If anything, it is growing – and so is the backlash.
Advertisement
He says he’s grown up with harassment by police all around, watching people get “messed with” and being harassed himself. And several football fans have burned the jerseys of their favorite pro football players after the players refused to stand during the anthem.
Garfield players chose to kneel after talking among themselves about Kaepernick and social injustice, Coach Joey Thomas said. Can’t we unify on what we have in common in this country? As President Obama said, Kaepernick was “exercising his constitutional right” by sitting during the national anthem. “If the perception emerges that at home we’re not treating our own minorities well, then that diminishes our own credibility overseas”.
Kaepernick broke no law, instead just a pre-game tradition that is evidently more important than the message of racial injustice. In wider society it was met both with hostility – some fans tweeted pictures of themselves burning Kaepernick shirts and an National Football League executive called him a traitor – and praise: and the protest is spreading.
“As veterans, we need to be more vocal about this”.
“I support it”, Bobo mentioned. “It doesn’t offend me. But I think, definitely, we’ll see a few guys in the National Basketball Association doing the same thing”.
“When there’s significant change and I feel like [the American] flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, [and that] this country is representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand”, Kaepernick said on August 28.
Kaepernick was quoted saying, “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way”.
They made their statement while the music played.
Colin Kaepernick’s decision to sit through the national anthem and the people who later chose to denounce him for the action share something in common: they both exercised their freedom of speech.
Sterling Smith of Southeast High School says he did so before last week’s game and will do so again Friday against Omaha North and continue through the rest of the season. In an op-ed from the National Baptist Convention USA, Rev Dr Amos Brown, pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and chair of the Convention’s Civil Rights & Political Action Commission, said Kaepernick had “challenged America, to match its creed and pledges with actions of justice, equality and peace for all”. You know what they do to women and gay people in many countries around the world? This checklist approach to free speech and patriotism is not only misleading and misinformed, but also ignores the objective of the right of free speech reserved to citizens of the United States under the Constitution. They say everyone at school has been supportive. “There needs to be a conversation around what the issues are, and what policies are being proposed to fix it”. Conversely, there are many police officers who are heroes, who do their jobs admirably, who risk their lives – and, at times, lose them – in the risky process of keeping citizens and communities safe.
Advertisement
“We are a team comprised of individuals with diverse backgrounds”. “And that’s what makes our military incredibly strong”.
