Last week the People’s Flag of Milwaukee, originally named “Sunrise over the Lake” by its creator Robert Lenz, almost passed a vote to almost go up for another vote to become the new official flag of the City of Milwaukee. The Steering & Rules Committee of the Common Council heard arguments from The People’s Flag Initiative about putting the change up for a formal, full council vote. Ultimately, neither a ‘no’ nor a ‘yes’ verdict was reached; instead, the decision was sent to the city’s Arts Board for further deliberation.
Who knew the city had an Arts Board?
Regardless, I watched the sometimes quarrelsome meeting with interest, and found with some surprise that the years have slowly softened my formerly hardened stance against the “People’s Flag” (though I still hate that term).
In 2014, when a random TED Talk got locals talking about our “4th worst flag of all major cities in the US”, I penned a goofy article about the details and virtues of our cluttered mess of a flag. By the following year the People’s Flag movement was underway, calling for (Millennial graphic designer) Milwaukeeans across the city to submit their own designs for public consideration.
As my hipster generation is wont to do, I disagreed with the crowd. I explained in another article that it wasn’t so much that I loved the original Milwaukee flag; rather, I felt changing it was unnecessary and focus should be on creating flags for our diverse neighborhoods instead. 317 people read my article. 1,006 people submitted new Milwaukee flag designs to the initiative. Womp womp.
The official Milwaukee flag design is bad, I know that. We shouldn’t want to have a flag that has a Native American caricature on it, let alone all the other junk present. So there: I’ve accepted that a change should happen.
Sunrise over the Lake may follow good design guidelines (perpetuated by podcast-idol Roman Mars), but I personally still think it kind of looks boring – the beautiful thing? It doesn’t matter what I think.
I’m one citizen of 600,000+ in this diverse city, where prior to 2016 I’d only ever seen a city flag flying in front of City Hall. Today I see the People’s Flag flying in front of my neighbor’s house, above skyscrapers, on Brewers’ gear, on beer bottles, and in my own basement (next to the OG flag, natch).
That’s what a flag should be: a symbol of civic pride. Sunrise over the Lake has been accepted more by our city in 2 years than the official one was in over half a century.
The Steering Committee’s concerns about Reno stealing the design and that not every citizen of Milwaukee has had a say in the design are unfounded. 1) Who cares about Reno? 2) The whole city didn’t all vote on our original flag, either. That’s why we elect Common Council members to make the decision for us. Ahem.
Wait, am I actually defending the People’s Flag of Milwaukee? This is a new experience for me.
Fact is, I love Milwaukee, and I will love it regardless of what flag is flying above it (well, sans Native American racism). But if a fancy Corona design can make others love our city just a bit more, too, than I’m all for it.
Arts Board, I’m looking at you.