All of you here are free to attach your own meanings to the flag. It is your right in a democracy. The city council, however, as the city’s highest elected body, has a duty to not uncritically endorse these projections and interpretations in the name of the entire city without a fuller understanding of the history of the flag. I personally believe that it is a mistake for the city council to endorse the flag of the former South Vietnam, a flag that is highly controversial and painful to many. When it comes to democracy, the former South Vietnamese government was also a dictatorship...

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "All of you here are free to attach your own meanings to the flag. It is your right in a democracy. The city council, however, as the city’s highest elected body, has a duty to not uncritically endorse these projections and interpretations in the name of the entire city without a fuller understanding of the history of the flag. I personally believe that it is a mistake for the city council to endorse the flag of the former South Vietnam, a flag that is highly controversial and painful to many. When it comes to democracy, the former South Vietnamese government was also a dictatorship..." in the context of "Kshama Sawant, "A Flag Controversy of Our Own" in Seattle Met (24 June 2015)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.