I can't believe I'm writing this, but we all have to go out and buy a US flag right now.
I grew up with an uneasiness with nationalism. History teaches us that it leads to fascism, undermines pluralism and diversity. Many great protest movements have burned flags and created new symbols to directly undermine the power of the State.
And the US? Well the flag of my adopted country certainly never stirred my heart as a kid in Canada. It was the more violent, more conservative cousin next door whose sole purpose was to make us feel smug about our health care our education and our quiet, crime-free existence.
But then I fell in love with an American. I saw through her eyes what this country could stand for, and it's beautiful. It's about values like freedom, like opportunity; it's about faith, it's about innovation; it's about leadership locally and globally. And it's about revolution and change.
So why do we cede the symbol of all this amazing Americanness to the opposing side? We have a President who is perhaps the most corrupt leader in this country's history and we've decided his movement, his people, own the American flag.
We have pink hats, and Planned Parenthood buttons and Obama stickers and Princess Leia and they are beautiful and innovative. But they are not enough. Nationalism needs to go from a bad word in our movement to a part of our most precious language. And values beyond equality and justice need to find a home in our fight for a different future.
It's time to reclaim American values, to look them square in the eye and recognize how quickly they can be used to destroy and choose instead to use them to rebuild. It's about taking all the terrible, violent, offensive, destructive pasts of this country and letting them live next to the hopeful, transformative, inclusive futures it can create.
It's time to buy an American flag, hang it over our doors, alongside the "This pussy bites back" sign still leaning in the front window. And the next time this corrupt President uses his power to enrich himself and his friends and destroy the hopes and futures of any of the rest of us, we should throw both in the back of the car as we take off for the next battle in this American resistance movement.