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Yosemite National Park staffers claimed responsibility for an upside-down American flag being hung thousands of feet in the air to protest the Trump administration’s “attack” against public lands and mass layoffs of federal staff.
Thousands of visitors descended on California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range as the so-called “Distress flag” fluttered in the wind 3,000ft above the valley floor off the top of El Capitan, the tallest exposed vertical face of granite on Earth.
A group of six demonstrators rigged ropes and rappelled down the cliff face to unfurl the 30 by 50ft flag on Saturday.
The stunt was timed with the last weekend of the annual Firefall spectacle where the setting sun causes Horsetail Falls to take on a fiery orange glow. The upside-down flag was intentionally hung close to the waterfall.
“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” Gavin Carpenter, a Yosemite maintenance mechanic who supplied and helped hang the flag, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”
Eleven of Yosemite’s full-time staff members, including the park’s sole locksmith and a biologist received a termination email on February 14 – as did 1,000 permanent National Park Service employees across the country after the Trump administration directed federal agencies to carry out widespread layoffs.
At least 50 jobs that were originally cut are already being restored to help maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and collect admission fees, reports the Associated Press.
Many of Yosemite’s staffers live in employer-provided housing inside the national park.
“Since these cuts came, a lot of people are really uneasy and worried about what’s going to happen to them,” Carpenter said.
Historically, the upside-down flag represented an apolitical symbol of distress or national threat. It has been appropriated by both the left and right in protest – from those who expressed dissent with the overturning of Roe v. Wade to Donald Trump’s MAGA supporters who contested the result of the 2020 election.
Park visitors who saw the flag flying offered mixed responses.
“At first thought the upside-down flag was for Trump support, but then realized it was to support the national parks, and I was for it,” Las Vegas resident Tina Alidio told The Chronicle.
“I would rather see nature, contested Rebecca Harvey of Mariposa County, adding: “No hand of man.”
Shortly after hanging the banner, Yosemite National Park Service released a statement, claiming their display was a protest on behalf of public land.
“The purpose of this exercise of free speech is to disrupt without violence and draw attention to the fact that public lands in the United States are under attack,” it read. “Firing 1,000s of staff regardless of position or performance across the nation is the first step in destabilizing the protections in place for these great places.”
It continued: “These losses, while deeply personal and impactful, may also be invisible to visitors and members of the public – we are shining a spotlight on them by putting a distress flag on El Capitan in view of Firefall. Think of it as your public lands on strike.”
