A town official in Haddam, Conn., faced backlash from the community and beyond for kneeling on two separate occasions during the Pledge of Allegiance before Board of Selectmen meetings.
The first time Melissa Schlag, a Democrat, knelt for the pledge was on July 16, just hours after President Trump concluded his first bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. She was in a room only with other town officials, but the moment was caught on camera.
She knelt again on Monday in front of a few hundred rowdy audience members, who showed up in anticipation of another show of protest, Fox News reported Wednesday.
“I don’t have to stop my free speech when I walk into a selectmen’s meeting,” Schlag said while the crowd booed. “I don’t hate my country. I love my country. We need to continue this conversation.”
As she spoke after taking a knee during the pledge, many crowd members kneeled in protest against her. Some also turned their backs to her.
“Are you thinking when you kneeled down to the sacred Pledge of Allegiance, that what those people died for gives you the right to do that and disrespect that?” a man questioned during a time of open comments.
Another man said, “I wholeheartedly respect your right to protest, if that’s what you would like to do, do that on your own time.”
“When you turned your back on that flag, you turned it on half of this town,” a third man said.
Many people in the crowd were wearing red, white, and blue to show support for the flag and the U.S. colors, and express distaste with Schlag’s actions.
After the meeting, while speaking with a citizen, the official said: “It’s been worse in this town. This town is fascist and racist.”
Schlag confirmed that the first time she knelt for the Pledge of Allegiance was in protest of the president’s comments in Helsinki casting doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Trump publicly corrected his comments, claiming that he misspoke and meant to portray the exact opposite message.
The action of taking a knee in protest stems from the NFL protests where players have been kneeling during The Star-Spangled Banner before the start of each game. Many claimed they were kneeling in protest of race inequality in the U.S.
That form of protest was been met with widespread backlash from football fans and Trump himself. NFL approved a rule for this season that requires players and coaches to either stand during the national anthem, or to remain in the locker room, or otherwise the team will face a fine. However, implementation of that rule was temporarily put on hold amid talks between the NFL and the NFL players’ union.
