Alice Barr reports for KHOU 11 News, June 18, 2014, that Duy Tran, a resident at an apartment complex in Webster, Texas, says the complex’s manager ordered him to take down his his American flag because it was a “threat to the Muslim community.”
After Tran moved into the Lodge on El Dorado just a few days ago, he proudly put up the flag. But an apartment manager told him he had to take it down.
“What really stunned me is that she said it’s a threat towards the Muslim community,” said Tran. “I’m not a threat toward anybody.”
KHOU tried to ask a manager if that’s exactly what was said, but the woman refused to answer any questions, handed the TV reporter a statement, then called an officer to escort the reporter off the property.
The statement reads:
“While the Lodge on El Dorado admires our resident’s patriotism, we must enforce our property rules and guidelines. Such guidelines maintain the aesthetics of our apartment community and provide for the safety of all residents. The apartment community already proudly displays our country’s flag in a safe and appropriate manner at the entrances to our community.”
The KHOU news team saw other patriotic symbols hanging from other balconies in the apartment complex. Nor did they hear complaints from other residents about the flag. On the contrary, several neighbors said they want Tran’s flag to stay.
For his part, Tran doesn’t plan to budge and will not give up without a fight because the American flag “means a lot to me.”
“I’m gonna leave my flag there, as an American, until she shows me proof that I don’t have the right to leave my flag there,” said Tran.
To Tran it’s about so much more than stars and stripes. “I have friends that died for this country,” he said.
So he says this fight is the least he can do.
****************************
Here’s contact info for the Lodge on El Dorado apartment complex:
Address: 265 El Dorado Boulevard Webster, TX 77598
Phone: 281.480.3730
To write an online message: http://lodgeeldorado.com/Contact
Duy Tran typifies many Vietnamese-Americans who are fiercely patriotic, being refugees (or children of refugees) from South Vietnam who, unlike too many Americans, know well the horrors of communism.
See also “A Vietnamese immigrant thanks God he’s American.”
H/t my friend John Molloy and FOTM’s Miss May
~Eowyn