 Welcome back to the couch at DCTV for another episode of In the Studio. I'm your host for today, Issa Shake. There's been a push in Davis recently to get the city a new design flag. One of the organizers of that effort is Aiden Ramey and he joins us today. Thank you very much for having me, Issa. Thanks, Aiden. Let's start out with your background. Where are you from and how long have you been in Davis? I originally grew up in the Los Angeles area and I've been in Davis since my third year now. I'm a junior at UC Davis. So you came here because of the UC? Yes. Davis has sort of been in my family for a long time. Lots of my family are farmers in the Fresno area, so they all came to UC Davis. So it sort of made sense for me to come here as well. So for viewers who don't know, what is your project? Well our project is to give the city a symbol that they can be proud of. This project was started by and for the community. We wanted to get community submissions. We got people from high school students to a guy living in Davis for over 70 years to design a flag that we can all proudly rally behind. Yeah. So your project is to give the city a flag. Where did the inspiration for this project come from? Well, I watched a TED talk about flag design, specifically city flag design. And at the end of it, the speaker gave a little call to action. And he said, if your city doesn't have a city flag, maybe work to change that. And I was inspired by that. And ever since I've come to Davis, I've absolutely fell in love with the city. And I decided, why not give it a go? And I've been having a blast ever since. Yeah. So what is the significance of a city having a flag? Well, a city having a flag is the best way for the residents to show their civic pride. City flag can display a powerful and complex message easily recognizable from a distance. And the cities that have the well-designed flags are proud of it. And they proudly fly it. And we believe Davis needs such a flag. Yeah. So when you watched this TED talk, you were inspired. What were your first steps? What did you first think of doing? Well, the first step was to get some help. I consider myself artistically challenged. So I went out to some design students at UC Davis and pitched them the idea. And started out with five initial designs from UC Davis design students. And just so we could sort of get people interested in the idea. And then we said, we want people to submit your own ideas. And so we got lots of submissions from the community. And yeah, that's how it started. Yeah. So other than just getting submissions from the community, have you reached out to Davis residents to the community? How have you tried to get their support? We've been doing so much over the past year and a half. So we've been tabling at the farmer's market, tabling downtown. I've spoken at four local schools in Davis, DaVinci, Willett, DHS, and King. I've spoken at multiple city council meetings. I've been at events with police officers and firefighters. Just any Davis public event members of our organization try to show up to show that we're proud to be part of the city and we would like people to support the project. Yeah. So when you're at the farmer's market, when you're at high school, what's the kind of reaction do you get? Overwhelmingly positive. At Willett Elementary, there was a young man who, I've spoke to around 66 graders there. And he came to me after I spoke and very seriously said, I want you to promise to come back here once this project is successful. And it totally made my month. So it's been overwhelmingly positive because this whole project is out of love for the city. And people are excited by it and getting to wave your wave of flag and say, I love Davis. I'm proud to live here. It's something that a lot of people can really easily get behind. So it's not just a community effort, it's a political effort, right? Because you'd have to have the city government agree to this. How have your interactions with city government gone? They've been going pretty well. I've spoken at two city council meetings. We do have support on the city council. We have two city councilors that are on our side but can't quite publicly endorse it yet. And we're hoping by the end of the year is sort of our goal to get the flag officially recognized with a couple on our side and hopefully soon to be more. We think that task is... Have any votes been held? Has any votes? Yes. So last year, back when we had around a thousand votes from the community, the city council, this project stirred a lot of interest about flags and the city council decided that, hey, you know, city of Davis does need a flag. And they decided to implement an old city logo as the city flag. And we talked to them and said, you know, hey, we're doing this project. We think maybe one of our designs should be the city flag. And the mayor said it's a great idea. It's a great project, but you don't quite have the support yet. So don't view this as a time to give up. Don't quit. We want you to keep going. We want you to keep working. And that's what we've been doing since then. We've tripled the amount of votes we have from the community over 3,000 now. We've had so many public outreach events. And so we're getting more and more public support every day. And we do believe that next time that we do really start that push to the city council, it will get recognized. Yes. So moving on, you want something to happen by the end of the year. What are you doing to work with the city council, with the city government? So I'm having semi-regular meetings with city council members. I talked to Mayor Brett Lee yesterday and sort of talking to them and asking, you know, what would you like to see from the project? How can we get your official support? And so right now what we're working on is the arts community and organizational support. They agree that we have public support with over 3,000. That's more people that have voted than voted for city council members. So we have a large amount of support, but they want to see Davis institutions and things like that to show their support. And that's what we're working on. We spoke at the Davis Odd Fellows and lots of lots of support from them, starting to get support from members of the art community. And that is our plan of action moving forward. Yes. So looking at the flag itself, you've described a lot of symbols and significances. Could you just tell us about some of the symbols you decided to put into this flag? Well I think it's, I'm sure you could guess, the first obvious one is bicycle. You know, with the bicycling hall of fame, with the safest biking city in the country, it's necessary that the flag has some sort of bicycle representation on it. And then with all the different submissions we got, each one highlighted different things, you know, some focused more on our agricultural roots, you know, with our amazing farmers market and all the local farmers around. You know, you saw flags with greens and yellows, really emphasizing that. You saw some more flags that, with the university colors, you know, that obviously there's a strong connection between the university and the city. You saw so many different great ideas from residents with the various symbols, because you know, a powerful flag should have lots of symbolism behind it. And that is what the flag should have. Yeah. So let's just imagine I'm in Davis resident and I'm reluctant to support your flag. I think it looks too much like my Rotary Club flag. I think it's 2UC Davis centric. How do you convince me that I should support having this flag throughout the city? So the 2UC Davis centric, I think it's unfortunate that sometimes there is this divide between the university and the city. Councilwoman Partita agrees with me on that. And this flag is, I think one of the great things about the design that we have chosen is with the university colors on it, it really can help demand that relationship. You know, the, you know, if you talk to business owners downtown, you'll see so many we support UC Davis student signs in their buildings. Because young people in the university, you know, they want to go out to eat. They want to go to the art stores. They want to go to the music stores. You know, they want to spend their money in these great local shops. And because, I mean, to be frank, the city wouldn't be what it is today without the university. And the reason why it's one of the most educated cities is because we have this amazing institution right here. And I don't, you know, some people view that as a negative and I think we should be celebrating that. We should be proud that we have this fantastic university. In terms of the Rotary Club, I'm not familiar with the Rotary Club symbol, but the bicycle wheel on the design has multiple meanings, one for the bicycle wheel. And also since it is a half bicycle wheel, it does make a D for Davis. So it really has lots of symbols impacting this one flag. Which a good flag should. Yeah, but going back to convincing reluctant, I know your majority of your response has been positive. But when you do encounter a negative response, when you see somebody reluctant to see this change when they're totally fine with the penny farthing flag, what is your main argument to convince our viewers? Well, our main argument is if it was a good flag, it would be flown. And I talked to people, you know, reluctant about changing it. The current flag, do you see it flown anywhere? I've never seen it flown downtown. I've never seen it on a patch. I've never seen stickers of it. I've never seen it on coffee cups. You know, if you talk to, when people come talk to me when I'm tabling downtown, and I say that we already have a city flag, people are surprised. We have a city flag. And that is a failure. That means the flag has failed its purpose in a symbol that people instantly recognize and are proud to fly. And the fact that it's not flown everywhere means that something needs to be changed. Don't you think that the penny farthing is recognized enough in the city of Davis? Absolutely. The penny farthing is a great logo. And in no way are we trying to bash the penny farthing. And the only difference is a logo and a flag are different things. Logos look great on pieces of paper, business cards, things that you're seeing real up close because they're intricate and have lettering and you can read them beautifully. But we can't confuse a logo and the flag as the same thing. A flag is meant to be enjoyed a hundred feet away from you, flapping in the wind. It's supposed to be simple, it's supposed to be well-designed and have lots of symbolism. If we institute just the penny farthing, although that's great symbolism and has great history within the city, unfortunately that's just one symbol. And a great flag should have many symbols. What are your next steps moving on going forward? Moving on, continuing to reach out to organizations and people amongst the city. Next month we'll be on KDRT and we're speaking with arts organizations, speaking with local firefighters and EMTs to try and get, you know, really our important workers behind it. And those are our steps to get, or also speaking to our county supervisor to get political support. So if we get, you know, political and organizational support it really shows legitimacy to the campaign. So that's what we're focusing on right now. And finally, if viewers want to know more, if they want to support you, if they're sure reluctant, where can they go to find out more about your project? So the best place to find information is our Facebook page, facebook.com slash our Davis flag. We have lots of great pictures, videos on there. And we've also recently started a letter writing campaign to the city council. City council wants to hear from the residents. So on there we have the sample letter. You can check out, edit it, put in some words that, why the flag really means a lot to you. And then email it off to the city council to show your support. Thank you Anna for joining us. And thank you for joining us in the studio for today's episode. We'll see you next time.