By now Americans all around the country have witnessed what may have been the most visible act of resistance to Trump since the Women’s March this past January. And although the actual protesters only numbered in the hundreds, rather than the millions who marched in D.C. and elsewhere around the country, the collective impact of the NFL’s near-universal rejection to Trump’s clumsy attempts to race-bait American pro football is likely to resonate in ways that the Women’s March simply could not.
Because Americans, regardless of their political persuasion, could not change the channel this Sunday. Football cuts across political lines, and whether your news is filtered in your Facebook feed through the Drudge Report or Daily Kos, if you want to watch that game you’ve got to tune in.
And if you tuned in, this is what you saw:
This weekend, however, the kneeling became a movement: Kaepernick, after President Trump mocked the notion of athletes engaging in politics during a rally on Friday, was joined in his quiet protest by an unprecedented number of his fellow football players. And also, in spirit, by many of his fellow athletes. And by several NFL franchise owners. And by the NFL itself.
When Trump delivered his remarks on Friday condemning Colin Kaepernick and a few other pro football players who dared to protest the continuing epidemic of wanton police brutality against African-Americans by kneeling through the National Anthem, the motivation behind that gesture still remained fair game for attacks by Republicans and their media mouthpieces eager to inflame their base against the supposedly “unpatriotic” nature of people of color. Instead of a way to call attention to the fact that police across the country have continued murdering innocent black people with impunity, often suffering no legal consequences for doing so, Kaepernick’s protest instead became a simple affront to “patriotism,” another case of an uppity black man who didn’t know his place in the pecking order. And oh, by the way, he’s really not an “American” like us (wink, wink)—look how he was defiling the holiest of holies—American professional football! Until Friday, Kaepernick was still being stopped at the line of scrimmage, even thrown for a loss by a gleeful Fox News.
But, as he showed all too clearly after Charlottesville, Donald Trump never met an opportunity to demonize people of color that he didn’t try to take full advantage of. Little did he know that by opening his uncontrollable, fat mouth in singling out Kaepernick he was also opening a huge hole in his defense, leaving the lanes unguarded and relying wholly on his tattered secondary to stop what turned out to be a major moment in anti-Trump solidarity, broadcast into every American’s living room all Sunday afternoon, again and again:
It all happened slowly, until it all happened quickly. “Last week across the entire NFL,” the Associated Press reported, “only four players knelt or sat, and two stood with their fists raised. In the nine early games Sunday, AP reporters counted 102 players kneeling or sitting, and at least three raising their fists.” (Later in the day, the AP modified its estimate to “more than 130.”)
And there were a lot more than 130 by the end of the night. Because football is so ubiquitous and the reaction to Trump universally negative by those who actually play in the game, what Trump accomplished with one ill-conceived moment of crass opportunism simply galvanized more Americans against him in ways he should have foreseen. It’s turned out to be a fumble of historic proportions. As Megan Garber, writing for The Atlantic, notes, just like football, the progress of historical change is often a slow, painful task, methodical to the point of exasperation. But just like any football game, the course of history can be changed in an instant, and whole new narratives can move forward with shocking speed. Today was one of those instants:
[T]hese moments matter. The images being made from these moments matter. The knees on the turf, the fists in the air: these are the gestures that history tends to remember—and that tend to change history’s path even as it moves forward. Football is a game of progress: yard by yard, play by play. It is a game in which, often, the best result that can be hoped for is the chance to try again. But it is also a game in which, every once in a while, change comes in an instant. The pass is intercepted. The tackle is evaded. The ball is carried, by a single person backed by a team of them, over that line. Colin Kaepernick is not playing on Sunday. In another way, though, he will be. With him and around him, slowly and then all at once, many others took a knee.
Instead of one recalcitrant football player, Trump now has an entire League and a lot of fans publicly coming out against him. And while some of the fans watching may have hissed and booed the players’ actions, they’ll be back next week sure enough, Trump’s hollow calls for a “boycott” notwithstanding. They’re now a captive audience to the Resistance, whether they like it or not.