Written by Linda
March 01, 2009
Despite being a graduate of a "goddamn hippie college" and admittedly being sensitive to political correctness, I'm always pleased to see high and mighty uber-sensitive liberals squirm as a result of their own doing. During the screening of Flag Wars, you could feel a cloud of guilt combined with denial hanging in the air of the theater. "Oh, how awful for those well-off gays to displace the downtrodden urban blacks in their own neighborhood!" when in fact, the exact same thing featured onscreen in Columbus, Ohio is going on here in Seattle, as well as in countless urban neighborhoods across the country.
Flag Wars follows one inner-city community in Columbus going through a drastic change. The neighborhood had been falling apart due to disrepair and neglect, with its gorgeous Victorian homes becoming well-worn—some would say wasted on the folks that had lived there for lifetimes. Some home buyers, seeing diamonds in the rough, swooped in on these bargains, spiffed them up to their previous glory, and told their friends about this bargain neighborhood with great potential. Except the less-sensitive real estate agents and investors, flocking like vultures over a dying animal, neglected to take note that there were already people that lived there, calling this neighborhood home.
To make matters more tense, the new neighbors tended to be white, double-income, no-kids gay couples, and the residents being bought-out were black, lower income folks. The gays saw themselves as equals, saying that they are also a minority group, so why can't they just get along? But when one so-called minority group makes a chunk more in income than the other minority group, and has white societal privilege to boot, it is a little difficult to see eye-to-eye.
Filmed over a span of four years, Flag Wars focuses on several folks from both sides of the white picket fence. Particularly fascinating is the saga of Linda Mitchell, a lifetime resident of the neighborhood, fiercely protecting her falling-apart family home, while disease wreaks havoc on her body. Her repeated trips to court to face charges of zone violations (like the dead RV in the back yard that hasn't run since her father died in 1992), provides almost comic relief. You can't help but feel for the judge who tries his best to sympathize with her, despite her complete lack of response to the charges. Another African-American fellow, with an African-given chieftan name of many many syllables, fights for the right to keep a hand-carved sign hanging above his front door (which suddenly conflicts with neighborhood zoning after hanging there for years), while other neighbors hang rainbow pride flags with no complaints.
After the screening of the film, one of the directors was in attendance to take Q&A. It took only a couple of "Where are they now?" questions before one concerned white woman, wringing her hands, stood up and asked earnestly, "What can we do???" Flag Wars isn't so bold to suggest it has answers to the problem of gentrification, but it does take an admirable step in bringing to light a common urban phenomenon that is not often discussed.
