Thread: Minutemen hold demonstration outside of Del Mar County Fair

The federal law states that a flag of any nation can be flown in the US as long as it is accompanied by the American flag and it is flown lower than the American flag

Well, I guess they did follow protocol from the looks of the above picture but it's still and insult since it has no business at a county fair. I would be upset if it was a Korean flag flown at a county fair simply because alot of Koreans lived there.....or an Irish flag etc......or German etc.....To me it's a symbol of the uniting of all the nations and unless it's something like the olympics or some world event or competition like Chinese little league and the US little league......why add to the seperation? If it was an ethnic festival....fine. But this is a county fair just like all the other hundreds of county fairs going on around the country. It's a US tradition...even though I'm sure they celebrate something similar in other countries. It's got nothing to do with Mexico or any other nations flag. Have a flag print at your taco stand at the fair.....but geeze...at the entrance?

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/07 ... 102030.txt

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Fair rally takes aim at Mexican flag

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer

DEL MAR ---- For the first time, an immigration protest has spilled into San Diego County's annual summer party of farm animals, carnival rides and aromatic foods.

Upon learning through a talk radio show that the Mexican flag was flying next to U.S. and California flags at the San Diego County Fair, members of the San Diego Minutemen, an anti-illegal immigration group, planned rallies at two Del Mar Fairgrounds gates.

As fairgoers arrived Friday morning, they were greeted by 50 flag-waving, sign-toting protesters who demanded that the green-white-and-red flag be taken down.

"It's telling illegals that it's OK to come here," said John Grimes, a restaurant repairman from San Diego, who held up a cardboard replica of the Mexican flag with a black line through it, next to the main O'Brien Gate.

Fair officials say the protesters are off the mark.

"People shouldn't try to read something into it and make it more than it really is," said Tim Fennell, Del Mar Fairgrounds chief executive officer and general manager. "No disrespect is meant. It is simply a welcoming of our friends and neighbors. It's as simple as that. And contrary to what some people would have you believe, it doesn't fly higher than Old Glory."

Fennell said fair officials fly the Mexican colors because the county has a large Latino population with roots in the neighboring country, and many Tijuana residents drive across the border every day ---- legally ---- to work in San Diego County. Hoisting the flag is a way of making them feel comfortable, he said. It is not in any way, he said, meant to endorse illegal immigration.

That didn't stop protesters at Durante Gate to the fairgrounds, where the trio of flags were flapping in the breeze. Protester and Escondido resident Gary Walker pointed to the flags and said to passersby: "There's the flag of your invaders right there, my people."

Organizer Jeff Schwilk of Oceanside promised a larger rally today unless the flag was taken down. Fair officials said it would continue to fly.

Friday was the first time activists had protested since fair officials began flying the Mexican flag in the mid-1990s, Fennell said.

During the rally, protesters repeatedly insisted Mexico's flag should be replaced with the official flag of San Diego County. They contended the third pole traditionally is reserved for county flags at county fairs.

"The San Diego County flag? That's news to me," Fennell said.

Following the rally, a pair of protesters met with Fennell to discuss their objections, said fair spokeswoman Kina Paegert. Fennell promised to take their request to move the Mexican flag to a site inside the fairgrounds to the fair board, which is next scheduled to meet in August, she said.

Fennell said the rally was peaceful, with no reports of clashes or arrests. Some protesters waved U.S. flags, while others held up handmade signs. One man chanted: "American flag only."

Not everyone agreed with their message.

"We were all immigrants at one point, that's all I know," LeAnn Bahul, 37, of Oceanside shouted back as she strode toward the entrance with her husband and three daughters, ages, 15, 8 and 7.

Her husband, Steve Bahul, said the flag's presence was not only appropriate, it made sense.

"We're a border city," Steve Bahul said. "We live by the border and we have a border culture. I don't take offense to it at all."

But there is a problem, said protester Anthony Porrello, a San Diego man with curly salt-and-pepper hair beneath a "U.S. Minutemen" baseball cap. The flag is flying at a time when concern about illegal immigration is at an all-time high in Southern Californian and Mexican politicians are openly encouraging their citizens to migrate to the United States, he said, and there are a lot of "hard feelings" about that.

"If they were flying the Canadian flag, the Israeli flag, the Italian flag or the German flag, it would be a different story," Porrello said.

Over at the Plaza del Mexico, a cultural exhibit at the fair, visitors said they couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

"You could have anybody's flag here," said Jose Torres, 28, of El Cajon. "Everybody here is an immigrant ---- unless you are a Native American."

Torres suggested it was hardly surprising that the Mexican flag was in a prominent location.

"You got to know, it's a marketing ploy, too," he said.

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 740-5442 or ddowney@nctimes.com.

A few more articles. The second one is obviously an open border advocate.

http://www.kfmb.com/stories/story.55433.html

Flying Of Mexican Flag Triggers Protest

Last Updated:
07-01-06 at 1:49PM

The San Diego County Fair faced protestors Friday for flying the Mexican flag alongside the stars and stripes.

Protesters rallied at the Del Mar Fairgrounds demanding the Mexican flag be taken down, but fair officials said they will continue to fly the flag.

"We fly the American flag only," one person said. "I mean this is America, if you want to go back to Mexico and look at the Mexican flag, then go back there."

"It's just a welcoming to our friends, neighbors and customers to the south," another person said.

Fair officials said the Mexican flag has flown at the county fair every year for more than a decade. Friday's protesters feel the flag should be removed and replaced with the San Diego County flag.




http://www.signonsandiego.com

More from Logan Jenkins
Stars and Stripes always and forever?

UNION-TRIBUNE
July 1, 2006

A brick –the Silly Flag Flap award – to the 60 protesters who trooped over to the Del Mar Fairgrounds yesterday to protest the Mexican flag waving below the Stars and Stripes.

Am I crazy, or are people starting to border on insanity?

The Mexican flag flying next to the California flag (and below Old Glory) has been the fair's flag style for years.

Now, thanks to inflammatory radio talk shows, Minutemen types are agitating to demote the Mexican flag in favor of San Diego County's official flag, which I dare say one county resident in a hundred would recognize.

What's next?

Knocking down the statue of Tom Hernandez, aka Don Diego, the fair's goodwill ambassador who for 37 years has welcomed guests?

Are we going to ditch Don Diego for Mr. Jones, a true-blue American in a baseball cap?

(Memo to Minutemen: A Padres cap won't do. Too Mexican.)

A bouquet –the Looking Into the Mirror award – to the city of Escondido for staring head-on at the astonishing level of poverty in the neighborhood recently dubbed Mission Park.

A $10,000 study by the National Latino Research Center at CSU San Marcos offers a sobering look at the area near Grant Middle School.

Over the past five years, the population of mostly Latino immigrants has increased from 10,500 to 16,500 without a significant rise in housing capacity. The median household income is $17,000, according to the survey.

The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to blame the nation's failing immigration policy for this transitional neighborhood.

No matter what the cause of the decay, Escondido has a moral obligation to make every neighborhood as decent and safe as possible. It's too easy to wish for a wave of the federal wand to make the poor people disappear in a wave of deportations.

Humane measures, not angry flag-waving, will help turn Mission Park into a more hopeful place.

Logan Jenkins can be reached at (760) 737-7555 or by e-mail at logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com

I am no expert but from my understanding the only time a foreign flag is allowed to fly next to the Stars and Stripes is during some type of political event such as a vistiting foreign dignitary as a symbol of respect.
At ethnic events foreign flags may be flown but not on a main flag pole with the American flag.
I'll do some research on this and get back with my findings.
A bit of trivia here, Texas is the only state allowed to fly their flag at the same height as the American flag.

Welcome to Mexifornia!

We need phone contact numbers for this Fair if there are any so we can mount a phone campaign to back up the protesters.

W

Check here. Dixie already posted some information on contacting them.

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... light=fair

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/07 ... 7_3_06.txt

Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Last modified Monday, July 3, 2006 11:35 PM PDT

Banners are more than colorful bits of cloth

By: PHIL STRICKLAND - For The Californian

Today, on the occasion of Uncle Sam's 230th birthday, many of us are a bit more than miffed by flags and/or the treatment thereof.

Once again, for the umpteenth or so time, protection of our nation's flag from desecration by protesters who only have the right to do so because of the lives sacrificed and shattered by those who fought under it, has failed to pass. So, rabble-rousers, live it up. Burn the thing. Stomp on it. Curse it, shred it, defile it as only your twisted sense of "patriotic duty" can imagine. Just remember, in that orgy of faux intellectual expression, the blood that ran as it was carried into battle to protect, among other things, your excesses.

Disrespect for our nation's banner is only one of the reasons we find ourselves shaking our heads this Fourth of July.

Communities in Southwest County and across the nation recently have witnessed the bearing of a foreign flag as a rallying point for criminals not seeking, but demanding, acceptance as full citizens of the country, the laws of which they ignore. Further, there are among their enablers those who would have California, at the least, seized for Mexico under some mistaken notion that those of Latino descent have a noble claim to its land and riches. It's always best for your cause if you can ignore any history that throws stinky stuff all over your righteous claims.

Amid all this, a minor flap has developed over the flying of the Mexican flag at the San Diego County Fair. A minor flap it may be, but it is symbolic of the much more divisive and important issue of illegal immigration and what it means in a very real sense to our citizens and the future of our country.

You probably know this, but, in a nutshell, fair officials are flying the Mexican flag along with Old Glory and the California flag. A rumor circulated that the Mexican flag was flying higher than ours. Fair officials moved quickly to quash that bit of untruth, and in their explanation of its presence, said the Mexican flag was meant to welcome Latino visitors and make them feel comfortable.

Although Latinos, many of them no doubt here legally, comprise a sizable percentage of the population of San Diego County and the state, flying the Mexican flag begs the question: What about the Vietnamese and other Asians whose numbers are large and growing? Shouldn't they be made to feel comfortable? And, in the final analysis, does not the Stars and Stripes wrap all of us ---- even those here illegally ---- in its protective folds? Is there really any need to differentiate among people other than to pander to those demanding some measure more than everyone else?

It has been noted that absent from the display of flags is the San Diego County flag. That's an interesting point. It would be conspiratorial to suggest that its absence and the presence of Mexico's flag represent some overt effort to support illegal immigrants. Still, the absence of the San Diego flag in favor of Mexico's points up the creeping, false notion that Mexico and California really are one.

Protests by American citizens have been greeted with jeers, slurs and condescension by others. One is tempted to suggest that the flag most representative of the jeerers' beliefs is the white flag of surrender.

-- Phil Strickland is a resident of Temecula and a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: philipestrickland@yahoo.com.