At Saturday’s “No Kings” rally in El Segundo, clever signs and inflatable costumes lined Main St., inviting honking and cheers from drivers passing by. The most eye-catching demonstration, however, was a return to tradition: the sea of stars and stripes that characterized the protest.

The all-American display was particularly striking given that American pride has slipped to an all-time low in 2025. Democrats in particular weighed down this national average, with a minority of 36% saying they are “extremely or very proud” to be an American. 

Despite Democrats’ American pride reaching record lows, the left is making a clear effort to reclaim the flag they surrendered. The push toward patriotism was palpable at Saturday’s protest. 

“There’s so much going wrong in this country I couldn’t fit it all on one sign,” said Jeffrey Reed, 67, flying an upside-down flag on the corner of Main St. and Imperial Highway. “I thought I’d bring this and show we’re in a lot of distress in this country. This kind of sums it all up with one demonstration.”

To Reed, the American symbol is everything. “This is what you pledge allegiance to, this is what you sing the national anthem to, this flag,” said Reed. “And this is my way of showing we’re in trouble and we need to make some changes.” 

Protestors like Jay Cee Cary, 59, shared Reed’s reverence for the national symbol. “[The American flag] means freedom, which to me means the freedom to express ourselves, the freedom to dissent, the freedom for speech, the freedom for people to be themselves and free of tyranny,” said Cary. “I feel like the American flag has been co-opted by those that don’t agree with us. So I am taking it back.”

Cary was not alone in his efforts to reclaim the flag he felt had been stolen by the political right. Barbara Bohan, 67, said that to her, “the flag is the symbol of our democracy. It’s the symbol of the country my parents taught me to love and to stand up for.”

“The American flag has been appropriated by the right,” said Bohan. “And it’s not theirs. It’s not their flag. It’s the United States flag.”

To some, like Patty Koehler, 78, the political move to reclaim the flag is obvious. Koehler expressed her feeling that Democrats “surrendered the flag to Trump” during his first term. “There should never be any kind of a protest without an American flag present, because it is what the American flag allows us to do: have a protest.”

Though this Democratic push to “own” the flag feels unique to this polarized era, it’s not. Beyond lacking a shared vision for the country, Americans have long struggled to share a national flag. 

According to Woden Teachout, manager of faculty development at Harvard University and author of Capture The Flag, the American flag has been used as a political symbol “since the very beginning.” 

Teachout came to realize the contested nature of the American flag in a political climate that mirrors today’s, when the political right had virtual ownership of the national symbol.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Teachout “grabbed the flag off the house” to join a protest. With a six-month-old baby and no time to make a sign, she thought the obvious: “This is an American thing to do, to go protest.” 

“We noticed this crowd kind of like giving us more and more space and looking at us funny, so we had this circle of space around us,” said Teachout. Someone eventually asked her, “Are you counterprotestors or are you here with us?” 

“It was such a revealing moment that they could not see the flag as a symbol of protest,” said Teachout. “They were seeing it as a symbol of militarism and U.S. imperialism.”

As in 2003, it’s undeniable that in 2025, the flag and patriotism are conflated with the Republican Party. “If you’re going to see someone standing out on a street corner with the American flag, you’re going to make assumptions about how that’s owned by the right,” said Teachout.

Much of this can be attributed to the Americana imagery that enveloped the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill. The traditional American flag flew among extremist right-wing symbols, including Trump 2020 flags, Confederate flags, and many signing the “OK” hand gesture, a symbol of white power co-opted by the Proud Boys. 

Just as this is not the first time the flag has been strongly associated with the political right, it’s not the first time the left has attempted a conscious adoption of the symbol. 

A poignant example of this calculated reclamation happened during the Civil Rights movement. “When civil rights activists had come back from World War II, they had been struck by the discrepancies between what they were supposedly fighting for and segregation in the South,” said Teachout. Civil rights activists utilized the American flag as a symbol of racial integration, redefining what it meant to be a patriotic American.

Due to diametrically opposed visions for the country, it feels impossible that both ends of the political spectrum would seek to claim the same flag under the guise of patriotism. Teachout attributes this reality to two kinds of patriotism – humanitarian and nationalist. Both are “inarguably American” but are very different. 

Humanitarian patriotism, experienced by the left, is defined in Capture the Flag as an “ideological commitment to democracy as a political and social system.” Teachout characterizes humanitarian patriots as valuing dissent as a key patriotic activity and identifies Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. as figures who have embraced this ideology. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, nationalist patriotism was defined by “a shared cultural, social, economic, ethnic, and geographic heritage.” Today, she said that white Christian nationalists utilize this patriotism. “That’s what it’s about: it’s Christian, it’s white, there’s this sort of shared culture,” said Teachout. She noted Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan as leaders who called on this belief. 

Though they both fall under the same category of American patriotism, humanitarian and nationalist patriotism are entirely different ways of experiencing this pride across the political aisle. 

For many Americans, a nuanced, complex understanding of patriotism is more than political, it’s personal. Bryon Garner, a Black Navy veteran, described his experience living within the paradox of patriotism. 

Garner grew up in Gary, Indiana in the 1970s, and a reverence for the flag was integral to his upbringing. In elementary school, he recalled the opportunity to raise the flag in the morning being, “a sign of distinction.” A World War II veteran working as a custodial worker at his school taught him the ritual of the flag: “carrying the flag and how you raise it, never letting it touch the ground, and all of those things.” In his community, patriotism was defined by actions, not words. “It was just what you did,” said Garner. 

While he was undoubtedly patriotic, internal inconsistencies arose as racial tension pervaded his community. “Most of the time that my father was growing up, it was segregated,” said Garner. In 1968, Gary elected the first Black mayor, which “ushered in an era of white flight. All of a sudden, white people were moving out of the city. I saw this, where entire blocks would change in the matter of months,” said Garner. 

This conundrum followed him throughout his life. “The feeling of being included was not something that felt secure. Even the times when I felt included, I realized that it was included but conditionally, as long as I participated in the performative things that were a part of what is considered patriotism: joining the military, being in uniform,” said Garner. “I had incidents where, if I was out of uniform, I was treated very differently.”

When Garner went to Purdue University, he was one of two Black members participating in a cadre of roughly 400 midshipmen in the Navy ROTC unit. “I was included when I was in uniform,” he said. “If I was not in uniform, no one spoke to me.” 

After Garner had served in the Navy, he was faced with even deeper questions about the intersection of race and patriotism. “I returned from the Persian Gulf War in the early ’90s, and within months of my return was the Rodney King incident,” said Garner. “So on the one hand, there’s this patriotic fervor, and then there’s this incident that occurred. Both affecting me as my own lived experience.” 

“I’m certainly proud of my service, but there are paradoxes with regard to what the flag means, what it has meant in the black community, [and] what it has meant to the larger community of Americans,” said Garner. 

If the American flag represents the United States, the storied political contest to claim it perfectly encapsulates its reality: a country deeply divided. To Garner, the debate about who owns the flag only keeps us from the truth about patriotism. 

“We think of things as zero-sum: for one side to win, the other side has to lose. I don’t think that way,” said Garner. “This is something that is bigger than all of that. […] We have to separate politics from patriotism.”