LET'S DISTRACT THE GROUNDLINGS WITH A FLAG REDESIGN.

Last year it was Tim "Blue Falcon" Walz in Minnesota conducting such a contest, the semifinalists of which, according to Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg were "from IKEA, and appear to have been designed to work as button icons on Android phones," and he was being polite.  "Yes, when one of the semi-finalists looks like more than a nod to the old Vietcong flag, the only thing to do with any of the new Minnesota state flags is to take Paul Bunyan's Axe to any flagstaff flying it."

But when you're a politician in a failing jurisdiction run by Democrats, a flag redesign might be just the thing.  There has been a contest going on in Milwaukee for several years to do just that.  The proposed new design dates to before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the idea is the same, only it's the lake below and the sunrise above, rather than the steppes below and the sky above, with Japan's rising sun overlaid with three bars representing the three rivers.  Meaningless mod, I suppose.

"People's Flag of Milwaukee" image retrieved from Urban Milwaukee.

The redesign contest has been ongoing for some time, and even in failing Democratic jurisdictions, intersectional faction fighting is a thing.

Eight years after it was created, Milwaukee could finally be on the verge of adopting the People’s Flag as the official city flag.

But despite the fact that Robert Lenz“Sunrise over the Lake” flag is already flying in front of many homes, displayed on sports team uniforms and beer cans and embedded in all kinds of other places, approving the flag as a replacement for a 1950s flag derided as one of the worst in America isn’t being greeted with universal admiration.

The Steering & Rules Committee recommended adoption of the flag on a 5-3 vote Monday, with some members saying they just wanted to move on and others saying the community has already adopted it. The full council must next review it.

But Monday’s meeting reignited some of the same racial fault lines that ultimately doomed the 2018-2019 process to replace the city’s 1955 flag, a cluttered amalgamation of symbols, with the winner of a 2016 design contest.

That 1955 flag epitomizes Sewer Socialist Realism, and yes, it is cluttered, but then there are a lot of state and local flags with lots of stuff on them.

There is also a lot of clutter in the contest to redesign the flag.  No matter how inclusive steering committees try to be, it's never inclusive enough.

Ald. Russell W. Stamper, II, who represents an overwhelmingly African-American district that is also the city’s most impoverished, raised the same concerns about Burgelis’ survey as he did with the 2016 design contest and its 1,200 entries. As he said in 2019, he wants “fair outreach” across the city and wants to see the process restarted.

Steve Kodis, who organized the 2016 contest with the nonprofit Greater Together, said an effort was made to reach out to Boys & Girls Club locations and schools in every area of the city. But he said he couldn’t recall specific locations off hand.

Two of Stamper’s African American colleagues, DiAndre Jackson and Mark Chambers, Jr., also expressed objections.

“I didn’t feel comfortable talking with people with real problems about this,” said Jackson of why he didn’t avail himself of Burgelis’ outreach offer.

In response to a question from Jackson, Kodis said the sun was white because that’s the color it appears when looked directly at. He also said white on flags is a symbol of peace or unity. Stamper said he wanted to see documentation of that and rhetorically asked who determined white the color of unity.

Chambers questioned if the flag represents the city’s majority-minority status, but Kodis said the imagery deals primarily with geography.

The alderman also said he concerned about the cost of replacing the city’s 18 existing flags. Burgelis said there are “17 to 18” known flags that would need to be replaced. A 2019 report said it would cost $3,000 to replace the flags and the imagery on city vehicles would be replaced as the vehicles are.

Chambers said he wants the city to make money from a new flag by maintaining the rights. The People’s Flag is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero license that allows anyone to use it.

Perhaps, in light of that discussion, that previous contests in the 1970s and 2001 to design a new city flag failed comes as little surprise.

Cross the Cheddar Curtain, then, and the failed state of Illinois, which adopted its current, cluttered flag in 1969, is now considering, you guessed it, a chance to apply your IKEA skills in designing a new one.

The Illinois Flag Commission will begin accepting submissions for a new state flag design next week, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced Wednesday.

The commission was created last year after Senate Bill 1818 was signed into law.

The goal of the bill was to develop new state flag designs to determine if one of them should replace the current state flag. The current flag was adopted in 1969.

The commission will accept design ideas for consideration from the public, online or via mail, until Oct. 18. They plan on working with schools and libraries to encourage more residents to take part.

In Illinois, though, the squabbles between Chicago and Downstate intrude even into the flag contest.

Illinois State Representative Adam Niemberg is calling on Illinois citizens to join him in opposing efforts to redesign the Illinois state flag, calling the change a blatant attempt to infuse far-left ideology onto the state’s flag.

“In and of itself, the idea of a new flag is not necessarily a terrible idea,” Niemberg said about Senate Bill 1818, the goal of which was to develop new state flag designs and determine if one of them should replace the current state flag that was adopted in 1969. “Will we highlight the governor’s efforts to partner with Chinese-owned companies? Or will the flag become a state-sponsored tribute to the Pride flag? We need patriotic citizens to take a stand against this clear attempt to rebrand our state according to leftist ideology.”

The more constructive thing to do might be to encourage those patriotic citizens to submit their own designs.  I have an idea, although something tells me that a design invoking the blue of the lake, the green of the fields, and the gold of the outward pointing arrows isn't going to play well in the judging.