September 24, 2017

NFL Players Across the Country Take A Knee In Response To Trump

This could be a turning point for athletes speaking out on politics.

Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker Terrell Suggs, from left, Mike Wallace, former player Ray Lewis and inside linebacker C.J. Mosley kneel down during the playing of the U.S. national anthem at Wembley Stadium in London.Matt Dunham/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Scores of NFL players linked arms and kneeled in defiance as the national anthem blared in stadiums across the country today, just two days after President Donald Trump criticized one of their own. Some didn’t participate in the national anthem at all, choosing to stay in their locker rooms, while the NFL’s only Muslim owner went beyond the team statement and stood on the field beside his players in protest. 

Current and former athletes, from Cleveland Caveliers star LeBron James to Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin, lashed out after Trump called on NFL owners to fire players who protest during the national anthem at a rally in Alabama on Friday night. 

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired!” Trump told the crowd, alluding to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose kneeling during the anthem to condemn police violence and racial injustice last season inspired others to join in protest. 

On Saturday night, Oakland A’s rookie catcher Bruce Maxwell, whose father was in the US army, became the first Major League Baseball player to take a knee during the national anthem. He explained to reporters why he joined in on the protests. 

More than a dozen members of the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars took a knee during the US national anthem when the two sides faced off in London, England. Jaguars owner Shad Khan, who contributed $1 million to Trump’s campaign last year, locked arms with his fellow players and called it a privilege to stand with his players. “We have a lot of work to do, and we can do it,” Khan said in a statement, “but the comments by the President make it harder. That’s why it was important for us, and personally for me, to show the world that even if we differ at times, we can and should be united in the effort to become better as people and a nation.” 

Hours before their game against the Chicago Bears, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin told CBS that the team would stay in the locker room during the national anthem. 

https://twitter.com/DSky3/status/911998691631882241

Singer Rico Lavelle raised a fist and took a knee at the end of his national anthem performance before the Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons game. 

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/912001508744601600

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/912001987054653446

 

 

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate