Sen. Warren weighs in on movement to change Massachusetts state flag over 'White supremacy culture'

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Warren backs changing Massachusetts flag after group claims it’s racist

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren supports a movement to replace her state's flag and seal. Proponents say the imagery promotes "White supremacy culture."

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she supports changing her state's flag after residents demanded it be replaced.

Newburyport, Massachusetts, locals pushed a resolution demands that the City Council support an effort to replace the state's flag and seal. The residents argue that the imagery helps promote what they call the state's racist history.

"There are people who are reconsidering the flag in Massachusetts, and I support those efforts," Warren told Fox News in a brief exchange on Capitol Hill.

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The U.S. and Massachusetts flags fly at half staff in Boston. (Reuters / Brian Snyder / File)

Newburyport residents Marianna Vesey and Linda Lu Burciaga have led the movement, according to the town's local paper. The flag and seal both depict a Native American holding a bow and arrow. At the top is an arm holding a sword. "She seeks by the sword a quiet place under liberty" is emblazoned in Latin.

Vesey said the state seal supports the idea that White people are "in charge of this world and that we have to subdue the Native American people" through a "colonializing and violent depiction."

"One of the reasons that we can ignore this so easily is that our White supremacy culture has really allowed for the disappearance of the Native American world," she said. "We’re really trying to say that they are not gone. They are here among us, and we really need to not only recognize that but to honor it."

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Meanwhile, Burciaga, who called the state flag and seal problematic, criticized the imagery by saying it shows a White hand holding a colonial sword over a Native American's head.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, speaks to members of the media during a protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images / File)

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This is not the first time Warren has picked a fight over a state flag. While running as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the senator said she supported removing the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi state flag.

Mississippi adopted a new flag in 2021.