Day 5

June 5

Flags hang in Down Cathedral, a Church of Ireland (Protestant) cathedral that sits next to the grave of Saint Patrick in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland.

As we drove to the Saint Patrick Centre today, we passed by Evelyn Downshire Memorial Orange Hall in Dundrum. The small brick building caught my eye because beside it was a Union Jack flying high atop a flagpole, very visible from the road.

I remembered a conversation I had had with another Young Ambassador a couple days earlier, as we were leaving our chat with former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. I asked what happened on July 12, a day Bertie had said nationalists should embrace as part of the history of Ireland just as Unionists should embrace St. Patrick’s day. For context, July the 12 is celebrated as Orangemen's Day for Ulster Protestants, but I didn't know that at this point.

The student said that unlike St Patrick’s day, which has spiritual resonance for its followers, July 12th was just about celebrating Catholic death. Another student chimed in and said that her friend had seen huge bonfires on July 12th and it was very disturbing to her, but that the teacher had wanted them to see. Of course, Bertie hadn’t said that Irish Catholics should embrace July 12th unreservedly; he had added that perhaps it would be easier to do if the Orange order stopped burning images of the pope and the tricolor as they stoked their fire. There were no Unionists on the bus who could give their two cents, and as I sat with their words, I began to think more broadly.

What does it mean to respect differences of belief when one side’s practice directly antagonizes and disrespects the other’s?

I was reminded of Ashura, the Islamic holiday during the sacred month of Muharram celebrated as a joyous feast day for the Sunni and in contrast, is a day of mourning for the Shi'a. One of my students at UW-Madison told me that she didn’t feel fully integrated into the Muslim Student Association there because the majority of them were Sunni, whereas she is a Twelver Shi'a. Days like Ashura just exacerbate this tension for her.

Another example would be April 30, 1975, which was alternately feted this year as the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon by the Vietnamese diaspora and descendants of its exiles, and the anniversary of its liberation and reunification by those who support the Communists.

And then of course there is May 14th, 1948. Growing up I knew it as Yom Ha’atzma’ut, the anniversary of Israeli independence. I later learned the Palestinians call that day the Nakba, or catastrophe. I was in Jerusalem on May 14th a number of years ago, and I saw huge cheering crowds in the streets, waving Israeli flags, dancing and singing. I remember learning that some even march into the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem with their flags and their chanting, and that violence often breaks out...

There have been many strange and twisted threads of similarity. I continue to reflect on that.

Today I finally heard what the twelfth means according to a Unionist-- a commemoration of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, in which the Protestant King William of Orange (somewhat ironically allied with the Pope), defeated the Catholic King of France. The Unionist in question was a self-described "Orange Man," a local politician of the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) representing a handful of rural counties. He talked about the Orange Order with pride, as something he "doesn't hide," and which "stands guard against anti-Protestant violence." I felt that the atmosphere as he was speaking had shifted. Maybe everyone was just tired from our 13-mile hike yesterday, or maybe the AOH-enrolled Irish Catholic American student group felt the bile of ancient rivalry rising in their throats. Wikipedia told me later that the victory of this battle ushered in a period of persecution and disenfranchisement for Ireland's Catholic majority. I noticed that when one student started to clap at the end of the talk, another student gave him a (half-ironic?) shake of the head, and he stopped.

The funny thing is, though: most of the Catholic "voting bloc" in the United States leans conservative, which would seem to align with the DUP on many issues. When asked what are some of their current issues, Harry Harvey, MLA for Strangford said the DUP want “women-only spaces, which should not be shared, especially when children are involved. That’s our struggle at the minute." They also spoke about their positions on marriage and abortion, which I recognized as similar to language and messaging of the Republican party in the U.S. Also, DUP voters in Northern Ireland are more likely than their counterparts to be economically disadvantaged and less educated, which is true of many of those who voted for Donald Trump, particularly in rural areas. And then there is the fact that Nationalists have put up Palestinian flags in their houses and on pins on their shirts, whereas Unionists back Israel.

Some of my fellow student ambassadors no doubt come from families who voted for the current American president, yet they did not seem to find common cause with the DUP guys. No surprise, I guess, considering some of them just formed a group chat jokingly called the "Irish Running Association," or IRA for short.

Old habits.