Seattle: Dance Team Told to Remove Their American Flag Shirts “Or Leave” Because Some Competitors Felt “Triggered and Unsafe”

Over the last two days, we have been answering dozens of calls and messages from friends and family. Feelings have ranged all the way from outrage to sympathy to disbelief. We want to make sure there is complete understanding and truth surrounding the events of Saturday.

I’ll try to make this as short as possible. Our Dance Team along with a few others were scheduled to perform at the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle on Saturday. They’ve been asking us for three years to perform but because of their Covid restrictions, we have been unable to until this year. Dance teams work their boots off preparing for performances like these. Extra practices, babysitters, ferry rides, hours upon hours of practice and commute time and time away from their families. We all were very excited to perform for this event.

Unfortunately, what our team was met with upon arrival was that our flag tops were offensive to some of the convention goers. There was a small group that felt “triggered and unsafe”. They had several claims for this reasoning. Mostly associated with the situation in Palestine and the Trans community in America.

At first we were told we would just be boo’d, yelled at and likely many of them would walk out. This did not deter us. But then we were given an ultimatum.

Remove the flag tops and perform in either street clothes (which most didn’t bring as they traveled there in their uniforms) or they would supply us with ECH shirts from years past… Or, don’t perform at all, which effectively was asking us to leave.

Also, here is a link to their website that shows the pictures of our teams in our uniforms. So they would have known what we were going to wear.