In 1961, Walter Beach III was playing with the American Football League’s Boston Patriots when they were scheduled to travel for an away game down South. Beach, a defensive cornerback, looked at the team’s itinerary and noticed that the black and white players would be staying in separate facilities. On the opposite side of the field, the home fans sang louder than usual and chanted “U-S-A” once the song was complete.
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Tensions certainly ran high, even leading up to the game. “We should all get behind that”, said Daryl Graves, 52, a fan who was in the stands during the 49ers game. But in a stadium reserved for athletics, without a word, an uncomfortable conversation continued. “I think what they stand for is something important”.
Watkins Mill players shake hands with Damascus players before their Friday night football matchup in Damascus. The national anthem, for example, was written by a slave-owner and contains a painful reference to slavery in its little-known third stanza.
Watkins Mill’s captains didn’t think their decision would get this much attention.
When team owners and administrators submit to performing acts of national pride for less-than-patriotic reasons, they rope players into that practice as well.
According to Q13Fox, Garfield High School head football coach Joey Thomas said that the players chose to take the action to bring attention to social injustices, emphasizing that it was a player-driven move. The 49ers have acknowledged Kaepernick’s first amendment right to do whatever he pleases during the anthem, and donated $1 million to a foundation working toward “improving racial and economic inequality and fostering communication and collaboration between law enforcement and the communities they serve”, according to a statement from 49ers’ Chief Executive Jed York.
The school has had town hall meetings twice this week speaking about the topic and what they plan to do going forward. They read about it, watch it and talk about it. Smith says he, too, wanted to start a conversation. Thats why we believe in America, she said.
We need to stop conflating differences of opinion with being unpatriotic, stop scapegoating and get down to solving these problems. Now people have just heard about it. He hasn’t pillaged, stolen, lied or brought any disrespect to his family or community.
Q: You said this protest has caused disruption and torn at the fabric of the team. A possible alternative message: “I was abandoned by both my parents as a very young child and taken in by two white parents”. “That’s not true of every individual student”. Nobody believes that, least of all Trump who constantly berates the United States saying it has become the “world’s whipping boy”, calling the American military “a disaster” and publicly approving of the authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin over American president Barack Obama. Watkins Mill was overmatched, losing several players to injury including senior Ginino Mattocks, who was was carted off by an ambulance after a helmet-to-helmet hit. One army veteran who also used the hashtag explained, “I did not volunteer to defend a country where police brutality has been swept under the rug”.
If it wasn’t for the courageous men and women who have sacrificed for him, he wouldn’t even be able to play the game that he enjoys. They loved me and treated me the same as my blonde sister and my other siblings. And people are trying to beat them down.
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Said Mission High junior Marvin Pusung-Zita, “I consider my teammates my brothers, and being that my brothers on the team are black and oppressed, then of course by all means I’m going to support them and take the knee”.
