Also known as an Appeal to Heaven flag, the historical banner has been embraced by members of the Christian far right as a call to fight to save the nation. It catapulted into mainstream awareness when the New York Times reported that one such flag was displayed at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation home in New Jersey last summer. The flagpole at the Alito home in Virginia also had an upside-down American flag in 2021, which his wife said was “a signal of distress” and a response to a dispute with neighbors over political signs. (The Supreme Court justice claims he had nothing to do with the flags.)
Flag-flying is a long-standing if unevenly observed practice in the United States, and has evolved from classic stars and stripes to sports teams to more pointed political messages. Perhaps no home decor communicates as much about you to others as the flags you display — how you vote, what you believe, what you care about — and flag sellers have a unique window into the passion (and vandalism, and neighborhood spats) flags can inspire.
Dacka hears a lot about vandalism of political flags, especially during election years. “They either steal that flag, they cut it in half, they burn it, they shred it,” says Dacka. “We’ve gotten a lot of phone calls about that.” Yes, that’s right — customers call Dacka and Flags USA to share all kinds of flag-related thoughts and information.
She has heard from people angry that states like Minnesota and Mississippi have changed their flags, as well as from those outraged that the company still sells the now-historical state flags. People call and send photos of flying their American flags upside down, which is “a hard thing to hear … [because] that’s a symbol of being in distress,” she says. Dacka started seeing the trend when George W. Bush was president, though it’s “obviously just gotten more heated since then.”
And then, there are the people who call Dacka to see if they can sic law enforcement on people over their flag displays. “I cannot even tell you how many calls I get, you know, ‘Can a ticket be written?’ ‘Can this person be arrested?’” over, say, flying a flag above the American flag on a pole or having a particularly tattered banner, says Dacka. “And it’s like, ‘oh my, you guys, these are your neighbors’ … I get these questions all the time, even to the point where they’re calling the police station.”
Of all the political banners that Flags USA sells, the Gadsden flag — the historical yellow flag with a rattlesnake ready to strike and the words “Don’t Tread On Me” — is the best seller, per Dacka. (The company does not sell the Confederate battle flag, though she suspects it would both sell well and be vandalized frequently.)
LGBTQ-related flags are the bestsellers at Flags for Good, according to company owner Michael Green. He too hears from customers facing vandalism. “We are constantly contacted by people who, they’re flying a Pride flag and someone stole it — they have video camera footage of people walking up to their house and ripping it down,” says Green. “That happens way too often.”
Green, a vexillologist (a.k.a. flag expert) who founded the company in 2020, is as passionate about flags as many of his customers. “I was seeing flags as a medium being taken over by the far right,” he says. “And as someone who loved flags, I was like, ‘well, you know, I don’t want that’ … I think flags are so powerful, and I don’t think that they should all be in one side’s hands.” When it comes to issue-based flags, the company only sells ones with progressive messages and donates some of the proceeds to related causes.
He has long flown flags from his 100-or-so strong personal collection in front of his own residence. On Aug. 1, for instance, he’d fly a Colorado state flag in honor of Colorado Day. “It was just sort of a fun little thing that I did,” says Green. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Green wanted to fly flags with more of an activist bent. Flags for Good’s first design was a Black Lives Matter banner. “Flags can make people feel safer in their own neighborhood. They can show that people are welcome, show that they’re not alone, he says. “And they can also do the opposite.”
When people decide to fly a flag at home, they have to mull over what message that piece of fabric is sending to passersby.
Bailey Sanz, of Chicago, started collecting flags and signs when she and her husband bought their home. Suddenly, they had a place to display them. She wasn’t looking to be inflammatory, but she thought flags with messages like “Vote,” “End Gun Violence” and “Climate Change is Real” wouldn’t be too controversial.
“It’s a little bit self-expression. It’s a little bit protest. And then it’s a little bit, you know, just household decoration,” says Sanz.
In one instance, after a disagreement with a neighbor at a block party over abortion rights, Sanz purchased a flag that says, “Abortion saves lives.” But that didn’t lead to any further responses from the neighbor, largely because Sanz suspects that she didn’t notice. “She does not know that that flag is for her, probably, but I do,” says Sanz. “This is my way of saying, ‘hey, I remember what you said, and I am disagreeing.’”
For Sydney Smith, her flag display in Carrollton, Tex., was a direct reaction to her neighbor.
Before the 2020 election, their house displayed a big Trump flag, along with signs for other Republican candidates in the state. Smith, who describes herself as liberal, felt obligated to respond.
“If you want to fly your bull—t flags then guess what, honey? You’re going to see mine too,” Smith says. She hung up a Biden flag and a Black Lives Matter flag. She’s pretty sure that the neighbor knew her displays were a response, but it didn’t mar the relationship, because they didn’t have one to begin with. She doesn’t even know his name.
This election cycle, she’s waiting to see what the other house will display. As of last weekend, the neighbor’s home is still flagless, “but you know, I stay at the ready,” says Smith.
The flags people choose to fly don’t just have implications for neighbor relations; they can influence real estate transactions.
Questions about political flags and signs come up “all the time,” says Amelia Robinnette, the principal broker at Nova House and Home. Families looking to buy a home will eye the neighbors’ yards and flagpoles for clues about who they might live near for the next decade or so.
At one listing, she advised the owner to chat with their neighbor about potentially taking down their political sign while the house was on the market, because it could turn off a segment of buyers. “I’m not trying to judge your block or your neighbor,” Robinnette recalls telling her client. “I’m just letting you know from a marketing perspective, this is something that comes up.”
But the client didn’t want to make that request of their neighbor. Then, at the open house, the neighbor had a flag the size of a car trumpeting their presidential pick. Robinnette heard feedback from visitors about the flag: “We lost buyers because of it.”
That’s because, as Green puts it, people “use their house and their house’s flagpole to communicate about themselves and to communicate the world that they want to see.” And some buyers at the open house wanted a different kind of world — or at least, a different kind of neighbor.
