Joshua Tree National Park (Photo: Brad Sutton, NPS)
The patriotic duty of showing up for the land and its stewards.
Editor-in-Chief, High Country News
April 1, 2025
Republished courtesy High Country News (www.hcn.com)
Jennifer Sahn
On a recent trip to Joshua Tree, I had the opportunity to attend a protest of the Trump administration’s depraved cuts to public-lands managers and park employees. Crowds of people held signs saying “Parks Not Oligarchs,” “Rangers Rock,” “Defund DOGE.” There were tambourines, a coronet, a woman dressed as a monarch butterfly and a man carrying our state flag, with its image of one of the last California grizzlies roaming a green meadow above the words “California Republic.” What I felt most strongly, being among that crowd of people, was this: Defending what we love is another form of love.
I was especially heartened to see so many American flags, some upside-down, signaling distress, others right side up, waving on small sticks held by young children. An older man wore a larger flag as a cape. I remember how, during the Iraq War, the flag was co-opted by supporters of that war, which was being waged under false pretenses. Now the flag is a symbol of our love for the land. After all, national parks are an American invention. But, like our country, a flawed one. All public land is land that was formerly occupied and stewarded by Indigenous people. The establishment of many parks involved the forced removal of Indigenous communities, perhaps most notably in Yosemite. We might call it “our” public land, but it was someone else’s prior to colonization. At a protest near Cap Rock, inside Joshua Tree National Park, a LandBack sign was held high next to someone waving an upside-down flag.
Earlier in the day, near the corner of Park Boulevard and Highway 62 in the town of Joshua Tree, we encountered some men who were brandishing flags and some hard-core motorcycle regalia. My friend wondered if they were counter-protesters, there to support the president’s sweeping cuts to programs that benefit the vulnerable, to defend the havoc DOGE has unleashed on the federal workforce, in favor of slashing funding for scientific research. Instead, they gave a thumbs-up to a protester’s sign.
There was much honking of horns in support, from passenger cars, tractor trailers–even Teslas. There was also opposition from drivers-by, middle fingers thrust out windows, the shouting of expletives, though such responses were in the radical minority. One had to wonder what their point of view was: Do they not like national parks? Are they happy that more than a thousand rangers, trail workers and other public-lands personnel unjustly lost their jobs, jobs they had held, in some cases, for decades? Or are they simply in lockstep with an administration that, sooner or later, will come for them and their families, too?
Republished with permission of High Country News, April 1, 2025
