NFL players protest racial inequality

More than 16 months after filing a formal complaint alleging that NFL team owners worked together to keep him off the field in the wake of his kneeling protest, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s collusion grievance against the league has concluded with a confidential settlement, lawyers for Kaepernick and the NFL announced Friday.

The exact details of the settlement — which also included an agreement with player Eric Reid, who filed his own collusion grievance in 2018 — will not be announced due to a confidentiality agreement. The settlement was first revealed in a pair of Friday afternoon tweets posted by the NFL and Kaepernick’s lawyer, Mark Geragos.

Pastor Mack Morris wanted to take a stand. Preaching in front of his Mobile, Alabama, congregation on Sunday morning, positioned just to the left of an American flag, he declared that he was sick and tired of the way clothing brand Nike had, in his view, disrespected America and its people.

“The first pair of jogging shoes I wore were Nike jogging shoes,” he told his congregation, “That was in the early ’80s. I’ve been wearing Nike jogging shoes since 1980. I got news for you. I’ve bought my last pair of Nike shoes.” He produced two branded items — a Nike wristband and a headband. Then he cut them up right there at the pulpit.

It didn’t take long for the internet to explode when Nike announced who would be the new face of its brand.

On Labor Day, Nike tweeted a photo of NFL player Colin Kaepernick, (in)famous for sparking controversy when he took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, to celebrate the corporation’s 30th anniversary of the slogan “Just Do It.” The image — Nike’s usual stark, intense black-and-white style — features Kaepernick staring directly at the camera overlaid by the text, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just Do It.”

Nike announced on Monday that the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign would star Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who famously began kneeling during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality, igniting a national conversation about race, sports, and the meaning of patriotism.

The ad, which features a close-up of Kaepernick’s face and the tagline “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” was met with praise from fellow Nike athletes like LeBron James and Serena Williams, as well as former CIA Director John Brennan. That “everything” refers to Kaepernick’s professional football career — following his departure from the San Francisco 49ers, he was essentially blackballed from the NFL for his political demonstrations.

Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played a down of professional football since January 1, 2017 (a home loss to the Seattle Seahawks). But he’s become a powerful (and divisive) symbol — an inspiration for hundreds of other NFL players who have continued to kneel in protest of racial inequality during the anthem, and, most recently the face of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign in 2018.

The tagline for the Nike campaign: “Believe in something. Even if it means losing everything.”

For the past several months, the NFL and the owners of its 32 teams have been locked in a debate about how to handle players protesting racial injustice before games. The tension is only exacerbated by criticism from President Donald Trump, who regularly slams the protests as unpatriotic and unnecessary. But on Thursday evening, several players continued their protest, once again calling attention to systemic racism and racial inequity.

Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and cornerback De’Vante Bausby both stood in the team’s tunnel as the national anthem played, while Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett stayed in the locker room before the team’s game versus the New England Patriots.

At ESPN’s football media day, encompassing both college football and the NFL, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro announced that the network does not plan to show the National Anthem during its broadcasts of either college or professional football this season.

The move comes as the world’s largest sports television network attempts to steer around the complicated issue resulting from the backlash against NFL players who have protested racial injustice and police brutality by kneeling during the anthem for the past two years.

For most fans, the upcoming NFL season means a few months of enjoying some football. But for President Donald Trump, it’s an opportunity to reignite the culture wars by mischaracterizing the national anthem protests.

During this week’s preseason games, several NFL players from different teams, including the Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Seattle Seahawks, protested during the national anthem by refusing to come out to the field as it played, raising their fists, or kneeling. On Friday morning, Trump reacted to the players with another round of tweets.

When the NFL announced in May that it would require all players on the field to stand during the national anthem or potentially face team fines, the league sought to finally end backlash to the kneeling protests against racial injustice that dominated coverage for the past two seasons. Now the NFL will put the anthem rule on hold after a fresh round of criticism this week.

The controversy began Thursday when the Associated Press reported that the Miami Dolphins had created a team anthem policy to suspend or fine players for kneeling. According to the AP, a leaked copy of team discipline rules included a brief, one-sentence section on “Proper Anthem Conduct.” The document classifies the kneeling protests under a larger list of “conduct detrimental to the club” that could lead to suspension, a fine, or both. Other violations on the list include “drug use or possession, gambling, breaking curfew and riding motorcycles as a driver or passenger.”

For months, President Donald Trump has waged an all-out offensive against the NFL, arguing that football players who kneel in protest during the national anthem are disrespectful and unpatriotic.

Trump regularly accuses the players — who have engaged in a two-season protest against racial injustice — of insulting the flag, the military, and America itself.

For months, President Trump has railed against the NFL, arguing that players who kneel during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and inequality are being unpatriotic and “disrespectful.”

He continued this attack Monday evening, announcing that the Philadelphia Eagles, the 2018 Super Bowl champions, had been disinvited from the White House. In a statement on Monday, the White House justified the decision by arguing that the team’s members “disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem.” On Tuesday, the White House added that because only a few players agreed to attend, “the vast majority of the Eagles team decided to abandon their fans.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on the NFL to punish players who kneel on the field in protest of racial inequality and police violence.

Now, in the wake of the NFL’s new policy that all players must “stand and show respect” during the national anthem, Trump has suggested that players who kneel don’t belong in the US.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on the NFL to punish players like Colin Kaepernick who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and systemic racism.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now!’” Trump said at a rally last September.

In October 2017, NFL executives, owners, and players met behind closed doors to discuss the many criticisms from President Donald Trump of the national anthem protests.

The conversation was supposed to be secret, but Ken Belson and Mark Leibovich at the New York Times obtained a recording of the three-hour meeting. Belson and Leibovich described the meeting as “extraordinary” — a reaction to Trump’s remarks sparking “a level of public hostility that the N.F.L. had never experienced.”

After the last play is run and the lights go off in Minneapolis’s US Bank Stadium, the end of the 52nd Super Bowl on Sunday night will mark the conclusion of a football season dominated by coverage of kneeling football players. The kneeling protests, which sought to draw attention to police violence and racial injustice in America, were condemned by the president, activating a broader debate about race and patriotism in America and serving as a key example of President Donald Trump’s ability to influence public opinion.

Started by then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the summer of 2016, the kneeling protests have been controversial from the start, initially drawing criticism from those who viewed Kaepernick’s action as being offensive to the military. (Kaepernick actually shifted the form of his protest from sitting during the anthem to kneeling in an effort to curtail this line of critique. And several veterans openly supported his protests.)

Last Sunday, Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, said he would bench players who did not stand during the national anthem. This threat was publicized nationally and applauded on Twitter by President Trump, who summarized the two men’s shared view: “Stand for Anthem or sit for game!”

On Wednesday, the president elaborated on his views, telling Fox News that the NFL “should have suspended” Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem because “you cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem — you cannot do that.” It is quite possible the players have First Amendment protection against retaliation of this kind. The First Amendment generally protects citizens against the suppression of their speech by the government, not private entities like their employers. But when the president uses the power of his office to intimidate business owners into suppressing the speech of their employees — with both implied threats and specific ones — the possibility of a First Amendment violation becomes quite real.

This weekend was our umpteenth reminder that the core of Donald Trump’s political strategy is exacerbating cultural conflict to distract from his policies and results.

The provocation was almost childish in its transparency. Mere weeks after choosing, at a rally, to reawaken conflict over the NFL’s protests, Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence to a NFL game where a protest was inevitable, with explicit instructions to walk out the moment the players took their knee. Pence did as he was told, and we in the media did as we were told: swarming to cover the Trump administration’s latest mortar attack against our attention spans. Just to make sure there was no mistaking whose plan this was, Trump tweeted that it was his idea:

Vice President Mike Pence, the former governor and Congress member from Indiana, announced on Twitter that he had left Sunday’s football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers to express his discontent with some 49ers players’ decision to protest police violence against African Americans by kneeling during the national anthem:

President Trump said on Twitter that he had instructed Pence to leave should any players kneel:

On August 28, 1963, basketball superstar and activist Bill Russell sat in the second row at the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It became one of the most famous civil rights rallies in the country’s history. But Russell called it a “mere picnic” — a radical idea that had been “compromised” by organizers worried about appeasing then-President Kennedy.

Fifty-four years later, this story of activism compromised repeats itself.

The wave began in London. It rippled across the Atlantic, from football stadium to football stadium throughout the country. Ultimately, NFL games all Sunday long included a moment of protest during the national anthem.

Players took to their knees, linked arms, or stayed in their locker rooms when the anthem was played, all either in continued solidarity with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick or in direct response to President Donald Trump, who infuriated players across the league by criticizing such protests last week as unpatriotic and as fireable offenses: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field?’” he said to wild applause.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired!’”

That was President Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Alabama in support of Senate candidate Luther Strange on Friday night. Trump was referring to NFL players such as Colin Kaepernick and others who have protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem.

President Donald Trump is upset again — this time, at a sports league.

On Friday and Saturday, he called on the NFL to fire players who protest during the national anthem. On Monday, after Trump’s comments led more players to protest during Sunday’s games, he tweeted “#StandForOurAnthem” and retweeted someone who called for a boycott against the NFL.

Millions of Americans are facing desperate conditions in Puerto Rico, congressional Republicans are mounting a last-ditch effort to enact billions of dollars in health care cuts, and the president of the United States is spending his Monday morning tweeting about flags and NASCAR.

Nominally, the topic is President Trump’s request that NFL owners fire players who kneel or otherwise engage in silent acts of political protest during the singing of the national anthem at games. Since NFL owners rather clearly can’t do this under the terms of the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players, the whole thing makes no sense, and the stakes are essentially nonexistent.

The controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem has managed to become the number one issue in America, despite millions of US citizens in Puerto Rico living without water or power after Hurricane Maria. For protesting NFL players, like quarterback Colin Kaepernick, their demonstrations are about racism and police violence. “We will not stand for the injustice that has plagued people of color in this country,” the players of the Seattle Seahawks wrote in a Sunday statement explaining their unanimous decision to protest during the anthem.

President Trump, who kicked this controversy into high gear on Friday after calling Kaepernick a “son of a bitch” at a rally, sees the protests differently. “The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “NFL must respect this!”

With a series of tweets over the weekend, President Trump breathed new life into the debate surrounding NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. His comments followed a raucous rally in Alabama where he said an NFL player who doesn’t stand for the anthem is a “son of a bitch” who should be fired. Players responded to the president incredulously on social media, and yesterday’s NFL games saw even more players take a knee during the anthem. And they were joined by Bruce Maxwell, one of baseball’s few black players, and even music icon Stevie Wonder.

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers and many believe to be blackballed from the league, drew attention to this form of protest last season, stating that he refused “to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”