Hell yeah, tear down the flag.

Ban the flag in government spaces. Scrub the ghosts of Confederate heroes from street names and reservoirs and academic buildings. Banish the statues to museums. Have the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy donate their money to those museums, and somehow we have to follow up the conversation with teaching eleventh graders, once they finally reach the American Civil War in public school curriculum, that the country in which they live was formed and fueled by racism if they haven’t figured it out already. The Confederate Flag is a symbol of hate masquerading as a cause for pride. We must make the conversation honest, for once — yes, white ancestors died “defending their rights” and principal amongst those rights was the one to keep people’s black ancestors enslaved.

I live in Mississippi and even the governor of Aladamnbama, our sideways sister, has called for the removal of the Confederate flag at the capitol. I predict that Mississippi will have the Last Flag Standing, because Mississippi often likes to be the bastion of the last ignorant thing that should matter to anyone, like that one relative you know who might still indignantly wear cargo shorts — racist, dehumanizing cargo shorts. It has to end now. Black Lives Matter everywhere, and as I mention in my TIME piece, this includes the South, with its hazy blanket of the weight of its racist history covering everything that moves. We must prove that black lives matter by working to show that black lives are valued in every space in which they walk.