found it silly. I guess with them, to coin a phrase with a good friend of mine, they constantly see a nail, and all they do is carry around a hammer. Everything is [about race].”

Neal and Tinney argued that the flag’s recent history demonstrates why it doesn’t belong in a government building. They argued that the official reaction to the matter reflected a need for broader measures to tackle racial bias and insensitivity, both in the department and citywide.

The symbol alone is something that should not be displayed anywhere in a public building. I wouldn’t want a Confederate flag being hung up in a public building. Just like you wouldn’t want me to hang up something that has the Black Panther Party on my uniform. It’s the same aspect,” Neal argued. An organization which is negative and has done nothing but done their best to not advance any minority in this country, anyone with color in this country … They have adopted that symbol. When the symbol was originally developed, it was a positive thing. But once this organization had adopted their symbol as their logo, it went from being positive to negative. We feel that the department — and our union — should take steps on making sure that this city is represented fairly and is not representing anything biased.”

Both Tinney and Neal said they believe Vargas that he wasn’t trying to promote the Tea Party by displaying the flag. The issue, they said, is the department’s ignorance” of the flag’s current role in American life and its lack of interest in addressing that ignorance.

He eventually took it down. What bothers me is he took it down under protest. He felt he did nothing wrong, even after individuals told him it was disrespectful,” Neal said. I’m not going to say he should be disciplined. I want to see him being reeducated.”

Asked for comment, Fire Chief Michael Grant said he had no knowledge of the incident.

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