COLUMN For Independence, Take Down Your National Flag

This is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Image credit: Flag of Los Angeles City, public domain, via City of Los Angeles

If you’re a Californian who wants to celebrate your independence this Fourth of July, put your American flags away.

Instead, fly a California flag. Or, even better, run up the flag of your county, municipality, or community. It’s at the local level that you have the best chance to hold onto liberty in this country.

The attacks upon us by the current regime in Washington D.C. are myriad. The occupier of the White House never stops declaring that he, not we Californians, should rule California.

Violating law and constitution, he maintains that he can send in soldiers to police Los Angeles, strip our schools of billions, tell our universities whom to hire and what to teach, impose tariffs and taxes on our businesses at his whim, overrule the environmental pollution laws that we have made with our votes, deport our immigrant neighbors—even legal residents and U.S. citizens, shut our service programs, take healthcare from our poor, claw back funds from our localities, steal billions set aside for our high-speed rail, and even decide who gets to compete in high school track meets.

It is altogether fitting and proper that Californians respond by pulling down the flag on the Fourth. Because in all his actions, Trump almost perfectly resembles the lawlessness and war-making by King George III that inspired the Declaration of Independence 249 years ago.

Californians should read that document aloud to each other while removing their U.S. flags. “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,” it reads. The abuses in the original declaration’s list are familiar today—“he has refused his Assent to Laws… he has obstructed the Administration of Justice… For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world… For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent….For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences... He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.”

Refusing to fly the flag isn’t enough to overthrow a tyranny, but it’s an essential way to disobey, to show that you don’t recognize the authority of the U.S. regime.

Pulling down the U.S. flag would be even more powerful if California’s governments did it too.

Indeed, it would be an act of defiance, and not just against a American republic that has died and is turning into a dictatorship. In refusing to fly the Stars and Stripes, the state government and some local governments would also be in glorious violation of 1953 state laws on flags that unjustly paint California as subservient to the United States.

Those flag laws, which you can find in Sections 430-439 of California’s Government Code, are a product of the McCarthy era, which in its repression of speech and truth resembles our own. The laws say that both American and Californian flags must be displayed “in all rooms where any court or any state, county, or municipal commission holds any sessions,” “upon or in front of… each public building belonging to the State, a county, or a municipality” and “at the entrance or upon the grounds or upon the administration” of schools and colleges.

And when both flags are used together, they must be of the same size—but with the American flag “placed in the position of first honor,” according to Section 436. “First honor” can mean in front or above the California flag. “If only one flagpole is used, the National Flag shall be above the State Flag,” says the code.

C.C. Marin, director of the Independent California Institute, has been publicly encouraging challenges to the custom of American flag supremacy.

“California’s state flag is a powerful symbol of resistance and unity in the face of a cruel, lawless presidential administration,” Marin wrote recently, adding: “Flags remind us who’s in charge. California is not and has never been a subsidiary of the federal government. We’ve always had our own sovereignty… Voluntarily flying our own flag below the American flag is literally a symbol of inferiority and compliance.”

Marin suggests that those communities who are shielded from flag rules take the lead. Charter cities—which have their own constitutions and are said to have “supreme authority” over their own municipal affairs—are exempt from flag laws. Every major California city, and dozens of smaller ones, including my Pasadena hometown, are charter cities. Special districts—governments that carry out a special duty, like running a hospital or a utility—also don’t have to fly the American flag.

For other jurisdictions, where the flag laws apply, Marin has a couple suggestions. First, Californians could insist that state and local governments follow the flag law provisions that the American flag and California flag must be the same size when they are flown together. That rule is violated at office buildings in Sacramento, including the Capitol, where the Americna flag is bigger than the California flag. Perhaps a good, old-fashioned lawsuit could force compliance against those state agencies and local governments which like Trump, thinks it’s OK to break the long as long as you’re patriotic about it.

Second, Californians and their governments should consider flying the American flag upside down—which is legal. Doing so is “a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property,” according to the U.S. Flag Code, which is advisory (and nont even binding on the federal government). The nascent American dictator’s military invasion of California obviously qualifies as an instance of extreme danger.

On a personal note, I love flying flags outside my home, but I haven’t decided what I’m doing for the Fourth. Right now, the Canadian flag is up (I value the True North as an ally, even though Trumpists don’t), but I may switch to the California flag or the L.A. County flag.

Or I might raise the Earth Flag, a half-century old flag showing a photo of earth taken during the Apollo missions. The flag expresses our planetary commitment to all living things, though I’d fly it in support of the democratically sovereign Humboldt County city of Arcata.

Voters there approved Measure M to raise the Earth Flag above the U.S. flag in 2022. That measure is being challenged in court. Meanwhile, the Trump regime just barred U.S. government institutions from flying “activist” flags.

Which makes flying the Earth Flag, or other banners of your choice, the perfect holiday expression of independence.