In what seems like an arbitrary decision the National Football League has stripped its workforce of their citizenship. The NFL now says the players, and they do mean black players, no longer have the right to exercise their Constitutional right to protest. If President Trump has his way they may be even risking their occupancy in America. Oh sure, the players cannot cry poor mouth, after all, many of them became instant millionaires at twenty-two years old, once they left college (notice I did not say graduated, but that is another issue). I am wondering, how much, for those of you waving off the rights of spoiled players; how much money for your freedom?
So, without the input of the legal bargaining arm of the players, in the form of the NFL Players Association— their legal union, the league issued an order for its players to either stand, stay in the locker room, or be fined if they kneel on the sidelines of the playing field during the playing of the National Anthem. The action seems to be at the behest of a president who has called them, sons of bitches, told the public that there are some “very fine people” supporting white nationalist and this morning said maybe the players “shouldn’t be in the country” if they dare use their 1st Amendment right.
I was born in this country and knelt before the flag after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., members of my family knelt after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. They knelt because it was not only showing reverence to great men or to protest a country that had let me and them down, it was there right as citizens. People do not go off to war and die to decide what rights you are allowed to exercise they go to war, so you can exercise them all. It strikes me as odd that the same people who are willing to bomb clinics, watch hundreds of children shot down in the streets as a result of gun violence, turn a blind eye to a 65-year-old black woman’s abuse or see a young black man [Sterling Brown] tasered for parking illegally, get so alarmed at peaceful protest.
The tip of the spear of the protest is quarterback Colin Kaepernick formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, and who led his team to an appearance in Superbowl XLVII in 2012, oddly cannot even get a look as a backup player. Kaepernick as his detractors will quickly and unhesitatingly point out, is not perfect. He wore some socks that offended some, had a problem with his head coach and probably spit on a sidewalk at some point in his life. I make light of his past mistakes because nothing he has done rises to the punishment of banishment from his chosen profession. His only crime seems to be a demand that people who look like him and I stop being abused, beaten and killed. So, if you can leave the game neither homicidal nor suicidal... Pardon me while I take a knee…