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Standing Rock: Where Have All the White Patriots Gone?

Where are all you white Patriots?

Where are all you jealous lovers of America?

Where are you tireless defenders of freedom, of religion, of the sacred songs of this country?

I saw you all Summer. You were everywhere. I watched you crucifying a quarterback. I saw you burning his jersey. I listened to you screaming about respecting the Anthem and the flag and the colors and our military. I heard you tell those who don’t love this country they can get the hell out.

I endured all your blustery words, and your angry red, white, and blue tirades, and every bit of flag-waving furor you could muster. I watched you stumble over yourselves to publicly pledge your allegiance to Liberty and to condemn treason.

I’ve heard you sound the patriot’s alarm against a tyranny that was coming to take your freedom and your guns; of encroaching immigrants and Muslims threatening your very freedom. The “rights of Americans” has been your incessant, deafening battle cry for months.

And now I can’t find you anywhere.

Not on the news, not on social media, not on talk radio, not in my neighborhood.

While bulldozers tear up the sacred grounds where the Sioux Nation preserves the memories of their dead, while construction crews callously trample on grave sites and ancient land deemed holy,
while dogs rip the flesh of those standing for their families and their history and their loved ones,
and while law enforcement watches it all from a safe distance—you’re invisible and silent.

It makes me wonder just whose America you believe this is. It makes me wonder just how much you cherish freedom and religion and liberty when they aren’t your own, when they’re for people who don’t look, think, or worship the way you do. 

Your selective volume is damning right now white patriot, your hiding very telling.

They both speak eloquently.

You demand what you see as sacred to be held sacred, you want your God to be worshipped, you demand clean water for your children, you insist on the sovereignty of your home, you want your anger to be tolerated. You believe America is your property.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is waiting on you, white freedom fighter; to speak, to be loud, to be outraged, to stand for something far more valuable than a two-minute song in a football stadium.

If this is a battle you deem not worth fighting, perhaps your patriotism is really self-worship. Maybe your privilege is the thing you truly pledge allegiance to. Maybe your American ideals are a little more narrow then you led us to believe last week.

Watching a family of Native Americans having their land violently taken from them and their sacred displaces desecrated by white people while other white people silently watch, feels like History repeating—and that isn’t a good thing.

Where are you, white patriot? Freedom is calling.

 

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