Flag of Facts

Flag of Facts: a black flag with six lines of capitalised text in rainbow colours reading science is real, black lives matter, no human is illegal, love is love, women's rights are human rights, kindness is everything.

Designer: Text: Kristin Garvey. Rainbow-on-black design: Kristin Joiner (622 Press), for a project organised by Jennifer Rosen Heinz · 9 November 2016

Six lines of text in rainbow colours on black: SCIENCE IS REAL, BLACK LIVES MATTER, NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL, LOVE IS LOVE, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS, KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING. Flag of Facts is a retail name. The thing itself is the American "In this house, we believe" yard sign. Kristin Garvey, a youth services librarian in Madison, Wisconsin, made the original by hand on foam board with Sharpies on 9 November 2016, the day after the US presidential election, listing groups she believed the incoming administration would harm and pairing each with a slogan already in use by Black Lives Matter, immigration activists, LGBTQ+ movements, and Hillary Clinton's 1995 Beijing speech. She wrote none of the lines from scratch; she assembled them. Jennifer Rosen Heinz saw it and organised a printable version, redrawn by Kristin Joiner of 622 Press, reportedly in about twenty minutes. Rosen Heinz has said on the record that the words were not originally hers. Garvey's original Sharpie sign is now held by the National Woman's Party museum in Washington DC. Wording and order vary. The canonical 2017 sign runs Black Lives Matter, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love Is Love, Kindness Is Everything, under the header "In this house, we believe:". This flag uses a common merchandise ordering and drops the header. Neither is wrong; this is a variant, not the original. Other versions add lines such as "Water is life" or "Trans rights are human rights". No colour specification exists. The rainbow sequence carries no assigned per-line meaning.

No standardized colour codes.

History

This is the only flag in the guide whose content is entirely words, and the only one that began as a piece of cardboard in somebody's living room.

Made the day after the 2016 election

Kristin Garvey, a librarian in Madison, Wisconsin, made it on foam board with Sharpies while her children napped. She listed the groups she thought were about to be targeted, then wrote next to each one a slogan that group was already using. That is why every line sounds familiar: none of them was new.

Who made it, exactly

Credit gets muddled because two people are involved. Garvey wrote the words. Kristin Joiner designed the rainbow-on-black version everyone recognises, for a printing project organised by Jennifer Rosen Heinz. There is no rival authorship claim, only a credit split that gets reported carelessly.

The line order on this flag is not the original

The original sign opens with Black Lives Matter and carries the header "In this house, we believe". This flag opens with Science Is Real and drops the header. It is one of many merchandise variants in circulation, and worth knowing if you care about the original.