In America’s great national parks, visitors expect beauty, not politics. Yet Yosemite has recently become the stage for competing displays that highlight not only the values of those involved but also how government institutions respond to conduct by their own employees.
The first name that surfaced was Nate Vince, once Yosemite’s lone full-time locksmith. Vince saw his post as indispensable, declaring, “We have endless things that need to be secured in various forms, and I’m the sole keeper of those keys, the one that makes the keys, the one that fixes the locks, installs the locks, and has all that knowledge of the security behind the park. And so it’s a critical role. And without it, everyone else in the park is handicapped.”
Vince’s role may have been important, but his work ethic raised eyebrows. He developed a reputation for spending more time hiking iconic trails and snapping photos than tending to his actual duties. Eventually, he was dismissed. To protest, Vince took to Yosemite’s cliffs, not with vandalism or disorder, but by raising a massive American flag upside down atop El Capitan. He was making a political point—protesting his firing and President Trump specifically. But he did so in a way that still showed respect. Vince and his group never let the flag touch the ground, removed it before nightfall, and carefully folded it. As Vince put it, “We’d made our point and didn’t want to interfere with people’s experience of firefall. We brought it up right before the sun lasered the falls. It really had a ceremonial feel.”
Whatever one thinks of Vince’s grievance, his protest at least recognized the dignity of the symbol he used. The American flag was treated with care. His point was made, and then the banner was removed.
That restraint cannot be said of another Yosemite employee: Dr. Shannon Joslin. Joslin, a self-identified nonbinary biologist, enlisted six climbers and a drag performer known as “Pattie Gonia” to unfurl a 55-by-35-foot pink-and-blue transgender flag on El Capitan. Unlike Vince, Joslin was still employed by the National Park Service at the time of the stunt.
The flag was secured with tension wire and anchor points, left on display for all visitors to see. Yosemite’s acting deputy superintendent, Danika Globokar, terminated Joslin’s employment, explaining in the dismissal letter that Joslin had “failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct.” New legislation followed swiftly, barring the display of large flags and banners on Yosemite cliffs and other national park sites—a clear attempt to stop political demonstrations from overtaking public lands intended for all Americans.
Joslin, however, took to social media to portray the firing as unfair. “I hung the flag in my free time, off-duty, as a private citizen. El Capitan has had flags hung on it for decades and no one has EVER been punished for it. Only me,” Joslin wrote. But the reality was plain: Joslin wasn’t an anonymous visitor. She was an identifiable Park Ranger, still employed by the federal government, staging a political demonstration on the very property she was paid to safeguard.
The stunt was designed as activism, not expression of personal identity. As “Pattie Gonia” put it, the banner was meant to “prove a point that trans is natural.” Dressed in a park ranger outfit with garish makeup, the performer claimed that plants and animals change sexes, twisting biology into a slogan. Joslin appeared front and center in the group photo on the cliff, visibly proud of the display. The final moments of their May video showed Joslin waving into the camera—a fitting farewell, since the action soon ended her “dream job.”
This episode underscores a broader truth about taxpayer-funded institutions. National Parks belong to the American people, not to activists with a political agenda. Public service comes with responsibility—responsibility to honor the role, respect the laws, and avoid turning shared spaces into stages for ideological stunts.
The comparison is stark: one former employee who chose the flag of his country to make a point, treating it with reverence even in protest, and another who chose a divisive banner, leveraged government affiliation to amplify it, and forfeited the career she claimed to treasure. Yosemite’s cliffs may be timeless, but the lessons here are immediate. Public lands are not billboards for politics. They are national treasures that deserve stewardship, not spectacle.
