Massachusetts State Flag (we need a better state flag)

[PercyL]

Personally, I think they should choose a well-designed naturalistic image of the Liberty Tree, in full leaf; there are old and existing examples from which to choose - but the bronze image formerly set in the pavement bricks at the SW corner of Washington x Boylston streets - I don't know whither it went when that lot was redeveloped - would be a good starting reference point:

https://www.battlefields.org/sites/default/files/styles/wy/public/LibertyTreeSidewalkMarker.jpeg.webp?h=ea0d59f6&itok=gcH67Yph

But Native objections to erasing the image of the Native on the current flag is by all accounts what's iced this effort; what they want is to remove the sword-bearing charge above the shield, and to remove or replace the motto.

 

[prediction-error]

National Parks Service has a page about this:

Flags of Bunker Hill: Banners of Liberty (U.S. National Park Service)

Flags of Bunker Hill: Banners of Liberty

www.nps.gov

There are Bunker Hill flag variants, as well as the New England variant (@stick n move posted above), that are similar

This NPS site is a bit odd. Under the "Appeal to Heaven" flag, they write:

Some American colonists embraced the idea that God could be summoned to help them defend their natural rights.

The phrase comes from John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. From Wikipedia:

The Second Treatise outlines a theory of civil society. Locke begins by describing the state of nature, and appeals to God's creative intent in his case for human equality in this primordial context. From this, he goes on to explain the hypothetical rise of property and civilization, in the process explaining that the only legitimate governments are those that have the consent of the people. Therefore, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown, i.e., revolutions can be just.

Colonists would have been very familiar with Locke's writing. It's not about "God being summoned," but about the right to revolution to form a secular government based on the consent of the governed.