Freedom of speech (a true story)

News item: “Man calls cops on Connecticut flea market over Nazi and Confederate items.”

A Connecticut man suffered physical revulsion when he spotted Nazi and Confederate merchandise last week at a flea market near his home.

The man, who declined to use his name in media reports, said he saw a vendor selling the items at Redwood Flea Market in Wallingford and contacted police, reported the Record Journal.

“I was shaking and almost vomiting,” the man said, adding that he was Jewish and the grandson of a concentration camp survivor. “I had to run. My grandmother had numbers (tattooed on her body by Nazis).”

The man said the shop owner told him he had been selling so many Confederate weapons and flags that he could barely keep them in stock since the shooting of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist in South Carolina.

Police investigated the man’s complaint but said the merchant had not broken any laws, and Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr. said he looked into the matter after the man contacted his office.

This man did what he could and what he needed to do. The merchandise in question was a direct attack on him, personally, and on people like him and he needed to get out of there. So please don’t take the story that follows as, in any way, a criticism of this man’s actions, or as a recommendation that everyone should do what I did, or as suggesting that everyone is in a position to do so.

The context of my situation was very different when, during one of the many summer street fairs back in Everybody’s Home Town, I came across a tent right there on the trolley tracks in front of the theater, where the vendor was selling Confederate Flag merchandise and “White Power” T-shirts. This merchandise wasn’t a direct attack on me, personally, but rather a direct attempt to appeal to me, personally. I wasn’t the one being attacked — just someone being invited to participate in an attack on others. I had the privilege, and the empowerment that comes with privilege, to safely take a different approach. So I did.

I approached the vendor and, with a strained politeness, suggested that these materials were not appropriate for our community and requested that he set them aside. I did not raise my voice and I did my best to project an air of respectful cordiality.

He responded by raising his voice and informing me that he had f–king paid for this space and that he had the f–king freedom of speech to sell whatever he f–king wanted to sell in his own f–king tent because this is f–king America. (He probably actually said “fuck” a bunch more times than that, but that was the gist of it.)

“You’re right,” I said. But since this is America, I reminded him, I also had the freedom of speech to say whatever I wanted to say out on the public street.

And so I began helping this man sell his Confederate flag decals and White Power T-shirts by standing just outside of his tent and loudly recruiting customers for him like a beer vendor at the ballpark.

“Rrrrray-cist T-shirts! Get your racist T-shirts! … Show the world that you’re a proud racist by wearing one of our fine racist T-shirts, available for white people of all sizes. … You, sir! You look like a fine, decent, intelligent person and a patriotic American … So move along, then! There’s nothing for you here, we’re selling racist T-shirts. Racist T-shirts here! Rrrrray-cist T-shirts!”

It went on like that. And on and on.

Fifteen minutes may not sound like a long time, but I was starting to get hoarse, and after quoting as much of the Declaration of Independence and 1 John as I could from memory — urging would-be customers to wear one of our fine racist T-shirts to proudly demonstrate they don’t believe any of that nonsense — I was starting to worry about running out of material.

Fortunately, that’s when the police arrived. The vendor called them. I was still barking at the top of my voice as the vendor spoke to the police officer behind me, so I didn’t hear their conversation and wasn’t sure what to expect when the officer put his hand on my shoulder. He steered me away, saying, “I need you to come with me, sir,” and walked me over to the sidewalk under the theater marquee.

Once we were out of ear-shot, the officer told me that the vendor was very upset but that he could “get this guy to play along” if it seemed like he was giving me a stern talking-to. He said the vendor had agreed to put away those T-shirts and all the Confederate stuff just as long as I agreed to go away and leave him alone.

So I did, and the vendor did, and that was that.

I lived there in the borough for another 10 years and went to every street fair I could because the food is always amazing. But I never saw that vendor, or his T-shirts, again.

(The moral of this story, if it’s not already clear, is that if you’re ever anywhere near Media, Pennsylvania, on a Sunday afternoon in the summertime, then you really need to go to one of the town’s street fairs. Don’t miss the booth for Margaret Kuo’s. Or Nooddi or Fellini’s or … heck, it’s all delicious.)