National anthem protests are spreading in a decentralized manner. Kaepernick chose to do something — to use his platform and say something about the current state of racial injustice in the US — and is taking a lot of heat. The protest is gaining momentum. And we are all watching it happen. What if we joined in?
By Dylan Lazerow
For three weeks running the Colin Kaepernick inspired protest has spread across the country, across teams and ages, and across sports. Meanwhile, most athletes — and the general public — have blasted Kaepernick as unpatriotic and have been outraged at his actions and those who support his position but have been silent about the ongoing police killing of unarmed black people and have demonstrated no outrage at the officers' involved continual non indictment and not guilty verdicts. Middle and high school students, volleyball players, school bands, and a select few prominent athletes have joined in this call to really deal with our problem of racial injustice in America. Despite the decentralized spreading of this protest, the focus in the media is still on whether or not the protest is patriotic.
This is not okay.
Someone protests the national anthem to underscore police killing of civilians and the racial injustice that goes on wholesale in this country and as a result becomes the most hated person in sports. The America that we want this country to be and the one we proudly call home cannot be a place where someone exercising their right to free speech is an act that is hated. Especially if it is aimed at the police killings of black people in this country, a widely understood reality. It begs us to answer what this country is truly about.
A country that is supposed to be about freedom, a quality that attracts people from all over the world to come to cannot exile the people from society who are the ones ensuring that we ask the tough questions to get our country in a better place. If we had instead a country filled with people with the kind of courage to speak up in support of Kaepernick's call for safety and freedom for black people instead of focusing all their energy on dismissing and deriding him as unpatriotic, then we could fulfill the dream of what this country is supposed to be about.
Until then, we will never wake up from the nightmare we are currently living day in and day out. It is time for this to end. And really end this time.
We have an epidemic on our hands, a national crisis and disaster, when our people are being killed at the hands of the police and on top of it the police are not being held accountable. Watching volleyball players and NFL athletes and owners join Kaepernick on the national anthem protest is intriguing - as more people are public about their hatred of him and his actions, more people join his protest. This is polarization working to build the movement. What is happening now are the early signs of decentralized trigger activity caused by the initial protest of sitting during the anthem. And we have seen different forms of protest in solidarity, from kneeling to the raising of a fist, which has served as an homage to the black power salute popularized at the 68 Olympic Games. Kaepernick — and the people who have joined in the national anthem protest — is the latest in the response to the unjust murders of black people at the hands of the police, who are supposed to be the government officials who protect the people.
As we receive reports that police have killed more black people, in Tulsa, in Columbus, in Charlotte, and in too many places all over this country with too many names that you wouldn't recognize because they never became hashtags — as a black person protesting the murder of black people is shot in the head with a rubber bullet as I write this story — it is finally time for this to be the work of everybody in this country. Not just the organizers and clergy and legislators, but the general public. And in this country, that includes a lot of people who believe themselves white. We have no choice but to work tirelessly day in and day out to destroy white supremacy and win justice and equality for black people. It is high time to join the work of the new civil rights movement for black liberation. This is a call to action for the historic end to the new Jim Crow that has acted as a parasite to our growth as a country and a people.
How do we want to be remembered as a country. More importantly, how do you want to be remembered as someone who lived through this period in this country? Ask yourself that question, and really engage with it. Then come out on the side of freedom and dignity for all people, on the side of the movement for black lives, and begin crushing white supremacy everywhere that it lives and manifests. In your spirit, in your attitude, in your assumptions, in your actions, in your workplace, at your dinner table, on the court, at the bar. It is going to take all of us to beat this nasty disease that has taken this country. There is a beautiful story we can write as a collective people now if we can defeat this thing. The symptoms are the police killings of unarmed black people and the racial injustice that the national anthem protest has tried to elucidate. We have the medicine for it, you just have to be willing to take the treatment.
DYLAN LAZEROW is currently a Core Team Member at The Relational Center’s Radical Engagement Project. He organizes with IfNotNow and Movimiento Cosecha, and is a Coach at the Center For Nonviolent Struggle. He has appeared on wbur, nbc, Rt, TYT, and yes! Magazine.