When I was younger you could find me sitting in the back of the room listening to the politicians make promises and realizing that at best I might get a 25% return on that promise. But recently I've moved to the front of the room not wanting to miss a single word. You have to listen very closely if you really want to hear what's being said. Unfortunately I didn't hear what I wanted to hear.
The conversation of the day was that a group of professional football players disrespected the flag and the national anthem, that they brought shame on themselves and shame on America . The issue became even became bigger than the people suffering and dying in Puerto Rico.
The truth:
So what are players protesting when kneeling for the national anthem?
Players are protesting the injustices people of color still face in America today. Eric Reid, who protested with Kaepernick during 2016 (and still is in 2017), wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that explained why they took a knee:
We spoke at length about many of the issues that face community, including systemic oppression against people of color, police brutality and the criminal justice system. We also discussed how we could use our platform, provided to us by being professional athletes in the N.F.L., to speak for those who are voiceless.
After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former NFL player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest. We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.
The message that the players are trying to send has been misconstrued. Some have said that the players are attempting to disrespect the country, national anthem, flag, and military by taking a knee — that is incorrect. Part of the confusion came from initial misunderstanding, and it grew when Trump spoke at his rally in Alabama.
The players are simply protesting systemic oppression against people of color, police brutality, and the criminal justice system. The national anthem is just the vehicle for the protest.
In 1968 and again in 1972 a similar movement was happening at the Olympic Games:
They didn’t #TakeTheKnee: The Black Power protest salute that shook the world in 1968
By DeNeen L. Brown September 24
U.S. Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith, center, and his teammate John Carlos, who won bronze in the 200-meter race, raise their fists during the U.S. national anthem at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left. (AP Photo)
They didn’t #TakeTheKnee. Instead they raised a fist.
On Sunday, President Trump’s demand that NFL owners fire players who kneel during the national anthem set off protests by NFL players, coaches and even owners. They linked arms, knelt or remained in the locker room as “The Star Spangled Banner” rang out in stadiums across the country and in London, where the Baltimore Ravens played the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The show of unity and defiance reminded some of another silent protest that continues to reverberate almost 50 years later.
U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos — who’d won gold and bronze respectively in the 200-meter sprint — raising black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City became one of the most iconic sports images of the 20th century.
The protest had been something the two athletes carefully planned. As Smith and Carlos walked to the podium, they took off their shoes to protest poverty. They wore beads and a scarf to protest lynchings. And when the national anthem was played, they lowered their heads in defiance and raised their fists in a Black Power salute that rocked the world.
[Before Trump vs. the NFL, there was Jackie Robinson vs. JFK]
Before the anthem started to play, Carlos recalled later that he thought about the symbols that had been chosen for that moment on the world stage. They knew it would become “a moment of truth.” And that by protesting they might lose everything.
“I looked at my feet in my high socks and thought about all the black poverty I’d seen from Harlem to East Texas. I fingered my beads and thought about the pictures I’d seen of the ‘strange fruit’ swinging from the poplar trees of the South,” Carlos wrote in his 2011 book written with Dave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World.”
He had decided to unzip his Olympic jacket, in defiance of Olympic etiquette, but in support of “all the working-class people — black and white — in Harlem who had to struggle and work with their hands all day.”
He had deliberately covered up the “USA” on his uniform with a black T-shirt to “reflect the shame I felt that my country was traveling at a snail’s pace toward something that should be obvious to all people of good will. Then the anthem started and we raised our fists into the air.”
They had one pair of gloves between them. Smith put a black glove on his right fist; Carlos covered his left fist. Smith raised his right fist; Carlos his left.
“As the anthem began and the crowd saw us raise our fists, the stadium became eerily quiet,” Carlos wrote. “For a few seconds, you honestly could have heard a frog piss on cotton. There’s something awful about hearing fifty thousand people go silent, like being in the eye of a hurricane.”
As the national anthem played the crowd began to boo them. Then some people in the crowd began to scream the national anthem.
“It was like they were saying, ‘Oh, you anti-American sons of bitches. We’re going to shove the s–t down your throat!’ ” Carlos wrote. “They screamed it to the point where it seemed less a national anthem than a barbaric call to arms.”
The punishment for defying Olympic rules was swift. Smith and Carlos were ordered to leave the Olympic Stadium.
But the image of Smith and Carlos raising fists and Australian sprinter Peter Norman — who took silver in the race — would become seared in history as an incendiary act of protest by athletes.
They’d taken a stand at a moment when the country was also embroiled in protests over the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The nation had seen on television Chicago police beating demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention.
When they returned to the United States, Carlos and Smith were suspended from the U.S. track team, and they received death threats.
After their track careers, both Smith and Carlos played in the NFL, but their time on the field was short-lived. Smith played three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, according to the Track and Field Hall of Fame. Carlos played one year with the Philadelphia Eagles and one year in the Canadian Football League.
Smith, who worked at Santa Monica College as a sociology professor and head cross-country and track and field coach, said in an HBO documentary that they were just trying to bring attention to injustice in the United States. “I don’t like the idea of people looking at it as negative,” Smith said. “There was nothing but a raised fist in the air and a bowed head, acknowledging the American flag — not symbolizing a hatred for it.”
Carlos, who worked as a guidance counselor at Palm Springs High School in California, told the Guardian newspaper: “I had a moral obligation to step up. Morality was a far greater force than the rules and regulations they had.”
A statue of Tommie Smith and John Carlos was installed at the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture last year. Another cover up. Where is the action?
Not much has changed in the last 50 years. Take issue with the vehicle, avoid the issue.
It's time to read between the lines. this type of stupidity has gone on long enough. we are all human beings; we want love; we want companionship; we want a safe place to raise our families; we want a positive future for our children; we all deserve respect.
Don't let our leaders and neighbors rip us apart.
UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL!
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