Maybe you don’t know 2020 Trump-Pence yard signs are still up because you haven’t been driving across the U.S. lately — but I have been, and there are. New & shiny “Trump 2024” signs too. I’d wager that most of the U.S. population that drives & doesn’t live in a solidly blue area has at least some inkling of the phenomenon though.
What I think fewer people are aware of is that there are Ukrainian flags being flown across the entire country. In blue states & in red states — in urban centers & over fields. Big flags. Small flags. Hand-made flags with the colors a few shades off. The flags appear individually & in neighborhood clusters, sometimes hanging from high-lofted Trump signs1 — and they appear even more often as a lawn’s sole adornment, flying from a pole, tree, fencepost, or window.
Apart from chain stores & restaurants, very little has been visually consistent in my past few months driving as far south & west as New Mexico and as far north & east as Maine2. Desert sandstorms 🏜️—> became temperate-zone blizzards ❄️—> became spring🌷. Mountains —> disappeared into pancake-flat fields 🥞—> grew to rolling hills. Baby-faced billboards warning against abortion👶… traded out for ones that advertise organic cannabis🥦. Except, since February, there’s been this added consistency of Ukrainian flags. There has been reporting on individual towns and cities committed to flying the Ukrainian flag in solidarity, and stories on high demand for flags & shortages, but no reporting* on the question of where the high volume of sold flags are eventually flown. The answer is: everywhere.
When I saw my first Ukrainian flag flying — back in February, in rural Minnesota, while mildly lost — I assumed I was passing the house of someone with strong, personal ties to Ukraine. Over the next few days, as I passed more houses flying Ukrainian flags than seemed explicable by personal ties3, the sightings started to feel bizarre. Few, if any, Ukrainians were going to see a flag in semi-rural Minnesota. Bipartisan support for Ukraine & sanctions was clear already4 — no one needed more convincing. There was, of course, disagreement over what exact measures to take5, but a Ukrainian flag does not express a particular policy opinion. And while maybe there’s a certain poetry to hoisting an emblem of support that those supported will never see, the proportion of the U.S. population moved to display futile & poetic lawn-art has never seemed particularly large, and certainly has never seemed to overlap much with those who possess the straight-forward & somewhat mundane organizational impulses needed to purchase & hang up a flag. So, why was this happening?
My next two drives took me first through Wisconsin & Illinois, and then Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. In one way, seeing the flags became, well, really nice. It feels good to see a visual, physical-world representation of Americans agreeing on something. I’d been reading abstract statistics indicating bipartisan support for Ukraine too, but in a country where so many of our visible public symbols are associated with political division — confederate flags, statues in parks, restroom sign illustrations— I experienced real emotion seeing people whose political viewpoints are often polarized agreeing on a symbol.
As the war in Ukraine has continued — and I’ve driven on through Colorado & Nebraska, back through Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, and onward to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, and New York — the flags, to me, have come to signify a kind of opportunity. Flag-hangers and hoisters are organized people. With houses. With resources. With time. Why are they choosing to do this? After all, they seem to have decided to do it as relatively independent actors or cohorts, and usually there’s so much effort needed for people to organize and do something like this (…either that or a short-lived social media fad). That’s why I think there’s a possible opportunity here: is there something we can learn about people’s motivations for altruistic action by looking at why politically diverse groups are flying Ukrainian flags all over America?
Especially, because, well, there’s a niceness to flag-hanging, but at the same time, given the state of the world, there are many important things to be doing right now. Avoiding nuclear war. Addressing the food supply-line issues caused by the war in Ukraine. Targeting aid in more efficient ways6. Things that, well, would help the people the flag-bearers wish to support in more substantive ways than hanging a flag.
Aberrantly, I’m based in NYC for the next six weeks. But here’s a post series I’ll be working on intermittently as long as there are Ukrainian flags up: I’m going to be knocking on doors and requesting interviews every time I see a home with a Ukrainian flag. Ask about motivation. What else they may be doing for Ukraine. What other causes, if any, they support.
It’ll be a journalistic rather than academic look into the situation, but it feels worth doing (…and if you’re interested in designing a rigorous study, I’d love to talk about me possibly doing your legwork). It feels worth doing because the idea that something has gripped the entire nation for this first time since — what? Game of Thrones? — is tantalizing7. So what’s causing it? If the answer is boring & predictable enough, I’ll still have some interesting conversations. If the answer is a surprise? Well, that sounds exciting.
I’ll add a link to updates [here] if I find anything worth writing you about.
Xoxo 🇺🇦,
Zard
*At least according to my Google Search attempts.
I’ve seen one Biden sign in the 7678 miles of cross-country driving I’ve done since December 1st. Given the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the U.S., my guess is that if I saw Biden lawn signs more regularly, some of the sightings would co-occur with Ukrainian flags.
A landscape free of political lawn signs is more typical for the presidential pre-election season, but the lack of pro-Biden signage does stand in stark contrast to sign efforts from Trump supporters — some of which are near-billboard sized despite being planted on personal property.
See the post “Welcome to 35 Milligrams” for an explanation of why I’m driving around so much.
There are many kinds of ties, but I was in a state where only 0.3% of the population reported any Ukrainian ancestry at all, there were no Ukraine-owned businesses, and in 2019 out of the half a million international visitors to Minnesota’s international airport, only 2800 had flights originating in Ukraine. In 2020, for obvious reasons, it was down to 524 visitors.
ibid.
Or, in slightly jargon-y Effective Altruism terms, doing this feels worth it to me because: (1) I’m in a unique position to do it (e.g., I’m traveling already; have the desire and skillset to cold-approach & speak with strangers on the topic; should be taking more leg-stretch breaks anyway); (2) The chance of finding something useful seems somewhere in the low-unknowns, but benefits might be large if I find something novel/useful about effecting wide-scale societal trends.
Read-Aloud of: "This Isn't Being Reported Anywhere Else*"