For other players, like Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin, trying to make change means making a call to action. “This is not isolated just to some specific parts of our country”, Baldwin said.
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Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin demanded that all 50 state attorney generals call for a review of their police training policies during a team press conference Thursday.
On Wednesday, the team’s star cornerback Richard Sherman, meanwhile, criticized the public for not fully listening to the message protesting National Football League players are attempting to send.
“You need a white guy to join the fight”, Bennett said.
Recalling the 2014 shooting by police of 14-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland – Rice was in a public park holding an air pistol and reportedly was shot by a responding officer within 2 seconds of arrival on the scene – Baldwin cited a Justice Department investigation that determined “officers did not effectively deescalate the situation either because they did not know how or did not have the adequate understanding of the importance of de-escalation” before employing force. “At the same time, I see why they probably wouldn’t, because they don’t know what we’re going through”.
“The conversation has gotten to the point where, yes, the situation that’s upon us right now, what’s going on in our country, it’s devastating”, Baldwin said, “but now it has to reach a point of intolerable”.
Washington’s attorney general reached out to Baldwin on Twitter after the news conference.
Baldwin and Sherman’s statements came in the wake of a pair of police shootings, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, another in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“This is not an isolated incident”, Baldwin said. There should not be a concern or worry that the law enforcement is not there to protect you.
“I’ve said this before and as Martin Luther King famously said, ‘We must not become a culture, a society, that is more concerned with order than justice”. I just want that to be clear. They get to love life, too, and they have their day.
It’s another plea, this time from an athlete who’s yet to kneel during the national anthem.
“If somebody like, say, Aaron Rodgers got behind us, I think it would touch home for a lot more people”, Avril said. They’ll look at the man delivering the message, dismiss him as a football player or an African American or both, or they’ll not bother to look at all because it’s easier to simply hide in the notion that everything is OK. However, there should not be the same risk for being a citizen in the United States, reports the Seahawks website.
On Thursday, Baldwin wanted more than the anthem; he wanted real, tangible government action. “Hear what he is saying, and she would get my vote”.
“Why wouldn’t you? You’re a human being”, Baldwin said. “When you see numerous instances like this happen, and again, you don”t know all the context, but you”re asking questions.”.
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The Seahawks’ Cliff Avril also recognizes the inability for many white people to completely understand the struggle black people face, while acknowledging the effect just one big name could have on the issue. Regardless of how you feel about the two most recent police shootings, it’s hard not to wonder if those situations could have been handled differently, with more patience, if the guns came out too early against a man with a broken-down auto and a man with a traumatic brain injury. And I think that we’re raising a culture or society right now that is questioning that very sentiment. “And let you know that it’s not OK”.
